Folks, this thread will attempt to ramble through the LIFECYCLE of an STC event & relate it to associated STC website content. So let's take the fictious event 'STC Summer Silly Triathlon'. I'd maybe expect the following content:
LIFECYCLE
- Create an announcement event item in 'Calendar' section. And appropriately tag it with a Topic e.g. 'Race | Triathlon'.
- (Optional) Create an interesting forum thread to generate some discussion/interest around the event. (And tag it with Topic - 'Race | Triathlon'.)
- Upload the Results document to the 'Downloads' section (and tag it with Topic - 'Race | Triathlon'). Jump in to the item, note or copy the URL from the browsers address bar.
- Upload event photos/images to a new Gallery subsection in the 'Gallery' section. Jump in to the Gallery, note or copy the URL from the browsers address bar. (Please note that you edit your photos / images so they are appropriate to the internet, i.e. crop them and reduce their size (no more than 600 pixels high or wide.)
- Create an article in the 'News & Articles' section that narrates the event. End the article with links to the companion:
Results Doc in the Downloads section (pasting in to the article the noted URL from previous steps).
Event Gallery in the Gallery section (pasting in to the article the noted URL from previous steps).
(And even any related threads.)
- Don't forget to tag the narrative Article with an appropriate Topic - 'Race | Triathlon'.
Such a lifecycle may also be accompanied by companion pre-event (and maybe post-event) content items that are in secured areas of the website i.e. 'Committee' or 'Membership' sections and / or event-specific sections. You could imagine that pre-event planning / organising activity might be hosted in such content items. There might also be post-mortem content items aswell so that STC can put on the event better in subsequent years.
Of course, the exact content items may vary according to your way of doing things - there's no wrong or right way to do it. In fact the best way to do is what suits you unterms of your web authoring skill level and the time you can commit. For example you may want a short event calendar item and create a separate Announcement article in the 'News & Articles' section.
TOPICS
One thing to bear in mind, is that these various related content items can be grouped using the TOPIC functionality, which if used wisely would allow users to bring all the related content back together by browsing-by-topic i.e. click on the 'Race | Triathlon' Topic brings back the event announcement, narrative article, results download, forum thread(s) and event piccys (plus other similarly tagged content items). A really great facillity if used wisely, but unfortunately a bit limited in that an item can only have 1 topic.
END NOTE
Note that in this community web site, I think that (in general) lots of short, snappy content items are what we should be aiming for.
For an idea of such a lifecycle checkout the Westfield 2006-IV content items, mostly tagged by the 'Race | Aquathon' Topic.
Hope this guidance helps and do discuss the issues using this thread - that everyone gets to learn from the debate.
Cheers, Neil