In 2015, SchoolAdvancement celebrated 10 years on the Web.  For those of you that remember it, it was text heavy, with navigation across the top and down the side.  There were also some blogs that were created outside the site to hold articles on Advancement and Systems Thinking for Education which were linked to the site.

As technology evolved, the sites were combined into one site which could be edited online and scheduled to be published rather than created and stored on the computer then uploaded manually.  A new design was then utilized to take advantage of responsive design, eliminating sidebars, using larger fonts, and making good use of white space because of the shift toward tablet computers and mobile devices.

Today, more and more browsers are starting to employ artificial intelligence to determine what is spam and what is not.  It’s why it’s important to add content you want to see to your “safe senders” list, since if something goes to spam over and over again, it may just simply be deleted before it even reaches your inbox.  That’s why it’s important to check your spam/junk mail folders too.

It seems that SchoolAdvancement has reached this point.  With three categories of articles published weekly, and another 3 published monthly, there are some browsers that consider 15 articles per month coming from schooladvancement.net excessive.

So, this summer, a resign has been planned.  A change in publication schedule, which leads to a change in site location, and which leads to a change in design.  In a way, it will be like starting all over again.  Three things that must all be done at once – how familiar does that sound?

Each category of articles – Development, Marketing, Enrollment, Advancement, Asset Management, and Tetrahedronics – will be published every 5 days – the 1st, 6th, 11th, 16th, 21st and 26th of the month.  The DREAM will be modified to include previews of these articles for the month.  This way, only 6 articles will be published per month on a regular schedule.

SchoolAdvancement will also return to schooladvancement.com after the new site is launched, and, in the spirit of agile development, will continue to be migrated from schooladvancement.net where the site is currently hosted.  This was done so the original site could continue to function until the new design a number of years ago was ready to launch, and accessing schooladvancement.com immediately forwards to schooladvancement.net.  Information and attachments will be housed on schooladvancement.info.

As you know, since 3 leads to 4 leads to 5, there will be a couple more elements to complete the system – the preparation of a new section for presentations, and an overall new platform to house both of these resources which may have membership stipulations.  Those are still in the planning stages.  The reason for this is two-fold; first, when people pay, they pay attention.  You’ll find out a little more about this in an upcoming SchoolAdvancement article as it applies to your school regarding tuition.  Second, when there is a cost associated with registration, it eliminates the folks that simply complete a sign-up list who are from half-way around the world because they want to spam your membership.  This is also the reason that the SchoolAdvancement group on LinkedIn is not an open group where anyone can join.

It’s hoped that these modifications will be ready for a July 1st launch.  That’s the current plan, and, as we all know, plans can change when you’re designing change.