Tuesday, May 6, 2008

GUEST BLOGGER: Building a Site with Tribe Voices

The College’s new web-design software is great!

Last year I taught myself how to use the old software that required us to map drives, and then this year I had a class that taught me how to use Dreamweaver. Building a site through W&M Tribe Voices is so much faster and easier, and looks a lot better. I've definitely been advocating on behalf of Tribe Voices. I've been telling everyone I’ve run into that they can now make websites in 10 minutes (that's about how long it took me to get started).

The new software will be particularly useful for student organizations. I currently serve as president of the William & Mary NAACP. As much as we try to plan in advance, we often find ourselves having to respond immediately to situations/issues that arise unexpectedly. Getting essential information out to members and to the general public is often crucial. The new web-design software allows us to do that in ways that were impossible before.

Every person on our four-member Executive Committee has access to the new NAACP website. Anyone of us can update it immediately at any time from any place that has internet access. We were actually discussing having the NAACP go green next year. The new software will definitely aid us in doing that. We can now easily and quickly upload minutes, meeting agendas – whatever documents we need – to the site.

While getting adjusted to the software, I found myself wishing there was a way to change text colors and create sub menus. Other than that, it's been perfect.

I just wanted to thank the re.web Team for pushing forth this much-needed initiative.

Check out the site I created (it honestly took minutes):

posted by Justin Reid '09

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Two things:

NOBODY uses Dreamweaver anymore. It is an obsolete piece of software. The web has moved forward to server-side software applications... sorta like Tribe Voices.

Secondly, Tribe Voices is horribly underpowered for what it is. Why couldn't IT have just installed a Wordpress server instead of creating this dumbed-down solution?

Anonymous said...

Sure, WordPress may be more fully-featured, but we have to be practical, here; the individual Tribe Voices is designed to help doesn't have any idea what WordPress is.

The system has to be accessible in a way that won't make a pressed-for-time user's eyes glaze over.

(But, if IT did decide to install a WordPress server, too, I certainly wouldn't argue...)

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the information, Justin. Considering they took minutes, the sites are interesting and visually appealing.