Designing Our Club’s New Website
Video Club webmaster Connie Shaw (right), a professional web designer and animator, has built our new club website in WordPress, rather than in the “club websites” section of Laguna Woods Village’s new community website. A link in the clubs section takes users to our site, where we now have our own domain name, videocluboflagunawoods.com. Connie recommended WordPress to take advantage of its functionality — especially indexing and archiving of posts and easily allowing comments and replies. Our old website was maintained by longtime member Gayle Gomez for many years, and then by Publicity Director Lucy Parker. According to Heather Rasmussen, Village Management Services’ Senior Public Affairs Specialist, it will soon disappear, along with the rest of what is now referred to as the “Classic Site.”
Named in honor of a print newsletter once produced by our club, the Videogram e-newsletter will still have a role to play. It will continue to be sent out monthly with occasional ALERTS to our list of over 350 members and friends, via MailChimp. Now, however, it will contain only headlines and links to website updates, usually news articles (posts). The Videogram has been published as an email newsletter monthly since May, 2014, written and designed by Publicity Director Lucy Parker with production assistance by Misako Katayama.
NAVIGATING THE WEBSITE
In navigation designed by Lucy and Connie, new posts will appear on the “Latest News” page as they happen, dropping off as newer posts appear, but remaining archived. The “Latest News” page is closely linked to the “Home” page (sometime called the “welcome” or “landing” page), in effect, making it the first thing users see. Each post will be indexed by category and archived for easy retrieval. thus automatically preserving club history. Past Videograms are also archived in our new site’s “History” section.
While they are current, posts about classes and other specific activities, will also appear on their own pages (i.e., “Learning Opportunities,” “General Meetings,” etc.) along with other static (non-changing) information, making them even easier to find and providing a quick overview for visitors who want to learn about our club.
MANAGING UPCOMING VIDEO SHOOTS
The “comments and replies” function of WordPress will be central to the “Upcoming Shoots” page, to be managed by External Video Coordinator John Kelly (left). On this page –available online to all concerned – John can post details about video shoots in progress. In turn, Video One production team members can volunteer for and comment on current shoots, and John can add replies and instructions. Although we expect this system to take some tweaking, it’s designed to facilitate shoots in progress, while keeping everyone informed.
ABOUT OUR WEBMASTER
A five-year Village resident, Webmaster Connie Shaw traveled early in her career as a professional underwater photographer. During 30 years as a caretaker for her mother here in Southern California, she worked at a variety of jobs, always recalling the dream she once had as a teenager in Chicago of one day becoming a Disney animator. Today, while she isn’t working for Disney, Connie IS an animator located not far from Disneyland – and she’s currently doing animation for Village Television and Village Management Services, while serving her commercial website clients. Connie joined the Video Club to participate in our Video One production group and volunteered to serve as our Webmaster early last fall.
videocluboflagunawoods.com 
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