SVES Website Purpose and Design Outline

The Purpose of the Website

Before we start building the website, I think it is important to establish what the website is intended to accomplish.

My primary goal is to create a useful, practical website for Swan Valley Emergency Services volunteers. I would like it to be a place where volunteers can find information they need, access training materials, read important announcements, find documents, check the calendar, and have information available to them when they need it.

I would prefer that we concentrate on utility rather than appearance. A website does not have to be beautiful to be useful.

Everyone will have a different opinion about what the website should look like and what it should contain. Some people will like the finished product and some may not. That's simply the nature of the beast. My goal is not to create a website that everyone agrees is beautiful. My goal is to create one that is useful, organized, easy to navigate, and easy to maintain.

Keeping the Website Easy to Maintain

The most important consideration in designing the website is maintenance.

It is easy to add features to a website. The difficult part is keeping those features current six months or a year later.

If someone wants a section or feature that requires regular updating, that person—or someone they designate—will need to be responsible for maintaining it.

I will create the structure and set up the various sections of the website, but I do not want to become the person responsible for updating everything that other people want included.

I also don't think it is fair to simply tell another volunteer, "You're responsible for updating this," without first making sure they are willing and able to do it.

Therefore, I am going to be cautious about adding features that require ongoing maintenance unless there is someone willing to take responsibility for them.

If everything is going to be left to me to maintain, then the website needs to remain simple.

Who Can Maintain the Website?

I can create individual sections of the website and give designated volunteers access to those sections.

For example, one person could be responsible for meeting minutes, another for training information, and another for a calendar or announcements.

Those individuals would have their own login and password and would be able to update only the portion of the website assigned to them.

They do not need to be computer experts. They do, however, need to be comfortable using a computer and typing information into a website.

This approach spreads the responsibility around and keeps the website from becoming one person's full-time job.

The Technology

I plan to use a Content Management System called Joomla.

There are many ways to build a website today, including WordPress, other content-management systems, and AI website generators. I chose Joomla because it gives us the ability to build a structured website while allowing designated people to maintain their own sections.

Technology is changing rapidly. Someday, AI may be able to create and maintain an entire website with very little human involvement. We aren't there yet.

For now, someone needs to build the site, organize the information, and make sure it works. For this project, that person is me.

What Should Actually Be on the Website?

I have looked at the Seeley Lake website as one example:

Seeley Lake Fire website

I would like everyone involved to look at it and think about what is useful—not necessarily what looks good.

Are there things on that website that you think SVES should have?

Are there documents that would be useful to volunteers?

Are those documents currently in the SVES office? If so, I can obtain copies and determine whether they can be incorporated into the website.

I'm particularly interested in things such as:

• Training information

• Training videos

• Procedures and reference material

• Important documents

• Meeting minutes

• Calendars

• Announcements

• Contact information

• Forms

• Information volunteers need to know

• Other practical resources that would be useful to SVES members

I'm looking for ideas that make the website useful, rather than simply adding things because we can.

Volunteer Website vs. Community Brochure

There are really two different ideas for what this website could become.

One is a brochure website for the community—lots of photographs, information about the organization, descriptions of what we do, and other material designed primarily for the public.

The other is an internal resource for SVES volunteers—a place to find training, procedures, documents, announcements, schedules, and information we need to do our jobs.

My preference at this time is to concentrate on the second one.

That doesn't mean a public-facing portion of the website can't exist. It simply isn't my first priority.

We already have Facebook, which is a good place for photographs, community announcements, and the more public-facing "brochure" side of the organization. I will create a link from the website to the existing Facebook page so people can easily find it.

The website can then concentrate on what Facebook doesn't do as well: organizing information and providing a permanent place where volunteers can find the information they need.

The Bottom Line

I would like to build the website around one basic principle:

Make it useful. Keep it simple. Make it maintainable.

Before adding a feature, we should ask three questions:

1. Is this useful?

2. Who will maintain it?

3. Will it still be useful and current a year from now?

If we can answer those questions, then we have a good reason to put it on the website.

My job is to build the structure and make the website work.

The responsibility for keeping individual sections current needs to be shared by the people who want those sections to exist.