White Cliff Country u3a share their SiteWorks experience

Diana from the SiteWorks Team gives an update on the project to migrate u3a websites over to SiteWorks, and two members of White Cliffs u3a who have already migrated over to SiteWorks share their experience.

The SiteWorks Project Team is pleased to announce that it is starting the new year in full production after spending the last 12 months developing and testing the software and putting together a comprehensive training package and migration process.

In time, u3as who have expressed an interest in using SiteWorks will be invited to join the Introduction to SiteWorks Training and Migration session. It is important to mention that with around 700 sites and a limited number of volunteers on the project it is estimated this could take 18 months to complete.

To give you a flavour of the journey so far Mary and Bill from White Cliffs Country u3a explain their involvement in the project:

Just over a year ago we started looking at updating and changing the SiteBuilder site that White Cliffs u3a were using. We have both worked on websites before. When we heard about the SiteWorks project and that it was to be using WordPress we jumped at the chance as we were used to this particular platform, and we thought it would be interesting to be able to share best practice with others.

We volunteered for a team and were put in the Testing team and have subsequently joined the Migration team as well. Testing meant that each time the development team brought out an upgrade we had to put it through its paces to try and find faults, which we managed to do on a couple of occasions including making the whole thing go down for a couple of days.

Because the testing work was done on a non-live test site, we were able to get our own ready and try it out before it went live. Our old site was very minimal, so we decided to build the new one from scratch – known as a ‘Starter Site’.

We are both used to IT and most of the terminology used, so really didn’t need any help getting the site up and running. However, the documentation available for anyone who is apprehensive is easy to read and understand and our committee have found it easy to follow and use. There will always be someone available to help if anyone get stuck.

WordPress is very flexible compared with the old site and I’m sure most people will find it quick and easy to use.

We’ve had quite a bit of feedback saying that members like the site and we will be doing a talk and demonstration of it at a meeting in the near future.

View the White Cliffs Country u3a SiteWorks website.