My school web feature wish list

One of our elementary school principals not long ago relayed this rather frightening but instructive tale. The parent of a prospective student said to him flat out, "There is not one thing on your website that would make me want to send my child to your school."

While my guess is that a lack of meaningful content was probably the primary reason for this comment, the technical aspects of our site may have also played a role in forming the message - or lack of message - as well.

For some reason it seems that school webhosting sites, from my limited experience, have developed and matured less rapidly that other online communication tools. GoogleApps gets some sort of new feature or new look about once a week. Our student information system undergoes yearly revisions and new features. Blog hosts, wikis, cloud-base storage/curation tools like DropBox, and social networking sites all make regular changes that improve both the appearance and functionality of their services. 

We've used the same webhost since the 2006-07 school year, and it has remained relatively unchanged. It did undergo a revision about a year ago that primarily added the ability to give individual pages static URLs and added an integrated wiki for teacher use. Not a lot of improvement compared to what we've come to expect from other online services.

So we are looking at what else is available - if there are services that have features worth the pain of migrating to a new webhost. We have a task force and we've developed a wish list for our webhosting service that includes:

• Integration with or access to our other web-based activities, facilities, child care payments, registration services.
• A means of updating the webmaster about what pages have not been modified or viewed after a certain period of time.  For example, if a page has not edited for more than two months, an email is sent to remind the webmaster to review that site.
• Provision of applications specifically designed for site access by devices with smaller screens and touch screens including smartphones and tablets.
• Integration with GoogleDocs, GoogleSites, and Moodle. For internal purposes, we will continue to grow the use of these powerful tool and use the website more for community communication.
• Customizable page URLs, not just randomly assigned numbers. For example:www.isd77.org/volunteer rather than  www.isd77.org/42317
• A 404 page we can customize ourselves, with no cost.
• A high degree of flexibility of graphic design
• Ability to enforce some form of school identifier (logo for example) and/or layout continutiy on all pages for branding purposes

What features are we missing? What have you found useful? Whar's on your wishlist?

Do you have a webhosting solution you feel meets your needs? (I am asking school employees, not vendors, for input on this question - sorry.)

Inquiring minds want to know...

Image source

Comments

[Kathy Kaldenberg]

I can't recommend hosted solutions. We have a homegrown version that is a work horse, but not particularly exciting.

However, I hope that if a parent took the time to look at our media services pages, which are featured prominently on each building's main page, that they would discover that a lot is happening in the library!

SInce I started working on our web pages (many years ago) I have made a point of posting photos, student work, blogs, videos, links - anything I think that staff, students or parents might be interested in. I'm not holding up my multiple web sites as paragons of organization or design (they've developed somewhat organically and I use a mishmash of platforms), but I do refresh the content often and link to them constantly, both for archival purposes and for instruction.

I believe that the librarian should lead the school in the development and active use of the web to communicate, advocate and guide. At the end of 2012, there really isn't any excuse for a library (or a classroom) not to have a dynamic web presence. Just as was evidenced by the comment quotes at the beginning of your blog, parents want this!

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Kathy,

I agree that content is king - for both libraries and schools. But I do think a good hosted system should make website management easier, content creation more user friendly, and improve the professionalism of the appearance.

All websites are hosted - some just internally, as I am guessing yours is. Are you using Apache?

Doug