Bridging platforms is so much fun!

In case some of you don't know, I am the VP Communications for the 2006-07 McGill MBA Student Association.

My main project this year has been to improve the use of the web and reduce our reliance on email to communicate with the student body. Previously, the student association's website was a single page with a few pictures and often outdated news. All coms, from trivial to crucial, were sent through email. Our inboxes were so solicited that many people stopped reading messages coming from the Student Association’s address.

To correct this problem, I decided to set up a new website containing useful information for students, news, a picture gallery and, more importantly, discussion boards and a web-based calendar (based on the SMF platform). The boards gave me the perfect excuse to stop sending emails - apart from the weekly newsletter - and start advertising the forums as the best and most current source of information. The calendar allowed the student council and clubs to advertise their events, placing the responsibility of content creation and management on the clubs themselves and not on me. User acceptance was good, usage went up and I turned my attention to the sucky start of the season by the Arsenal.

However, after running the website for a semester, I realized there were some shortcomings in my approach. First of all, the site was a nightmare to maintain – relying on my old Webmaster days, the base site was coded in HTML and SSI and any update or modification had to be done through Dreamweaver and demanded precious time. Moreover, transferring the site to the next VP Comms could prove very difficult – and might even kill the project altogether – should my replacement have no knowledge of web back-end. Finally, the content was rather static and not frequently updated. A new solution was needed.

I looked at a full-blown content management system (CMS) but it would have required migrating content from the old boards, calendars and photo gallery to the new platform; it also offered way more functionality than we needed. Instead, I settled on a blog platform called Wordpress. Wordpress makes it easy to post new content, is fully customizable and offers hundreds of plugins to add functionality. This way, I have a platform simple enough for any technologically challenged wannabe veepee, but expandable enough to be usable for years.

Of course, every launch needs its "killer app" - something that will drive traffic. For us, it is the explosion in the number of blogs maintained by our students, either here in Montréal or abroad on exchange. These blogs are funny, insightful, creative and totally addictive.

Almost as satisfying as a vintage Thierry Henry goal.