Website
 

Hey everyone! The website I made for my chapter has been in the making for a long long time, but it's finally 100% complete! please check it out and leave a message on our guestbook.


Thanks so much!

p.s. I know this is kind of a lame thread, but i've just worked really hard on the website and I am really proud of it.

Sweet.

Very very nice.

Congratulations and much envy from me for you being to be able to put this together!;)

You should be proud!:)

Great job. jessicaelaine!

Very nicely done. Congratulations.

Nice
 

I was working on ours for a while, www.utbeta.org but it has major back end problems, we tried to build a huge online alumn database and it sorta crashed. We're working on a new site right now, a lot simpler and cleaner.

Really nice website, how long did it take you to get it up and running? Also, which hosting company do you use? I've been shopping around.

Outstanding job:)

I noticed in your photos section an event titled "Big little with Alpha Sigma Pi. Our Gamma Psi chapter is at Lawrence Technological University. Is there also an Alpha Sigma Pi fraternity as well as ours? My guess is this is just a typo.

Very nice!

I've been working on my chapter's for about a year now. Some of the sections still aren't working, like some of the photos, but check it out :)

www.sigmakappawmu.com

i LOVE your website!! i especially love ya'lls paddles.. they are so creative!

Nice sites
 

Very nice sites everyone!! Its how we are all going to be able to recruit members in the future and keep track of the alumni/alumnae.

Am very Green with envy to see people able to do this.

It is still neat as is a very good selling tool for those looking.

Very nice web sites one and all!:D

It's a nice site.

I would make sure that if your Nationals has policies regarding web sites, you make sure you find out and know them. I know that my nationals has standards. for continuity purposes, and to make sure that we represent ourselves well.

I did see some drinks on tables... just be careful.

I really like both the DPhiE site and SK site. 'Course I'm partial to the SK site though. :D

However, they do both display two of my pet peeves about chapter sites and sites in general.

For the DPhiE site: When I viewed it on my computer at home the proportion was off so instead of seeing "delta phi epsilon, alpha psi chapter" I was seeing "hi epsilon si chapter". It left me wondering if it was my computer or the site that was messed up. When I view it on my parents computer it's perfect.

I'd suggest sticking somewhere on the front page a "Best viewed in..." notice. That way it's clear where the problem lies.

For the SK site: I was left wondering where your chapter is located. Based on address, emails, and photos I figured out it's Western Michigan University. Somewhere on the front page you should have something like "Welcome to the Gamma Beta Chapter of Sigma Kappa Sorority at Western Michigan University". Even if you don't give any more information about the school I'd have enough to look up the school site and learn more about the personality of the school and chapter, etc.

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I second Ree's caution about national guidelines. As a formal chapter advisor I know that while I may see things on a site that don't bother me personally that there are people more powerful in HQ that may see a picture and think negatively of the contents. I once had to tell my girls to remove a few photos because I knew that if a certain HQ officer who would more than likely see the site sooner than later saw the pics she would pop a vein over the images. Now I'm rambling. :)

JessicaElaine ~ I'd just make sure that your content and photos are in line with your HQ guidelines re alcohol, big/lil bro policies, men at recruitment guidelines, etc. It appears that your the only national sorority at your school so I can understand that there may be things that are tradition on campus that don't jive with HQ rules. :(

hey everyone, thanks for the great comments and suggestions.

that alpha sigma pi was a type-o but it's changed to phi now. i was actually told about that once, but couldn't for the life of me figure out there the type-o was.

and, we do have guidelines for our websites, which is one of the reasons the site has been so long in the making. i had to keep on submitting the website to our national site for a while until it got approved. so, if you found a photo with drinks in it, that is surpirsing. if it's not too much trouble, could you give me a link to the picture so i can delete it?

Thanks again everyone!

From a desktop layout point of view, the site is a little awkward. You may want to reverse the order of your frames because your text is squeezed into a small portion of the page while a picture, which I am sure means something to your chapter, takes up the majority of the page space.

Also, the Sisters page probably has more personal information about the sisters than is safe to appear on the web.

On a positive note, the color scheme is very nice and the pics are fun to look at.

The overall look of your site is very nice and pleasant to read. I like the page banner and the page layout in general.

However, you may want to increase your font size of your main text on all of your pages to the size of the text on the Rush page. The About page would be better if it was split into two or three pages because there is an awful lot of information in small type that is difficult to read, something that occurs on most of the site.

I am not sure if your organization has official colors but you may want to make them prominent in the design of your site.

Wow, this is very nicely laid out. The colors are pleasing and the symbolism and spirit of the sorority is evident.

I would suggest that you reorder your site menu bar. Arranging the pages in alphabetical is not typical and may cause frustration when trying to locate information.

You also may want to make your calendar interactive or, at the very least, include links to flyers or another page with more information on your many events. This will help users who want to find out how to attend your events.

Good luck.

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. I was told that having a calendar gave out too much specific information about our chapter, so I just put general information such as "initiation" or "depinning", etc. so that, if the girls forgot a date or time they could just look up the website real quick. Our old CPO freaked out about the calendar part of the website, so I'm just going to leave it as is, haha.

But as for the person that talked about the menu links, what do you mean? How should I arrange them if not alphabetical order? I thought listing them in alphabetical order would be the easiest way of finding things. :)

If you look at different organization and company websites, the links generally start with Home or Main, then list things like Calendar, Mission/History, Activities, etc. then Contact Us or About Us are the last items in the list. When viewing websites, people just expect this general order. I hope this helps.

I've usually seen About Us as the second listing and things like Calendar at the end but before things like Photo Gallery. But I hear what you are saying.

When I view a site I want to know who you are (purpose, history, etc.) what do you do (activities, etc.,) who does it (members,) when do you do it (calendar,) and how can I contact you, in that order.

I think when ordering your menu buttons you have to think of what people are going to look at most. So, not only do you have to consider first time visitors who will want to know about your philanthropy, and mission and returning visitors who might just want to look at updated pictures and the calander. if you find you have a lot of people e-mailing you about things, then maybe contacts should be first. or if the most people that visit your site are alumnae then maybe that should be first.

and i agree with you about the calander thing. if it's a sorority only event, not everyone needs to know all of the information. which is why my sorority has a calander online just for us and one for the public.

MCCOYRED, Thanks for the ideas, I'll keep them in mind as I work on the new page. :)

Hook'em

LOL, I have checked many Chapter, Local, and National Web Sites out, LXA while has a great site, it is over cumberson.

Us the kiss principle but give information.

Will check it out.:D

cute website!! you can tell you worked hard on it!!

Nice website. I've sign the guestbook.:)

nice website :)

this is our chapter's new site...

http://www.gsuzetas.org

Good job!

Very cute website! Great job!

I do have a question though...I noticed that you had a Recruitment Booklet on your website. Do all national sororities have this, or is this something that your chapter created to hand out at recruitment? It's really cute, and something that I'd like to suggest to my chapter. :)

This is actually something i just made a few weeks ago. i found something similar to it during our last recruitment and thought it was something good to have but the information was really outdated and it was just random papers stapled together. so i redid it and made it more uniform. i'm not sure if a lot of other sororities do this because mine is the only national one of campus. i'm sure some have national booklets and brochures but i don't know if any chapter makes their own.

we decided to do this because at my school, not all the girls come into college knowing a lot about sororities, it being a tech school and all. and it also gives girls the ability to know what we're talking about when we say something about philanthropies, or local vs. national so they don't feel clueless and left out.