Hi lakekit members,
Below are the results of the survey sent out in early October. Thanks a million to the ten of you who filled out the survey.
General conclusions (Please share your conclusions if different):
- The network satisfaction level so far is great and encourages further planning for next year and after that.
- General agreement exists that we need to plan for backup network administration, preferably through a volunteer.
- Members want a variety of help options. Sending a monthly memo was the strongest request.
- Improving simplicity of maintaining sites seems more important than site enhancements.
Survey results (To the right of each survey item choice is the number of responses for that choice):
Survey Item 3. Has the network met your organization’s expectations so far?
Yes – 7
Somewhat – 3
No – 0
Survey Item 4. What would help improve your organization’s site building and maintenance operation?
Help at a discounted rate – 1
Improved help information at lakekit.net – 5
Members ask for help from other members through an email group membership – 2
Continue monthly emails from the network administrator on pertinent or requested topics – 7
Access to an updated workshop guide – 4
Survey Item 5. Does your lake organization plan to continue membership in 2017?
Yes – 8
Not sure – 1
No – 0
Renewed – 1
Survey Item 5a. Why your organization may not renew membership?
Response for 1 “Not sure”
People not available to devote the time needed to build and maintain the site – 0
People not consistently available to provide the content needed for a useful site -1
We think a different site builder system would suit us better – 0
We think hiring a professional website design service will suit our organization better – 0
We decided we don’t need a website – 0
Survey Item 6. Check all options you recommend to be considered for designating an alternate network.
Wait until the current network administrator is unavailable to provide corrective action and then figure out a solution – 0
Retain a professional service to step in if the current network administrator cannot be available to correct issues – 4
Find a volunteer who is proficient in WordPress network management and is available to help with network administration – 8
Find a volunteer who wants to learn to be proficient in WordPress network management and help with network administration – 9
Survey Item 7. Do you recommend that a workshop on using the network be provided at next year’s
Yes – 8
Not sure – 2
No – 0
- Please add any additional comment you think is important to the success of the network.
Comment excerpts for survey item #8 are below. Italics text is the network administrator’s response.
- The lakes convention is a good place for getting new members.
- Maybe in May you should have a beginning or refresher workshop.
- If you do not constantly work on the site, you have to refresh yourself with it. But you forget many of the details by only working on it one or two days a month.
- I am to a point with fine tuning my site, but do not have to time to learn the details.
- I would like to share content if there was a central library we could all deposit to.
One way would be to form a Google Group. Anyone in the Group would receive a member email with content to share. For now, I could pass content to share in our “monthly” memo. - Adding news feeds would be nice.
We could add a feeds plugin for specific feeds if a sufficient interest exists. - I want to be sure the network is secure, fast, and backed up.
(1 security) The Wordfence plugin recently became available for multisites (networks) and has been activated to help with security. We are using the free version which does not have the features which the paid version adds.
(2 speed) To minimize hosting cost, we use a shared hosting account so we are somewhat dependent on other account’s usage. We could add a caching plugin to help with the speed if desired.
(3 backups) The hosting service provides daily backups for the last 30 days. Then we have the BackupWordPress plugin which stores daily backups at our lakekit.net hosting account. I am starting up the for-fee Updraft Plus plugin which will store backups in Google Drive so that we have backups away from the hosting service. I occasionally take a backup of the network and download it to my local computer. - I’m not fully engaged in website yet due to…other priorities take my time.
- You may want to repeat the workshop you gave last year in order to attract new members.
I plan to work with UW-Extenstion-Lakes to do another workshop at next year’s Lake Convention. - I feel that I know what I need to maintain our site, and we don’t have anything fancy that would require me to learn the more advanced features of WordPress.
- Thanks for all you do for us.
- Thanks for organizing the survey and providing the lake kit service.
Ultimately, the members of the network should determine the way it operates. - My attention to our website has been sporadic, but I am reminded of the value of the site each time I dig in and make changes and progress.
- Offer an option for an additional fee for continued members to have 1:1 help with any website questions, formatting, enhancing, etc.
My main goal is to help organizations maintain their own site through volunteers. After the network administration, workshops, the lakekit.net base site, and 2-hour free help for new members, I can be available for fee-based help at a discount for lake organizations. Anyone can also hire one of the many service businesses that do this work.