We’ve develop a particular expertise in using web-based weblog content management systems to create large website system for schools. These tools are particularly suited to this usage because in a volunteer-driven environment like schools, churches, and nonprofits. Here’s why:

• No license fees— as membership and leadership morphs through time, you don’t have to waste money on per-user license fees that are wasted when the user leaves the organization or no longer has time to post content to the web
• Easy to learn— with simple instructions and familiar text-box interfaces, it’s easy to get up to speed
• Scales well— when maintaining 50 websites for a large elementary school, it’s important that the sites be easy for an administrator to manage

Here are some recent examples:

Catherine Cook School Teacher Websites, Moodle Installation, and All-School Calendar

Created a complete website system for the Catherine Cook School in Chicago. Includes:

• Over 50 teacher websites based on the TypePad weblog content management system.
• All of the teacher sites run off of the same template, which reduces admin maintenance while assuring that each website has the CCS website look & feel
• Teacher sites allow for customization at the blog level– teachers are able to put in the own header, subhead, “my links”, categories, and so on
• RSS feeds automatically served by FeedBurner, making it easy for parents to understand RSS and subscribe through various services
• Installed and configured the Moodle Learning Management System with the school’s look & feel
• Set up Google Calendar so that everyone can keep up with the many events from Pre-K to 12
• Created OPML file of feeds for all teacher sites for easy importing into RSS readers so that parents, teachers, and administrators can keep up with the whole school

St. Benedict Schools Websites

Large-scale weblog system for a preschool, elementary school, and high school in Chicago. It was an interesting project for a number of reasons:

• We use the TypePad hosted weblog solution (2 separate accounts) to manage 20 High School teacher websites, 11 High School Sport Sites, 20 Elementary School Teacher Sites, and 6 Preschool Sites
• We publish the “Subscribe via My Yahoo!” button for each teacher site and really try to get parents to understand the advantages of RSS
• Created three separate training course (High School Administrators, High School Teachers, and Elementary/ Preschool teachers) and trained over 80 people on the system
• Made great use of Advanced Templates to make site administration easy over time. For instance, there is one template drive the content for each of the major subsites (i.e. one for the High School sports, one for Elementary School teachers, etc.)
• The Director of IT for the Parish, Sr. Deidre Jordy, came up with an ingenious way to pull TypePad posts into an i-frame for the High School site, which allowed her to absolutely control the design and make it “non-webloggy”. The page is written in a combination of HTML, Javascript, and PHP. The heart of the navigation is the two-dimensional array at the top of the page. The two dimensions are section and page, which are also the two variables passed in the URL to invoke the page. All you have to do to change the navigation is to change the URL value in that array and the navigation is changed everywhere, both on the top nav bar and in the side nav
• The teachers are all really keeping their own sites up to date with the normal assignments and classroom updates. Some are taking extra steps in linking to further learning material with complex animations, adding images, and using their weblog as a tool for unveiling the learning as time goes by.
• Sport sites are able to keep everyone up to date with the most recent scores

Queen of Angels Parish Website

Innovative, sophisticated website system for Queen of Angels Catholic Parish in Chicago, IL. The strategy uses an emerging technology—the TypePad hosted weblog solution—to deliver 20 separate websites at various URLs with over 30 content managers. This strategy is relevant for any large organization with lots of people and a wide variety of missions (to coin a term).

• Created a large, 300-page website that is easy to maintain
• Designed and rolled out training to dozens of content contributors, many of whom didn’t even have an email account when the project started
• Conceived of this mildly chaotic, trust-based content management system that gives the right to publish directly into the hands of the people who have the content
• The site is published in both English and Spanish when available
• Different designs for different URLs
• All in one $15/ month tool

With just a little bit of imagination, it’s not hard to see how the structure of this site—a centrally maintained main site with n number of subsites that surround it—can be applied to the corporate structure.

Devcorp North Website

We created the website for DevCorp North, a Rogers Park community group. It has lots of nifty features:

• Calendar based on Google calendar, which just last week allowed their calendars to be published to a separate HTML page. Very easy to add events w/o fussy software
• Based on the TypePad weblog content management system that the client, DevCorp North, has already been using for years
• Integrated with existing Member Database based on MS Access and PHP
• Memberships available online via paypal
• Leverages the Google sitemap program and the third-party XML Sitemaps tool to make content indexable by humans, machines, and machine-human combos

Overall, it’s a simple website that is easy to update, easy to find, and easy to consume.