Back in 2013 a team of dedicated members put together a lovely website to represent the SDFWA. It was beautiful, it flew our colors and it served us well for seven years while the world around us changed.
In recent years websites have become more dynamic. Fresh content is published frequently. The community engages with content and its readers. Social media flows through it. To serve our members it was time for an update and thankfully another team of talent came together to build its replacement.
What you’ll find on your new site.
The core of the homepage is fresh content. We will feature the best writing we can find from within our community, from out of our archives and from great woodworkers at large. Foremost we’ll be publishing articles about SDFWA woodworking and activities, written by our members. If you’ve got a story to tell then we’ll want to hear from you. In addition, from the SDFWA archives we’ll republish classic articles from decades of newsletters. Lastly we’ll be tapping our extensive network of woodworking friends to share their writings with us.
Around the site’s content is community interaction. Members can engage with each other around published articles or around topics of interest. Most articles will allow for comments so that registered users of the website can interact. In support of all other interaction we link to our discussion system where a more free form of interaction takes place around special interests, mentoring, project showcases and general conversation.
Flowing through the site is select social media. Twitter will be our beacon of association activity announcing activities, events, and programs. Instagram and Facebook will feature visuals of the amazing work being done by members. This casting of updates into social media is both for your convenience and to attract new demographics. However, it also helps serve the goal of keeping the website current, changing, and interesting.
Lastly, you should know that technically and financially we’re also in a much better position with the new site. By moving to a new hosting platform called WordPress we’ve gained flexibility at low cost so we can make improvements quickly and easily. By moving to a new hosting service our monthly costs for the website are dramatically reduced.
We made these changes to better serve SDFWA’s needs into the future. Getting us to this point has been a herculean effort by Michael Lewis and Jim McGihon. Going forward we’ll be looking to your contributions: visit the site regularly, engage with articles and other members, and contribute content via social media.
This new site is for you, for woodworking and to better serve the SDFWA.
For seven years of service, we thank you …