19 January 2024
The current CMEA website was launched on 19 January 2014, ten years to the day of writing. Since that time it has grown from 500 pages to over 8500 pages of current news, events, historical entries and other items of interest. In addition to thousands of visits from Canadian users, it receives dozens from other parts of the world.
Since the site was launched, our development and content teams have worked hard to maintain the site as a relevant part of the Association. Over that time we have done our best to keep up with audience needs and technology. The time has now come to consider refreshing the site to meet the changing needs of the Association and our audience and also to catch up to advances in technology.
Our proposed project is centred on two things. We need to update our platform from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10 to ensure we are using the latest and most stable technology. We also need to refresh the look and feel of the website to better meet our audience’s wants, needs and desires. Hopefully, both aspects can be achieved concurrently to ensure a smooth, flawless migration in the future.
There is no general need to get into details on the Drupal part of the project other than to say Drupal 7 will end-of-life in December of this year and we have no choice. Migration to the new Drupal 10 platform will allow us to provide a mobile-friendly site as well as improve our abilities to continue adding content in a more timely and efficient manner.
Our plan for refreshing the look and feel of the site will go hand-in-hand with the migration. In the end, we aim to present a more modern user-friendly site that displays well on a monitor, tablet and telephone. We need better navigation and we need to know what our users want to see.
The purpose of this article is not just to inform you of what needs to be done, but more importantly, to ask for your help. We need your ideas. What do you want the website to provide? What is missing? What is redundant? What needs to be fixed or improved? All and any comments are welcomed and needed.
In the next few weeks, a more detailed survey will be prepared and distributed to members and subscribers asking these questions and more. In the meantime, if you have any ideas, don’t wait. If you want to help, and we do need more help, don’t wait.
Please click here to contact the Webmaster with your suggestions and ideas.