CHES PTA Website Guidelines
Mission Statement
The CHES PTA Website was created in 2009 to act as an information tool designed to assist our PTA in sharing information in a timely manner with all PTA members. Additionally reasons for the creation of the website are:
- A way to post helpful information relevant to PTA members such as: PTA meeting schedule, calendar of events, names of officers, PTA newsletters, etc.
- To post forms for easy access – reimbursement forms, volunteer sign up forms, end of program evaluation forms, etc.
- To post fundraising information
- To “go green” and offer information without using paper
- To post historical information so that work is not lost once members depart
What not to include: since PTA is a membership organization, privileged documents with privileged information such as budgets, minutes and treasurer’s report should not appear on the web site accessible by the general public.
Decision to use Yola.com
Our budget for the website is $0.00. So, we are using Yola.com as our website builder software. The reasons for selecting Yola are:
- It is completely open source or free, Yola will allow us to be a sub-domain at no charge and will not post any advertising on our site. We also get our own customized domain name – right now the following name is available, CHESPTA. yola.com
- There are no banner or pop-up adds and the only advertising is a very SMALL Yola link at the footer of all pages which can be removed for $9.95 a year, we decided to leave this link on as it will allow other PTA’s to see how we built our site and use as a best practice. People without programming skills and limited knowledge of HTML and graphic design skills can make web sites using Yola. It is VERY user friendly and easy to create and edit.
- Yola uses drag and drop technology that is easy to use, but is also very powerful in that it allows for us to incorporate widgets without knowing HTML – a widget allows for us to add a “suggestion box that automatically emails to the PTA president”; or a form for a user to fill out, or a blog…
- Yola has won tons of awards and has an excellent 24/7 online support/help desk. It also has an online tutorial at http://www.yola.com/customer-support and user blogs that are very informative.
Editor Access and CHES PTA EMAIL Account
As of 12/09 the "CHES PTA EMAIL ACCOUNT" was created using “hotmail” to allow for webmaster to access and edit the CHES PTA Website and to forward/reply to emails generated from the website. The email address is: chespta@hotmail.com. The email password should be distributed to the webmaster and the PTA President(s) so they can access email and forward accordingly. The password can be changed yearly with a change in executive board members, etc. to control access. The emails will also leave a “history” for incoming board members.
Webmaster is responsible for the keeping the email active. If you don't sign in to your Hotmail account for more than 30 days, or within the first 10 days after signing up for a new account, all messages, folders, and contacts are marked for deletion, but the account name is still reserved. If the account stays inactive for a further 90 days, the account name is permanently deleted. You can forward the CHES PTA Email to anothe e-mail address that ends in hotmail.com, msn.com, live.com, or is part of Windows Live Custom Domains. Important note: You then must sign in at least once every 270 days so that your account doesn't get deleted.
Format Suggestions
- Keep content up-to-date
- Update site regularly with a date on the homepage or each individual web page+
- Publicize your webpage in the newsletter, at PTA meetings, emails and other PTA communications
- Website should contain a PTA banner or logo on the front page
- Keep your formatting clean and easy to navigate
- Put a title header on every page
- Check your links on a regular basis
Legal Guidelines
- Do not use any photographs of any children that attend our schools, use only free source photos and/or clip art.
- Credit all sources (other than PTA) with permission for use granted
- Links or content for personal or business use by any member of the PTA is prohibited.
Suggested Content
- PTA calendar with upcoming events including council, district, state and national
- PTA information
- Information on Reflections program
- Information on membership to encourage parents to join PTA
- Information for Parent Education and Involvement
- Information on Health and Safety Issues
- Information on the Community
- Information on PTA committees and their activities
- Include mission of the PTA somewhere on website
- Include material from and links to NYS PTA and National PTA
- Insert a disclaimer
- Links to the Internet sites of other nonprofit associations may be made provided that the nonprofit association supports goals and programs consistent with the PTA mission.
Design Tips
- Be sensitive to the fact that not all monitor are the same size, limit the amount of text on each page so there is minimum scrolling.
- Choose colors pleasing to the eye – stick with the burgundy color (#6c3838) and black text.
- Use readable – not fancy – fonts. Stick with the current Times Roman with normal for text size for all except for titles at medium/bold.
- With a couple of exceptions, try to keep the web site should be fairly static so that you are only updating portions of or some pages. You don’t want to be updating all the time. It is expensive to pay for a non-volunteer and time-consuming for a volunteer. Many of your sections will not change from year to year.
- Don’t expect everyone else to be as enthusiastic about a web site as you are!
- Create a web site that can be passed on to the next volunteer along with software to update it. Do not make something so complicated that only you can do it.
Internet Safety for Children and Volunteers
Issue: Even a first name or picture and city/school can be used to identify a child. Less information about individual children is probably better. The newsletter, which has more restricted distribution, is a better place to have acknowledgements and celebrations of our children’s and volunteers achievements.
Adult PTA Board member phone numbers and email addresses may only be posted with the permission of the member.
Newsletters on the Website
Since the PTA newsletters are already posted on the CHES website, we will include them on our PTA site as well. However, since kids names often appear in the newsletter (for awards, participation in activities, etc.), there may be a time that we decide to not post the newsletters on the website as this is a wider form of distribution. Should that decision be made, here are some options:
1) web-ready copies of the newsletter for the webpage
2) password protection access to archived newsletters for PTA members only
3) do not keep the newsletter on the webpage, but have a contact for the newsletter editor where you can request a duplicate copy of the newsletter via email.
In the future, we may want to expand on the information we make available on the PTA Website that would be available as “Member Only Content” that would require a password – such as: PTA school directory or PTA Bylaws.
Relationship with the School and District
Duplication of information would discourage the reader, keep PTA website “pta related” and all school related should not be repeated on the CHES PTA Website.
The CHES PTA website is not designed to be a school website. The website is the property of the CHES PTA. Any school content posted on the website is offered as a service that is beneficial to both parents and administrators (such as the Box Tops and other Labels Programs, etc.). School information should be reviewed for accuracy by the school principal and will be posted with the permission of the PTA President. Understanding the close relationship between the school and PTA, should the school or district have any concerns about content posted on the PTA website all parties should work together to resolve the issue. Informational updates or errors can be brought directly to the webmaster for correction. If the school or district is concerned about content or links, they should meet with the PTA President and Webmaster to review the PTA website Guidelines. Final authority for what is acceptable on the PTA website rests with PTA.
Administration of the Website
The PTA webmaster and PTA president(s) of the CHES PTA are the website administrators. Any content covered under, and meeting, the Guidelines may be published on the website by the webmaster. Any material not meeting the Guidelines, or outside of the established Guidelines, needs to be approved by the PTA President before publication on the website. If the material is substantially outside the Guidelines, approval for updated Guidelines should be sought from the CHES PTA Board, and reviewed to ensure compliance with the mission of the NYS and National PTA. Recognizing that technology is always evolving, CHES PTA website Guidelines should be periodically reviewed to verify that they are in good standing with the NYS PTA and National PTA guidelines and policies.
