Don't let your website disappear on Halloween! On October 31, 2010, the old public website at http://old.oregonsd.org will disappear. If your website is on it, and you want to keep it, you need to move it!
How? Glad you asked. Here are the four basic steps.
- Choose a new place for your site. You basically have four options, which are explained here.
- Decide if your old stuff is really worth saving, or if you would be better off just starting from scratch. (If you are starting from scratch, skip to step 4.)
- If your old stuff is worth saving/transferring, download it from your old site at http://old.oregonsd.org and save it someplace memorable.
- Upload your content to the new place you chose in step 1.
Q: Why do we have to do this?
A: We got lots of complaints about our old website, it looked pretty shoddy compared to neighboring districts, and we had a long list of requested features. The old website was declared a "dead end" product by the maker- there was no way to upgrade it and maintain the content, including teacher web sites. We evaluated many options and chose SchoolWorld.
Q: Why did you wait until now to make the change?
A: Well, we had intended to roll out the new website in early July, but we ran into some technical and design issues, so it wasn't completed until early August. We told everybody how to move their content to the new website via email and blog post on August 11. Unfortunately, August is a really horrible time to ask anybody to change things, and we understand that. It wasn't what we intended, but it's how it ended up. To avoid mass panic of websites disappearing in August, we paid for an extension of our old site until October 31.
Q: Why will our old stuff disappear?
A: Our contract with Powercom/CMS4Schools/CESA6 was set to end in August. We purchased an extension to keep it live for another couple months to give everybody time to move their content.
Q: But we just did this a couple years ago- how do we know SchoolWorld won't go away in three years so we have to do this all over again?
A: The old website provider was a small Wisconsin company that changed ownership multiple times. It was selected under extremely short time constraints. SchoolWorld is a national company used by many districts. It constantly updates its services, adding new features, unlike the old website which was declared a "dead end" product by its maker. Therefore, the need to replace SchoolWorld is much less likely.
Q: What if I need help?
A: Our Information Technology Literacy Teachers are available to help!
Any other questions or concerns? Feel free to contact me.
No comments:
Post a Comment