Which CAP squadron/group/wing/region has the best website(s)?

[Spaceman3750]

In the first third of that page, out of about 20 links, at least 10 are dead, broken web pages, woefully outdated, and one has a Rickroll.

That last one was legit, their Squadron motto is: "Never gonna give you up, Never gonna let you down, Never gonna run around and desert you." All in latin, of course 

I've never been rickrolled in ASCII before now...

[celticpiping]

my wing is supposed to be getting that whole Google site thing up & running for the squadrons to use...
I'm seeing a fair number of sites using them.

funny, speaking of outdated content, I surfed to a page on one of the cool sites referenced in this thread, and rec'd the dreaded "Page Not Found" : thought that was kinda amusing.

Content.....it can be a pain to update!

[Майор Хаткевич]

On the subject of "Is CAP an internet operation?"

http://www.capmembers.com/cap_national_hq/public_affairs/cap_unit_web_sites/

I'm assuming that the twitter and facebook feeds couldn't get on this list without having submitted an IO request.

There are Twitter and Facebook links on that list.

What a MESS.

In the first third of that page, out of about 20 links, at least 10 are dead, broken web pages, woefully outdated, and one has a Rickroll.

No, CAP doesn't need standardization at all...

One of them led to a yahoo page that said "Sorry, Geocities closed in 2009".


Subtract a few years from that when that list was probably last updated.

[Holding Pattern]

As an aside, if you do have a nice website now or think you do, I'd kindly ask you to point archive.org at it so that it gets indexed for historical purposes. Other IT people will thank you, and someday a CAP historian may thank you.

[RickRutledge]

I noticed someone mentioned the OKWG website. We actually discovered an issue that we were unaware because of the comments about the page weight. It should be fixed now.

As for the graphics, we're harnessed by the theme we use in WordPress. They have static sizes and we have no way to upscale some of the photos. Regardless, we do the best we can.

www.okwgcap.org

www.brokenarrowcap.org
www.capstarbase.org
www.edmondcap.org
www.capokc.org
www.tinkercap.org
www.counciloakcap.org
www.grovecap.org
www.muskogeecap.org
www.durantcap.org
www.capshawnee.org
www.normancap.org
www.woodwardcap.org
www.enidcap.org
www.lawtoncap.org
www.altuscap.org
www.stillwatercap.org

www.tulsacap.org - Gateway for the Tulsa metro

[The14th]

I decided to spend about an hour on Google just visiting random Squadron sites. A lot of them are just awful looking, and need a big overhaul. The one thing that concerns me though is the number of them that haven't been updated in years. It can't really be good for Recruiting if people search for your unit and don't see anything new. I can see people going "Oh, I guess they aren't active anymore" and moving on from the idea.

[RiverAux]

The one thing that concerns me though is the number of them that haven't been updated in years.

A continuing problem in CAP is that many squadron web sites are actually owned by some individual member rather than by the unit and if that person leaves, the unit has lost control over its internet identify.  There really should be a requirement that all CAP web sites be controlled by some level of the corporation. 

[The14th]

The one thing that concerns me though is the number of them that haven't been updated in years.

A continuing problem in CAP is that many squadron web sites are actually owned by some individual member rather than by the unit and if that person leaves, the unit has lost control over its internet identify.  There really should be a requirement that all CAP web sites be controlled by some level of the corporation.

I would agree with that. Have the person who owns the site provide the log in details and sign something saying that they allow the Commander to edit/delete as needed if the member leaves CAP.

[a2capt]

That's why some kind of access information is required to be in eServices as part of the approval for existence of the specific web presence. Continuity can be maintained, and things move on.

[a2capt]

A while back as part of determining whether to continue on with the .gov TLD, or not- with a wing level internet activity, I set out to find every Wing and Region site, and some unit sites- using CAPWATCH data as a starting point, only to see that many were listed wrong. I was expecting that, so nothing out of the ordinary there.

What I wasn't expecting though, was just how many sites .. would have been made to look better had they been GeoCities templates 15 years ago.  Of 52 Wings, just about a quarter had any kind of CMS (Content Management System) at all. Of the rest, most gave the impression they were just static pages, and some kind of upkeep was being done somewhere.

I added some notes, ranked sites according to impression, etc. It's well over a year old, in theory it should still be all correct information, but we know how that goes.

[Holding Pattern]

After much deliberation, looking at the choices of the googlesites.gov walled garden, the likely to be hacked wordpress, the innumerable CMS solutions out there, and whatnot, I think I'm going to run with a 2-tiered solution:

1. Front facing page. Powered by Twitter Bootstrap, this series of static pages can instantly scale to any size screen or device. Being static pages, there is nothing to hack. Embedded feeds will be added for Facebook and Twitter, allowing the PAO to update the facebook page and give the resultant feed on a page dedicated to current events.
2. Secure members page. Powered by the wing's google apps, authentication will be required to access it. Links to all CAPAPPS and FOUO/OPSEC/INFOSEC data that needs to be accessible online will be secured behind their auth firewalls.

Priority is 1. Self-driven due date is April 30th. This will give me time to hunt down media, bug test the website, and make sure I have all the appropriate approvals needed for all of our internet operations.