Job Description

Committee affiliation: Website Team

Responsibilities

Act as a co-administrator for the Events & News website. This site provides information about STC and chapter news, our events, and related events. It is powered by The Events Calendar plugin for WordPress. The event poster puts up posts about events that are added to the calendar. Other chapter members and yourself can write articles for the site. All article and event posts are open for comments. This leaves the site vulnerable to spammers, which must be monitored and blocked. You will manage users who register to be authors, editors, contributors, and subscribers for the Events & News site at https://events.stcwdc.org/.

• Ensure all users are STC members.
• Ensure all users are given accounts with very secure password login information (12 characters of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols).
• Delete users who do not comply with our requirements or who have not posted for four months.
• Monitor posts from users to ensure content posted is appropriate and related to technical communication or the chapter.
• Edit all contributor's submissions to ensure there are no typographical errors and to maintain formatting structure. If major edits are made to a post, ask for the contributor's approval. If major revisions are needed, return the post to the contributor for editing. (See Contributing Post Guidelines.)
• Ensure all links to sites going away from our site use rel="nofollow" attribute.
• Ensure all links do not use tabindex="₀" attribute.
• Ensure all links do not use title="₀" attribute.
• Ensure all image links use the alt="₀" attribute to describe the image and that image links do not use title="₀".
• Respond promptly to post comments.
• Respond to inquiries about registering on the site.
• Respond to submitted articles for publication and pass on to the appropriate writer.
• Monitor external events submitted for posting on our calendar; provide help if necessary.
• Monitor and upgrade WordPress versions as needed.
• Monitor and upgrade WordPress plugins as needed.
• Monitor Google Webmaster Tools for suspicious activity; resolve problems identified.
• Monitor all security reports for suspicious activity; add bad IP addresses to the Black List.
• Run periodic cleanup of the database and trouble shoot any hacked tables.

Posts may be on any subject related to technical communication or chapter news. Some topics include

• Accessibility
• Book reviews
• Chapter member interviews
• Education and training opportunities
• Event reports
• Job hunting tips
• STC news (input received from the Society office)
• Tools and techniques
• Usability

(See Contributing Post Guidelines.)

Experience and Skills

• WordPress skills
  • Familiarity with the WordPress.org 6.1.1+ text editor for updating posts and information on the website
  • Familiarity with HTML 5+, and CSS2 / CSS 3 editing to create and maintain accessible posts and pages for hand coding to add accessibility compliance if needed
  • Familiarity with using / editing PHP 7.7 / PHP 8+ include statements to include repetitive sections of HTML or text and modularized data on multiple pages in the website
  • Accessibility / Section 508 requirements
  • MySQL Database management, necessary
• Familiarity with The Events Calendar suite of plugins, helpful
• Experience working with or willing to learn and use online project management tools such as Basecamp
• Knowledge of and access to FTP software
• Familiarity with file maintenance and version control
• Experience with Adobe PhotoShop and Adobe Acrobat helpful
• Familiarity with JavaScript, helpful
• Good writing organizational skills
• Ability to take initiative
• Good time management
• Willing to ask for help when needed
• Familiarity with chapter members and other STCers who ask to register on the site.

Equipment

• Your own computer with high-speed Internet access
• Browser (Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome)
• Email address (Google is preferred for working with Google calendar, Basecamp, and other tools)
• FTP application (FileZilla)
• HTML5 / CSS3 / PHP7 text editor (such as BBEdit for Macintosh or Homesite 5 for Windows)
• Word processing software
• Adobe Acrobat Pro
• Adobe Photoshop (or equivalent photo editing tool)
• Adobe Illustrator
• FAX or scanner (optional)

Time Commitment

Expect to spend 2 to 3 hours a week monitoring and editing submitted posts, writing your own posts, and maintaining other pages as needed. Expect to spend 2 to 4 hours a week during other times for monitoring Google Webmaster Tools, tracking down and fixing hacking attempts, updating WordPress, updating plugins, and updating pages as needed.

Contact

If you are interested in serving the chapter as a volunteer, please fill in the Chapter Volunteer Signup Form.

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