new SSA web site

On Thursday, April 1, 2021 at 7:33:06 AM UTC-7, Mark Mocho wrote:
And for those of us stuck with slow internet access, it's a huge time waster. Loads like it was being carved into stone tablets.

My understanding is that a photojournalist/graphic-designer type person was bought in to make it. From a marketing/aesthetic standpoint its prettier than our old site, and it _does_ look and work better on phones/tablets than the old site.

But yes I am led to believe that the new front page is a Wordpress-based site with lots of plugins and components; which are all naturally going to slow the thing down. :-(

In defense of the SSA Board, we do have a fair number of older members who are not super tech-savvy so I understand why they might have felt that reaching out to the membership about this would invite a backlash before it even began...

However it is *also* true that we have a fair amount of tech-savvy members; many of whom have programmed successful websites, run complex technology projects, and understand how to develop systems that are maintainable and low-cost over the long-term (for example: did we leverage any relationships that soaring pilots have with tech companies to land cheap/free licenses and resources? I know that there is at least 1 soaring connection to the founder of Wordpress. And I myself have helped our local soaring club obtain cheap/free Office365 and Azure licenses that MS is offering to any nonprofit these days. The SSA could use those licenses & credits to keep website hosting and maintenance costs way down - as MS is on a big push to expand is nonprofit programs).

There are some real obvious "misses" here that a small group of technology professionals could have helped avoid.

--Noel