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1. sacrophyte
   Member
   Posted 7 months ago #

   Not wanting to re-invent the wheel, curious if anyone has taken the time to develop a multisite theme/template for School PTAs. If so, I would like to talk to you about it.

   If not.... any practical advice on getting started? :)

2. sacrophyte
   Member
   Posted 4 months ago #

   Nobody?

3. mdcleaver
   Member
   Posted 1 month ago #

   I'm about to give it a try - but it will be mainly in Dutch. But that shouldn't be a problem.
   We want a front page for everyone with diary and news and then a log-in for members giving them access to minutes, members and mailing list etc.
   Is that your idea too? However I can't believe that no one has made a working PTA site before? Are you any further, @sacrophyte?

4. sacrophyte
   Member
   Posted 1 month ago #

   mdcleaver: I have yet to find any "templates" to speak of. I have found lots of schools/ptas that are using a smattering of home-built custom code (some of it is VERY NICE, some of it... not so much) to procuring 3rd-party pro-bono help under 301(c)(3) and still others that pay top dollar for shiny websites. There is a huge variety in platforms; php, mysql, js, wordpress, facebook, google and the proprietary stuff. It's all over the map.

   I did try to implement my own on wordpress.org, but found that I was quickly getting over my head with details and making it too complex. Need to simplify.

   If you need help, give a holler. I don't know jack about dutch (*grin*) and my programming skills have waned since the college years, but I am willing to at least try something.

5. mdcleaver
   Member
   Posted 1 month ago #

   My idea is:

   Landing page:
   Calendar
   News
   Links
   Login/register
   Info/Contact

   Logged in

   Individual members profiles
   children/classes,
   address/phone etc
   talents

   Mailing lists
   class
   PTA
   whole school

   Files (not public)
   Minutes
   School docs
   Forms

   maybe BuddyPress too?

6. sacrophyte
   Member
   Posted 1 month ago #

   That's a good start. What about something to handle pictures/videos? A Donation app?

   We found the most difficult part is deciding how to hook all this up with other social media (facebook, twitter, sms text messages, tumblr, dropbox, etc). WordPress has hooks for most if not all of those things, but it becomes a bit of a pain to manage it. And what if the next IT person wants to do something else? The only "solution" we have so far is that we just have to do the best we can right now and not worry about what is going to happen in 5 years.

7. mdcleaver
   Member
   Posted 1 month ago #

   That's something to add to the "Public" side of things. I have been focussing on helping administer the active parents' side. We have about 1600 kids (12-19) and 100 parent/members in the PTA.
   First thing I did was disable "comments". That's a typical "blog" feature.

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