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Hassle-Free Website Management Tools for Non-Programmers
September 1, 2010
Version 2.0 Released
Versions 2.0 is a major upgrade over the 1.x versions. With this release, the logon system has been completely rewritten as a full Membership Management system, including a dues and expiration system and new reporting. The new Forums tool allows you to create discussion topics and invites your membership to be more interactively involved on your site. An all new integration of the Blast Emailer allows you to create and send HTML email to your members with multiple attachments, if desired. This same email tool is now integrated with the "Send Newsletter" function and the new "Event Reminder" function. The new System Setup area allows you to have more control over defining your system and how it should work for your organization. The Library has added fields for Media Type and Barcode Number. The Store now has integration for payment processors who use a button and/or cart method of checkout, such as PayPal, to be utilized directly in your sales offering page. An additional type of Custom Page has been included allowing you to create Pop-Open pages that open in a new window without the header and navigation borders of a regular page... great for internal page links to "the rest of the story". Take a look at the Demo Site and then call or email for your personal demonstration of the power that the new EasyNetSites product puts in your hand to solve your website puzzle! February 25, 2010 Florida Lines : Volume 28, Issue 1 – February 2010
The monthly newsletter of the Florida State Genealogical Society (p.7 - reprinted with permission)
Author: Pamela Tremé Get Into Webware... Current communication abilities guarantee that a vibrant society is going to have a website. But who on earth has website building skills readily available in their membership? And even if your society is fortunate enough to have members with the necessary skills, they are usually employed with precious little time to devote to developing your society’s website. Carlos’ experience with EasyNetSites—see page 7—offers one possible solution to this common society challenge. According to the EasyNetSites flyer, if you can fill out a simple form and click a mouse, you have all the necessary skills to create, maintain, and update your society’s website. Carlos’ article certainly goes a long way in proving that when you use EasyNetSites that these are the only skills you need to become a first-rate webmaster. Based on their literature, EasyNetSites enables you to:
To find out more about EasyNetSites, visit their website at: www.EasyNetSites.com. You can also call them at 813-675-4400 or email them at AskUs@EasyNetSites.com. If you’d like to see samples of EasyNetSites websites, select the Portfolio link at their site. You’ll find examples of websites they have already developed, including the Palm Beach County Genealogical Society site. Just click an image and you go to the website where you can see their work firsthand. While at their website be sure to notice the testimonials that appear at the top of pages. EasyNetSites have some very satisfied users of their webware. February 25, 2010 Florida Lines : Volume 28, Issue 1 – February 2010
The monthly newsletter of the Florida State Genealogical Society (p.7 - reprinted with permission)
Author: Carlos H. Ruth Genealogical Society of Palm Beach County (Florida) Launches New Website The Genealogical Society of Palm Beach County, like most genealogical societies, is always looking to attract new members and to better serve our current membership. At the start of the membership year, we were determined to improve our Internet services to our members and prospective members. Once we started to add services, we quickly came to realize that we were asking our website software to do much more than it was designed to do. It could not handle our 9,000 title library catalog in a “user friendly” manner that would let us update the catalog as new materials were acquired. We formed a Tech Working Group to look into what it would take to do what we wanted. We looked at some website design software, but none of us had the computer skills to take on the project. After looking at other society’s websites and various options, we became interested in a brand new website design package from EasyNetSites that was to be introduced at the Florida State Genealogical Society conference this past November. After a demonstration at the conference, we returned home and presented a demonstration on the www.EasyNetSites.com website to the board. By mid-December, we were ready to get to work. We were the fourth society in the country to switch to this “template based” genealogy package. One of our major concerns was that we needed a program robust enough to handle our Area Deaths, a 143,000+ name database. This data had some formatting as well as data entry issues. The staff at EasyNetSites helped us with the reformatting so we could move the data to the database template. The transition went very smoothly, with no data loss. Sure, we had to do a fair amount of work, but we were cleaning up errors our folks had made over the years. Now anyone with Internet access can search for a surname and sort the results by first name, publication date, town, or age. Our library catalog can be searched by an unlimited number of subjects and locations and can then be sorted by call number, author, or any word appearing in the title. One of the challenges we had in the past was to assign the most descriptive subject or location, since some books might cover more than one of each. It’s not a problem anymore as we can assign multiple subjects and locations, while entering the book just once. New items for our library catalog and other databases can be readily added from home, with the proper authorization, to make volunteering for data entry projects more convenient. EasyNetSites allows us to better manage our e-mail communications to our members, promote better communications between members, and manage our membership files. There is a special, “Members Only” area where members access our newsletters, board meeting minutes, and financial reports – real society transparency! Each member has their own ID and password, which allows the site administrator to control access and editing privileges for each member to specific areas for data security. We list our officers, and for many of them there is a link so that they may be contacted directly by e-mail. The Calendar of Events can include an unlimited number of events that may be divided into categories and are archived after the event so that there are no past events listed. You can display the next three months, or even go out for more than a year. Links to other genealogy sites are easily added, and again they can be sorted into multiple categories. We were able to easily add Membership and Query Forms that are downloadable and you can even pay for your membership, queries, or items you buy on G-bay, our online store, with links to PayPal. We did all this with zero website design experience. We even added a Google Map to help with directions to our library. There are specialized page formats that let you easily add pages of text, other formats for lists of facts. You can create links to other pages within the website for easier navigation. You can cut and paste material into the website, or compose your copy with the editors on each page. There are a variety of graphics packages available that can be further customized, so your site won’t look just like ours. We went live with our members at the end of January. The site was built in six weeks and most of the time was actually spent reformatting our databases. When I had questions, I was able to speak with a knowledgeable person quickly who speaks my language, not “Geek Speak.” Our members overwhelmingly love our new site and the new features it offers. In spite of its many new features the site looks very professional and uncluttered. We are extremely pleased with our new site and how easy it was to create. Even with no website creation experience our members were able to do the data entry for most of the site creation. I am comfortable recommending EasyNetSites, as it is so powerful, yet easy to work with. February 10, 2010 FGS Voice : Volume 17, Number 1 – 2010 January
The monthly newsletter of the Federation of Genealogical Societies (p.10 - reprinted with permission)
Author: Carlos H. Ruth Genealogical Society of Palm Beach County (Florida) Launches New Website The Genealogical Society of Palm Beach County has just launched a completely new website, gensocofpbc.org, with greatly improved capabilities and functionality for genealogists. Highlights of the new website include:
At the start of the membership year GSPBC set a goal of improving our Internet services to members. Once we started the attempt to add services, we quickly came to realize that we were asking our website software to do much more than it was designed to do. A Tech Group looked into what it would take to do what we wanted at a cost we could afford. After looking at various options we quickly selected a brand new software package from EasyNetSites that was introduced at the Florida State Genealogical Society conference this past October. We are the fourth society in the country to switch to this template-based genealogy package and are extremely happy with it. Even with no website creation experience our members were able to do the data entry for most of the site creation, leaving only the most technical aspects to the software developer. The software package handled our Area Deaths (a 142,000+ entry database) with ease, a major concern for us. Our new website allows us to better manage our e-mail communications to our members, promote better communications between members, and manage our membership files. There is a special “Members Only” area where members can access our newsletters, board meeting minutes and financial reports, real transparency in society government. January 15, 2010
Version 1.2 Released
This new release includes:
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