It doesn't matter how static your museum/ride and its operation and administration may be in terms of collections or activities.

You owe it to yourself to have someone OUTSIDE YOUR ORGANIZATION check over your website, and even your Facebook page or whatever.

Little personal anecdote:

Yesterday I attempted to contact a well-known, professionally-run rail museum, one most here would recognize. (Specific details have been changed and names are being withheld to protect the guilty--well, no, to make you wonder "is it our website?"....)

It was after hours and not urgent, so I felt dropping an e-mail was prudent.
I had to dig through the website like crazy to find a potential e-mail link--it was of the "Click here to send an e-mail" format.
I hovered the pointer over the link. It led to a classic "JDoe@railmuseum.org" link common to workplaces. That was my alarm bell. That stands a chance of not working if someone has left, quit, being assigned elsewhere, or died.
I sent my query. Sure enough, it bounced instantly.
I checked around elsewhere. I found another e-mail address buried elsewhere. But I saw it was through another domain--something via a city/county website, tied to tourist promotion. I tried that. It, too, bounced--the specific domain in question is now no longer used by that jurisdiction. I found yet another "name@" e-mail link that went through another domain, this one with a .gov address. That, too, bounced. I tried another broader e-mail address for that domain, it seems that the jurisdiction had changed the domain for things they don't run/staff directly from .gov to .net .

By the time I found an address that didn't bounce or wasn't conspicuously obsolete, I was heavily spiking my soda with rye whiskey to help with the throbbing headache.

Still waiting for an answer.

I suspect, in this specific instance, that what's in play here is an unclear delineation of online duties. This is a classic case where two volunteer groups are using a location owned by the local government, with administrative oversight by a separate public-private partnership. The phone seems to be part of a a local-government set of phone numbers. But who answers the phone, and then the e-mail?


Lessons learned and passed on here:

No one likes the online e-mail form, but it's become a necessity in many cases. Set the e-mail form or address to send to a free permanent e-mail address that won't expire along with someone's account or life. Make THAT address--a separate GMail, Yahoo, or whatever account--auto-forward to EVERY appropriate officer, secretary, webmaster, volunteer, or whoever and then see to it that at every election or change of personnel the forwarding addresses are updated. Once a year, at minimum, maybe quarterly.

Here's the acid test:
Find a young person, have him/her pull up your website ON THEIR SMARTPHONE, and ask them to find a way to contact your site to visit, or better yet to offer them, say, a rolling stock donation or estate.
See how long it takes, and have them send a test message.

If you can't find someone among your crew to make any needed changes, find someone who can. Pay for the service and changes, if need be.

Two of my all time big pet peeves:

Entities that do not update their websites and keep them current, and entities that haven't addressed the fact that their website or many of the features do not work well or at all when accessed from smart phones.

While I'm at it, I'll offer one other little gem. I'll begrudgingly conceed the need and value of having Twittle, Faceplant and Instajunk pages for your organizations, but I don't think I should HAVE to access those third party sites to find out pertinent information and news about your organization. If it's information worth knowing, for GOD'S SAKE PUT IT ON YOUR ACTUAL WEBSITE TOO!

In some organizations, Websites are like publicity and finance, tasks that are restricted to Officers and Directors, lest a confusing message be broadcast. People who are rechosen for those positions are not required to like or even know about the uses of the Internet. They also have a lot of other things to do.

For website email, please have your webmaster incorporate a form that uses some form of field validation, either jquery or PHP, and uses the PHP mailer. There are loads of these forms available for free download. And for a bit of extra protection, incorporate reCaptcha. Nobody likes them, but they’re a necessary evil to help stop bots from filling out the form. Use an exclusive email address for your form. The email address should also be from your domain or it may get bounced. Don’t give that email address out to anyone other than who all would receive it. If you respond back via that address, set up a DMRC policy with Google or it may not go through to gmail addresses and some others if you’re on shared servers.

Do NOT expose your email address on an HTML page or in the form. It’ll get scraped as soon as you do and you’ll be buried in spam. You can’t stop every bit of it, but the above will keep it to a minimum.

Keep your site up to date. Website email ain’t as simple as it used to be.

That is a classic case of an organizational failing. Letting the world know who you are, where you are, what you do, why you do it and what you are currently up to is IMPORTANT. The job needs to be given to someone that not only can do it, but WANTS to do it, not passed around like a hot potato. I have been accused of being a old fuddy duddy on a lot of things, but on the subject of websites, social media, media engagement and community outreach, I am 1000% on the side of the mostly younger generation that embraces it. In my opinion, even an organization that gets it like the FWRHS could and should do a lot more than they currently do, which is better than many. When I am looking at organizations, whether it be private business, non profits or government entities, I can make judgements pretty quickly on who has their s*** together and who doesn’t by what their website looks like and how often it is updated. This is 2022. Don’t have the time, don’t have the talent, don’t have the budget just doesn’t cut it anymore.

