My New Project
I’m a little afraid I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. I just volunteered to redo my five year old’s school’s website.
What I’d really like to do for them is to set up a series of WordPress blogs — one for their main page, and then one for each core (which is the equivalent of a home room). I’d like to design a beautiful custom template that conveys a sense of all that is awesome about this school. I’d like lots of custom fixed pages that provide information but don’t need much updating.
I think that blog format is so great for a school (and really, so so many small websites) because the content that will be changing would essentially be periodic announcements (like blog entries) and not much else. Each classroom could have its own separate blog where teachers could post about assignments and students could post summaries about field trips or projects or ideas or whatever. School-family communication is always an issue but this way parents could either subscribe to feeds for the blogs they cared about or they could even receive posts by email. Teachers could post photos and password protect them so that families could still have access. Hell, parents could even comment on posts.
Plus, posting to WordPress, even a post that contains links and photos and video clips and specially formatted text and password protection is so damned easy. If they can use a word processor, they can post. And that’s definitely not true of most WYSISYG editors and abso-freakin-lutely not true of handcoded HTML.
I want my son’s school to have a website that functions as a school website should — as a marketing tool for community members and prospective families, and as a resource and communications tool for current families and staff. I want the site to look professional and beautiful. I want people to visit the site and say, “Huh, I thought that school was that crazy hippy school but wow, it looks like such a fun, exciting place!”
But I don’t know how to do this stuff. I poked into the WordPress theme stuff this weekend and immediately felt overwhelmed. Sure, it’s pretty obvious how to make modifications like color changes and background images and whatnot, but making more substantive changes? Adding widgets and additional functionality? I just don’t know. Hell, I’m not even sure how to set up more than one WordPress install on one hosting account — although I think I read something about it while doing my own install, so I’m pretty sure it’s possible.
I often do this with web stuff. I so adore web technology that I take on projects beyond me and figure I can somehow make it through on sheer excited earnestness. I so don’t want to fuck this one up.
October 16th, 2008 at 9:57 am
It sounds like a great idea!
The cost of “failure” doesn’t seem that high, but the benefit of success is really a lot. Perhaps you should talk with the person you initially discussed this with when you made an agreement. Let them know that you have some great ideas and you’re excited about helping, but you’re still not 100% sure how it will work out. I mean, you’re doing this for free, right? Does the school have anything to lose by letting you try?
And hey, I’m always willing to try to answer technical questions. (Though I can’t say for sure I’ll have a clue, especially if it’s wordpress-specific.) But I like the idea of helping out a cool school, so don’t feel hesitant to ask!