The CICAAW website serves a lot of roles and purposes. It's a news center, a facility for self-expression of our turners, a time machine with old newsletters and photos, a contact center for finding each other, an event coordinator, and a recruiting tool.
It’s easy to visit and see what’s new, what’s going on, and what’s coming up.
It's also a source of pride. As such, this page enumerates and brags on the various features of the CICAAW website.
All visitors benefit from these general features of the club website.
News items. Most additions to the website automatically results in a news item being added to the home page. This running ticker of points of interest allows website visitors to easily see what's been going on.
Recent updates. Beyond the news items, there's also a Recent updates page which automatically reflects all the various updates to the website, even updates to the static menu pages (which don't result in news items).
Upcoming events and calendar. The next few meetings or special events are featured on the right sidebar. Each can be opened for more details (when we have them available!). We try to have the correct days scheduled out for months in advance so that our members and website visitors can plan accordingly. These details are available by clicking more into the calendar which is also on the right sidebar.
Recent newsletters. The last few newsletters are automatically featured on the right sidebar. These also include some simple highlights of what's in the issue.
Recent photo albums. The last few photo albums are automatically featured on the left sidebar. These are collections of photos from CICAAW events or other woodturning events such as the AAW Symposium.
Library. Our club's library is available via the website, including all our books and DVDs. We've tried to provide more than just a listing of the titles, so that visitors can browse the collection and decide what they want to check out at the next meeting (or see what's missing so they can request or donate it).
When possible, our library items are entered as their ISBN (or ASID) code and the information is automatically retrieved from Amazon.com, providing a rich set of information about the item, including the icon, title, author, page count/length, and even the item description. (This data is cached/refreshed once a day by the website.)
Newsletters. Our club newsletters are all available dating clear back to 2004. Each has some simple highlights listed, is grouped by year in the menu and on the newsletters page, and is even indexed so that the website search engine can find matches within the .pdf documents!
Albums. Our club photo albums are all available dating back to 2004. These include photos from club meetings, demos, events, woodworking shows, and even the AAW Symposium. Each album is grouped by year in the menu and on the albums page. When an album is opened, thumbnails are displayed for quick browsing, or a photo can be clicked on to open a slideshow overlay window to browse larger versions of the photos.
Articles. Woodturning articles can be uploaded by members so that they will be available on the website menu and articles page for the benefit of visitors.
Galleries. Woodturning galleries can be uploaded by members so that they will be available on the website menu and galleries page for the benfit of visitors. It also provides a more archival show-n-tell of our members' work.
About us. It's hard to visualize what a club meeting might be like, what benefits a woodturning club might have to its members, and, we hope, visitors also want to learn where we meet at so they can attend some meetings. This information is very important to new turners and visitors, so it must be treated appropriately.
Membership info. The most common questions through our old website's contact form revolved around membership. This page attempts to capture answers to some of those frequent queries, as well as to make visitors feel comfortable enough to visit us at some meetings and become potential members and friends.
History. In an effort to capture some of our long club history, we created this page to try to tell where we came from, some of the highlights along the way, and the people who helped us get to where we are. Our long time members' memories are fading, so archiving this here can be of interest to our newer members now and in our future...which we hope to be very long.
Logos. For our 20th anniversary, we created a CICAAW logo which is based on the AAW logo, but celebrates our Indiana ties. The logos page recounts some about this design process. It also provides access to the logo in several formats (both raster and vector...so any size can be created), to aid club members in any printable materials they create, such as brochures or handouts.
Slideshow. Our homepage features an attractive and compelling slideshow of featured photos from our club meetings. This is not only a visually interesting feature but also a recruiting tool because it's the first impression that most new visitors get while deciding whether to look further to learn more about us or to navigate to the next search engine result.
Archive photo. This block on the right sidebar enjoys a prominent location on all website pages. It randomly shows a photo from either our photo albums or our members' woodturning galleries. With 4000+ photos to choose from, visitors will rarely see the same photo twice. When an interesting photo shows up, it can be clicked on to open the album or gallery that it's a part of. Because of the visual appeal of this random image feature, we use a larger size thumbnail, which is automatically generated by the website as needed.
