Last updated on Nov 10, 2020
Summary
Earlier this spring the Board approved a $20,000 expenditure to update our Event Calendar website. The current website is close to obsolete and needs to be updated in order to continue. Alternatives to our Event Calendar have been considered but there have been none that suited us in all respects better than the one we have. For two principle reasons, price and features that suit our use. While we’re at it, we’ll also add calendar features to make it more user friendly. The funds to do this will come out of the roughly $150,000 that we’ve been sitting on over the past several years and is a necessary use of part of those funds. Without having our monthly socials it’s been difficult to ask our membership to vote on this issue, so we’ve added an additional question on the election page for membership approval. If you have any questions, please email the Section Chair at Chair@acccalgary.ca.
Scope of work
The Calgary section is proposing to refactor the Event Calendar website to build upon more robust database and backend framework. The goal is to enhance stability, security and scalability, improve the online event management process, and simplify website maintenance and modifications.
Why is the website refactor unavoidable?
- Database: With the growing number of members and data stored on the website, the current database is showing its limitation on scalability and require enhanced security.
- Backend maintenance: The current Event Calendar website backend was built with a legacy framework with hard to read scripting languages, which makes it difficult to interpret, update and maintain. To push an update to a webpage or the database, the website needs to be taken “offline” till changes get uploaded. On top of that, there is no debugging environment or tool for this deprecated framework, making testing difficult and “on-the-fly” updates susceptible to crashes.
- Future improvements: In general, there is very limited talent pool for the current legacy framework, which makes any potential website improvements costly.
Alternatives
- Purchase an existing website plugin: With all those affordable website plugins floating around, we looked at numerous event plugins, some of which we prototyped but couldn’t find any that would serve the level of complexity required by our event registration process. That being said, even if there was one “perfect” plugin on the market, our website would solely rely on the third-party plugin that promises no long term support.
- Develop our own plugin: This would have cost considerably more (quotes were solicited, starting at ~$50,000) to create a plugin from scratch with the level of complexity we would require. Additionally, this is also dependent on the third-party website builder platform (i.e. WordPress). There is nothing preventing them from going out of support.
The conclusion was that rebuilding the website is the only way to go about, which will grant the section full ownership of the source code and rights to modify and update the Event Calendar website.
Direct benefits
- Improved website stability, security and scalability;
- Ease of maintenance and modifications because we own and have full access to the code;
- Automate/semi-automate the membership data update process. Currently this is a mostly manual process done by the webmaster every few days (or as required) which also requires the website to be taken “offline” for a few minutes.
- A better and simpler event creation/approval/registration process, to name a few:
- – Addition of built-in WYSIWYG editor making it easier to add formatted texts and images to event details;
- – Addition of built-in PayPal option to save manual work by volunteers – currently payments are done through etransfer or PayPal buttons that need to be added manually by trip leaders;
- – Option to allow member’s guest(s) on “screened” events.
Indirect benefits
A successful implementation of the new website could spawn interest from other sections to collaborate. Potentially the website development expenses could be fully or partially recouped.
Who will benefit?
- Volunteers (trip leaders, trip coordinators, section admins)
- Members
- Potentially other ACC sections
Timeline
Aim to have the new Event Calendar website rolled out by April 2021.
Spill-over effects
Due to nature of the upgrade, the new website will be moved from Linux hosting to Windows hosting. This would incur up to $60 monthly hosting fee.