As I'm contemplating a switch to WordPress for my organization's website to streamline the back end of the outreach work, I'm wondering about existing examples of finely tuned, designed, updated, and content filled sites relative to railroad preservation that represent museums, steam groups, scenic railroads, etc. What websites do you think really do it well?

I've always been a fan of simplicity, so while I'm looking to preserve the general look/feel of the site, I'm also aiming to improve the end user experience and compatibility and make it easier to upload content/news/etc.

Some examples of sites I enjoy for one reason or another:

Newly designed RHMA/Friends of 261:
http://www.261.com/

The Grand Canyon Railway:
http://www.thetrain.com/index.html

Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad:
http://www.cvsr.com/

Steam Central
http://steamcentral.com/

Hoosier Valley's Graselli Tower (a very strong contrast to their corporate site)
http://www.grassellitower.com/

A maintained website is an effective tool. If your group hasn't considered revamping its internet efforts, a small investment of time (and sometimes money) can actually make it much easier to update your site quite often with minimal computer knowledge.

A poorly made and run website can be like those rusty box cars out front: they're the first thing people see.

Kelly Lynch

consider doing a Yahoo group?

Oh man... the things I could say about this subject.

Yes, a website is of absolute importance to your organization.

But it's like anything, if you want quality, you should talk to professionals.

Also, Wordpress is NOT a web content management system. It's a blogging tool. It's been stretched and expanded to attempt to be a web content management system, but it's always going to have a hard time getting past its roots.

Take a look at Drupal, for example. It's a bit more complex than Wordpress, but is a web cms at its core.

That's what we use for the Conrail Historical Society's site (all 13000 pages of it). It's flexible enough to support the basic stuff (forum, news, events, static pages), and bulk of the site, the photo gallery.

Drupal also serves as the core of our store site too: https://www.shoppe.thecrhs.org/

Yahoo Groups have their own place, but they're not a substitute for a good website.

Kelly,

I'd be happy to have an off-line discussion with you about this, since it is my field (mostly for global companies, but good stuff is good stuff).

I am a big fan of Wordpress as a back-end tool. Big fan.

Give me a shout on Facebook if you want to discuss further.

All the best,

Rob

Rob, there are other folks who are also interested, why not discuss it here?

Also, while we're talking about websites, please check to see if your railroad/museum does this way too common error.

"Located in West Bugville, only 15 minutes off of Route 14!"

What state are you in? For that matter, what country and continent? They call it the WORLDWIDE Web for a reason, but way too many sites bury that information deep within the catacombs of their site, if you can find it at all.

I know this from experience, since I run a website that lists tourist railways by location, and often have to struggle to find that info. BTW, it's at http://railroaddata.com/ if you want to add your site.

I would suggest that you investigate some of the websites related to the blog news sites, which are "stickied" as the first of the topics in the RYPN discussion board.

I really prefer news and updates that are in blog (wordpress, blogspot, etc) or similar format. RSS feeds are a good thing too. Myspace, Facebook and Twitter are all a bit to short. Good for instant messages sent to phones, and chatty little quips, but not much beyond that IMHO. However some people live in those realms so maybe have a little side site and offer them a nugget every now and then. Yahoo groups are fantastic for discussion, it can get people more involved with ongoing events and needs to raise cash or gather the volunteers to get a job done.
O.