Mitä tehtiin
As with many clubs and associations, the web site had been a bit of a cumbersome thing to keep updated. The site had been created as a school project some six years ago, and only some pieces of content has been updated since. Mobile interface was clumsy. Together with Dynamit, Rauma Kayaking Club decided to update the site into this decade.
The developer found the server backoffice covered with spider webs. Not the WordPress platform nor the plugins in use had been updated in years. Support for the contact form plugin had ceased three years back and form submissions had not reached anyone in the club for the last year. An unpleasant surprise was that the site had been hacked in some point. The public site luckily presented correctly, but most of the updates were impossible to perform in the admin area.
Because of the modest current server capability and the hacking to be cleaned after, it was decided to abandon the original renovation plan and to build the site from the scratch on Dynamit’s recommended Hostaan server. This was the fastest and easiest way, all existing content was easily migrated to the new site. This also made sure the site keeps up to date and would not again rot in their hands. Club users were trained to manage the content, and the newly added event calendar and kayaking destination map features.
A joy for the developer was the rich media library with beautiful kayaking photos. Quite a bit of the text content was erased, in an attempt to focus on the relevant content. The new event calendar events can be presented in many ways throughout the site. Anyone can also subscribe the events to their personal Google calendar. A drawing board feature is a reservation calendar to rent the club’s kayaks and canoes to the members.