Spruce up the Website and Email templates

[adonaldson]

I'm wanting to pull together a new newsletter template so that it's quicker and easier to get news out in a way that doesn't look like total ass. As an aside the look and feel could be adapted to improve the Website. Maybe the website should be a separate ticket?

I'm thinking of two or three types of newsletter, all sharing the same main theme:

• This month's meeting (sent midway through the month)
• This month's meeting reminder (sent on the Monday of the week of the meet)
• This month's meeting retrospective + invitation to take part (sent as soon after the meet)

Does anyone have any thoughts of what besides the main content an email newsletter has to contain?

• Date/time of next meeting
• Legal bumf
• Photos from last meeting? This can add a fair bit of time / cognitive effort to making the emails. Does it add any real value?
• Links to speakers' personal websites

If you've any thoughts, drop them into comments below and I'll amend the list above.

[hiraethmarkb]

Date and time is probably a must. Especially for a meat-head like me, as I am never quite sure what way is up half the time.

It's always nice to have a few photos, but would they not better used in social media, potentiality opening up their audience?

There might be some mileage to having links to speaker's personal websites on the either upcoming or retrospective mailshots, assuming folks are amenable.

I guess the question would are there enough people on the mailing list vs those who attend to make that worthwhile?

Certainly it would be good if the slide sets from a talk were online, or there were useful links for further reading and what-not might be a good addition to the retrospective.

Which reminds me I could do with getting my personal website sorted and online...

[adonaldson]

One of the main goals for me is to make it as brainless and quick to set up. Trying to pull together profiles / images of the right size is time consuming for a task that I (and others) don't usually have time for.

Honestly, in my head I see it being like a really pretty text template. Type in some stuff and it just looks nice off the bat.

[schwuk]

New site is live, hosted on WordPress. Absolute bare minimum for now. Will start looking to integration with Mailchimp/social media in other issues. This one should stay open for the mail shot improvements.