Welcome to the new website

We have a vision of the website as a dynamic hub and a central place to find information about storytelling and storytellers in this country and beyond.  Whilst there is a way to go yet, this new website is a first step along the way.

When I became a director of the society one of my main tasks, given my technical background, was to take over the maintenance of the website.  After reviewing the technology  I realised that there was a lot of work to be done in order to support the future needs of the society and our vision of the website.

There is much work still to be done, but, although it looks much the same, the website is now runs on a much more extensible and future proof back-end.

The most Immediate benefit of the new system is that the event handling is much more sophisticated:

• Repeating events and the display of ending times are now possible.
• There is now a map view, and events can be searched for by geographical location.
• There is also a calendar view.

Logged in users can submit events and news in html.

The first member specific feature on the site is a new members directory.  This is intended to replace the old paper directory which was discontinued a few years ago, and provides a way for members to share information about themselves with other members.  In the future there will be other features, such as online access to current and past editions of Storylines.

Upcoming features include:

• Biography pages of all the people who keep the society going - special interest group leaders, area reps, publications team, website editors, forum and newsletter managers, admin staff, ...
• Club pages.  Each club which wishes a page will be given one, listing location, time  and contact details and links to events.  This will be used to automatically populate a club map.
• Special Interest Group pages.  We currently have two active special interest groups: Health and Therapy, and Faith and Religion.  Each will have a page with information on resources and relevant events.

The Directory of Storytellers and the Forums will also be integrated with this site.

As an experiment we are currently allowing anyone to submit events and news to the site, without moderation beyond simple spam prevention measures.  This may change if the system is abused (e.g. non-storytelling events are submitted, or news articles which are not of general interest, or are personal adverts, are posted), but, if all goes well, this should immediately make the site more dynamic and useful.

Finally, I'd like to receive feedback, good or bad, and feature suggestions.  If something is broken, I want to know.  If you really like something, I'd like to know that too.  The system is now very flexible, so if you have seen something on another site that you think would be a great addition, please let me know; I make no promises, but will certainly look at the suggestion and see what's possible.

Please send feedback to developer@sfs.org.uk.

I hope you like the new site.

Tom Goodale