Theme. The theme that is used on the frontend of the website is (we think) visually appealing, with a nice color scheme, the slideshow (with its rounded corners and drop shadow), easily scannable blocks, easy navigation, and great menu system. We really appreciate the work of the open source developers that created this theme...it's the face of our site and it's stylin'.
AAW Symposium. Details about the next AAW Symposium are featured on the website footer. This includes a link to the official page as well as a fun "count down" until the event.
Featured sponsors. A few of the sponsors that help our club function are automatically included in the website footer. This randomly selects which ones to show and links to our Sponsors page for more information.
Friends of the club. The website footer includes some links to woodturning and woodworking organizations with which the CICAAW has good relations. We appreciate our friends and enjoy the occasions when we get together.
Some features of the website are more technical in nature. These include things like security and performance.
Website contact. Visitors can contact us via an online form. The website email cannot be scraped by automated "bots". Also, those "bots" cannot spam us via the online form because a security measure called a "captcha" is in place, requiring a person to actually enter the obscured words.
Account request. Visitors can request website accounts so that they receive updates such as monthly newsletter/meeting announcements. We enable them as "prospects" in the website, with reduced features/rights. Account requests are secured by a "captcha" so that a person must enter the obscured words, preventing automated "bots" from spamming our website.
Member contact. Members can contact each other directly using an online contact form, without exposing the members' email addresses on the website. The recipient just receives an emai with the information and can respond from there if they choose. No email can be scraped from the website for nefarious purposes.
Input filter. When editing content, such as adding an article, event, or news item, there are complex filters in place to prevent PHP code, to strip out risky HTML tags, and even to strip out risky attributes on the allowed HTML tags. This is done through a complex configuration that still allows for rich WYSIWYG html editing, inlining and styling of images, and the full size image slideshow overlay features. It's tough to get right, but it's incredibly secure, based on explicit whitelisting of every part of the HTML elements being allowed in.
Security updates. The website automatically warns the webmaster when security updates are available for its underlying modules. The security updates to these modules are the result of the huge community of developers that work on the system we use.
Domain host. We use a great website host, Dreamhost, and they take care of securing the physical servers and network access to our website.
Caching. Various layers of caching are in place, such as the rendered page content throughout the site (for anonymous users), the block content, etc. Yet, even though the pages are cached, the Archive image and Sponsors blocks still update each time at random. This magic is accomplished via AJAX requests that fire off from within the cached page content and dynamically inject the random block content at the last second from inside the visitor's browser. Nifty stuff.
Compression. Typically, each visitor's browser must check (in mostly synchronously way) a large number of CSS and JavaScript files that support each webpage, to see if the latest version has been downloaded to their browser cache. Performing each of these checks adds up to a non-trivial amount of time as the number of CSS and JavaScript files increases. So, as another layer of performance, the CSS files are automatically combined into a single generated file by the website, allowing fewer versions checks. All the JavaScript files that make up our website's underlying modules also get a similar combining into a single JavaScript file.
Cross-browser support. The website looks equally great in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Opera.
Cross-mail client support. The HTML emails have complex content and look great not only in Microsoft Mail, but also in the deficient Google Mail environment!
Newsletter format. Our newsletters are published in Adobe Acrobat .pdf format to provide consistent and accurate results in a format that is ubiquitiously available to our visitors.
Some features of the website are only available when authenticated and logged in. The specific features that are available depends on what roles a given website user has been given. Basically, everyone in the club are "members"...some club members are also "officers"...and the really ugly details are taken care of by the "webmaster".
These features are available to club members that log into the website. Members can create, edit, and delete their own website items listed below, but cannot modify the items of other members.
Woodturning galleries. Members can upload their own personal woodturning galleries through the website. The galleries are automatically put on the home page as news items and featured on the Galleries page. Photos from the galleries can also show up in the Archive photo block. Members can set descriptions for each photo, if they want, which will be shown as tool tips. The website automatically generates thumbnails for all the photos and links them so that, when clicked, a slideshow window opens to browse through larger versions of all the photos (or download the full size photo if it's larger still).