We do pretty well with communicating to our stakeholders via the web, Facebook, a few other places like RYPN, and we have recently added a Youtube channel.

However, your comments about accessing the web page via phone are well taken, thanks for the KITA to prompt us to deal with it. I haven't used a phone to look at a web site in a couple of years and don't text, but I realize I may be one of the few surviving Neanderthals. I would be perfectly happy if all phones were black, had a rotary dial, and a cord tying them to the wall.

I checked our web site on the cell phone and it's good news, bad news. Parts of it work fine. Other parts are essentially unusable. I've sent our volunteer web master a note to see if he can improve on things.

Your point about ease of contact is also well taken. We have avoided posting email addresses and phone numbers for the obvious reasons. Since our activities are primarily restoration and not operation, that has worked for us. As we are getting closer to operation it's time for a change. I'll see if our web master can add a "contact us" form.

So your advice wasn't in vain, it's prompted at least one organization to take action.

Telephone conversation TODAY:

"Hello, I haven't gotten an answer back on the train show reservation I sent last month. Do I just check in at the door, or what?"

"[a round of "what's your name again", etc. later]................ when did you send it?"

"About a month ago."

"............We've been sold out since early June....."

"Then how come your website is still offering tables for sale, how come there's no mention of the sell-out on your club's Facebook page, and how come your treasurer didn't tell me when I asked him about it a month ago?"

"........................ WHAT???"

".................... and how come YOU didn't know all of this??"

Within ten minutes, the website page for the show was updated with "VENDOR SPACE SOLD OUT"............. My business partner and I are #3 on the waiting list.............. and, having nothing to do with the club or website issues, the reservation form and check are STILL missing in the U.S. Postal Service.......... which is ironic, because the PO Box for the train show chairman is IN THE SAME FREAKING POST OFFICE AS MY P.O. BOX AND WHERE I MAILED IT.................

I wonder how many people on here understood half of what you said. I sure don’t, and I’ve grown up with the internet/technology. I imagine that quite a few people on here, in a position to do something about their websites, has no idea.

So - either people use Facebook - or are savvy enough to create/run their websites effectively. For those that are neither - what are some good and AFFORDABLE external resources, programs, services, etc that people can use for website creation and updates? Are there non-profit and price-friendly means of creating/updating a website? Affordable outsourcing? I think this thread could serve as a good listing for said resources.

If you don’t have a good “webmaster” on staff or someone you pay to maintain your site, there are paid “software as a service” (SaaS) providers out there that make it easy to make basic websites via drag n’ drop without knowing how to write code. Some that come to mind are Weebly, Wix, Squarespace and others. I haven’t used any of them so I can’t recommend any. Just search for “website builder”. I think most larger hosting companies have some form of builder.

There are a few offline (you make it on your computer then upload it when done) website builder software providers, also but the learning curve will be a bit steeper though you have much more control over how your site looks and operates. CoffeeCup Responsive Site Designer is one that comes to mind. There’s also Wordpress which has evolved into a decent website builder.

Most or all of these come with some templates to get you started or you can purchase others. The offline builders allow you to go wildcatting and design your layout from scratch.

I used a free (at the time) offline builder to make ORHS’ site as an experiment. I don’t recommend it if you’re not code savvy as it writes some messy code with tons of back links that have to be edited out and it is not easy to modify. Another change in software may be coming in the future.

Mobile devices i.e. phones, tablets, etc. constitute a minimum of 50% of the devices that access your site. If you haven’t updated your site to responsive design - it rearranges the layout to fit the screen size and orientation - then your site will be difficult for mobile users to use.

TODAY'S anecdote:

A specialized and prominent rail museum, very likely one of the most visited in the nation in terms of raw number of visitors:

No e-mail.

I went through EVERY page of the website. No e-mail link.

I finally did the "Hail Mary" play of doing an Internet search specifically for "[museum name] e-mail".

I finally found a "Contact" page, which included a somewhat odd e-mail address.

Apparently the only way to access this page is via a page to their online store--which is still "UNDER CONSTRUCTION".........

Now, there is an "Information" page that gives you the address, hours, phone number, and ADA access info--but no e-mail or link to their (active) Twitter account or their Facebook page (which is more for visitors sharing/linking their photos, not for the Museum to post)..........

And I'm pretty sure this is a case of "[somebody's] tax dollars at work".........

Next gripe:

A website with a nice photo blog of restoration activities from 2012 to 2017....................... and nothing since...........