Tonight I finished initial delivery of a large project I’ve had going with the Concord Scout House, Inc. (CSH). I was approached to do some web work with them as a result of what I’d previously done with MondayContras.com.
This project has been going on, to some degree, since January of 2010 (non-profits work seems to go in fits and starts). CSH is a group whose prior web site was showing its age. Users and other constituents were frustrated that information on the site was old and inaccurate, but there was no easy way to update the content via the folks then involved. The site was running on an infrastructure that was out of proportion to the group’s needs (but had been provided at no cost), and was too complicated for them to manage themselves.
The solution I composed included using a very simple yet powerful GPL’d Content Management Sysytem (CMS) which their non-technical content managers could use to maintain the public-facing site. At the same time, I secured them a non-profit (aka Education) account for using the Google Apps platform and integrated that with their web presence as a backend suite. The end result meets their current needs and will scale into the future easily. Should I be hit by a truck, the technologies involved are much more mainstream and should be able to be picked up by someone else with the right skills.
And the best part? It will cost them well under $50/year to operate — web, email, calendar, docs: everything. Yep, less than fifty bucks.
I can’t wait to see what CSH do with it, now that the modern tools are in their hands! You can check it out here: http://concordscouthouse.org .