Apparently one or two members have said that they preferred the old look website to the new. As designer of the former I have to say that I agree to a large extent. However, the new WordPress site has several advantages over the old and is much easier to administer.
Previously, some degree of tech savvy was required to merely to post an item on the news page. For instance, text and photographs had to be manually formatted and care had to be taken not to affect the formatting of items previously posted or even overwrite them. Having composed the item it was then necessary to use an FTP client program in order to publish to the correct place on the server, making sure that any dependant files were also uploaded correctly.
With WordPress, contributors can compose posts and pages much more easily, with formatting being done automatically. A press of the ‘publish’ button is then all that is required to make the item live. The drawback is that although some customisation is possible the overall look of the site is largely constrained by the chosen WordPress theme.
One of the features that we have been hoping to add for some time is to have newsletters available on the website. Owing to the fact that these newsletters occasionally contain privileged member information, it would be necessary to have these in an area only accessible to members. This is easily done with WordPress and it is hoped to have this up and running in time for the next issue.
With many users, including visiting anglers, now accessing the site via smartphone or tablet it was essential to make it accessable to these devices. Again, the WordPress theme makes this easily possible, working equally well on all types. Anglers can for instance now check maps or fishing regulations on the river bank.
These are some of the advantages of moving to a WordPress. Undoubtedly there are some as yet undiscovered that will make this site easier to use and administer.
Apologies then to those of you who preferred the status quo but one hopes that you will warm to the new look as the site becomes more familiar to you and that you will understand why we see this as the way forward.