Woodturning articles. Members can upload their own woodturning articles through the website. The articles are automatically put on the home page as news items and featured on the Articles page. The articles can be created using the very nice WYSIWYG html editor or pasted in from another editor. Photos can be attached to the article and easily inserted into the text, including formatting. If they are resized, the website automatically generates the selected size of image (to improve download speed for visitors) and links them so that, when clicked, a larger version of the photo opens in a nice overlay window.
Member rosters. Members can browse the membership roster, including seeing each others' personal websites or biographies. Also, they can contact each other using an online contact form, without exposing the members' email addresses on the website.
These features are available to club officers that log into the website. Officers can create, edit, and delete not only their own items, but also the items of other members. This might be to helpfully fix a typo or to remove questionable content (hope we never have to!).
Library items. Officers can add new library items. This would typically be done by the Librarian. New library materials automatically get added as news items on the front page and show up on the Library page. The library items can be specified with just a news item title and an ISBN or ASIN code, if available, resulting in the item's details being pulled (and cached daily) from Amazon.com! This includes the logo, title, author, pages/length, description, etc. This results in a much richer library resource for our visitors.
Events. Officers can add events. Any officer might do this. They automatically get featured as news items on the front page and show up as appropriate on the Upcoming events and Calendar blocks and pages, as well as included in any email notifications as upcoming events.
Sponsors. Officers can add sponsors. This would typically be done by the President or Vice President. In a single step, they can specify a Sponsor's logo, description, website link, and the start and end dates for which the sponsorship should be automatically active. This results in the Sponsor being included on the Sponsors page and featured block in the footer.
Newsletters. Typically the Newsletter Editor is the one that uploads newsletters. In one step, they are able to upload the .pdf file, specify the issue month/year, provide some short highlights, and specify a news item title and body. This results in the newsletter being featured on the front page, in the Recent newsletters block, on the newsletters page, and included in any email notifications as the current newsletter. The newsletter contents are also automatically indexed by the search engine!
Photo albums. Any officer might upload photo albums from our club events or from events they attend, such as the AAW Symposium. They can upload the images right through the website, optionally specify descriptions for each photo, and provide the album date, name, and description. Thumbnails are automatically created by the website, with a nice slideshow overlay when they are clicked, and the album is featured in the albums page, Recent albums block, and even included in any email notifications as recent albums.
Email notifications. Any officer might send an email notification, such as the monthly message about the upcoming meeting and the newsletter availability, or about a tree being available for harvesting, or whatever is of general interest. The notification can be targeted at "everyone", "CICAAW members", or "CICAAW officers", with the generated email including the appropriate audience as a subject prefix, for clarity.
The email notification is created in a WYSIWYG editor and sent out as HTML. Not only that, but the message is wrappered with website-like content, including the club identity/logo, upcoming events, current newsletter, recent photo albums, and recent website updates! A lot of backend work makes this not only look nice in Microsoft Mail, but also in the troublesome Google Mail environment (where you must use tables, not divs, and have inline styles on everything with no css shortcut versions used...ugh).
These features are available to the club webmaster.
Behind the curtain. There are lots and lots of administrative features that control the website's appearance/behavior, the 30+ modules that extend it, and the nice theme that shows up for visitors. The administrative part is themed differently (to allow a wider presentation) and is generally too busy/complicated to subject anyone besides the webmaster too. But, it allows custom content types and views to be created right through the website (e.g. all the albums, newsletters, galleries, articles, etc. etc. features). Most of this was done without the need for explicit "theming" (i.e. not too much manual PHP code) or "styling" (i.e. not terribly much CSS styling). There was some, but nothing crazy...except for the rich mail notifications that actually look like mini-websites, with automatic current information inclusion.
We truly hope that you enjoy and appreciate the CICAAW website. We do!
Visit the AAW website to learn more about the 2011 AAW Symposium in St. Paul, MN.
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