Digital Engagement (DE) are please to offer a specialised academic conference web site solution to Victoria staff responsible for running conferences. Based on Wordpress, the world's most popular content management system, the solution is able to meet any/all of the following requirements. This means our solution can support all these activities, or you can use alternative solutions for any aspect (e.g. EasyChair to collect and manage proposals/papers):
- Public web site: Using one of two pre-selected themes, you have control over aspects of the design and of all the content for a public web site. You are not restricted to Victoria branding and shouldn't actually use the University branding. The site will be in English, no other languages at this time. The site can be kept live for up to a few years after the conference, but will eventually be closed down.
- Sponsors: We can profile sponsors, if necessary.
- Registrations and payments: Developed in close co-operation with Finance, this allows for money to arrive in our bank accounts with sufficient information for journaling to the correct project codes and audit/refund tractability. We support credit card payments, together with tax invoices and receipts. We also support complex ticketing (different categories, prices, combinations, discount codes, open dates, etc), custom registration forms andÂ
- Call for proposals/papers: Collect and manage both abstracts, and reviews, including blind reviews if necessary. Customised notifications, flexible handling of attachments, reporting in the system and downloadable.
- Secure hosting: Selected in conjunction with ITS, we have about 10 sites on the account, ranging from blogs to poetry sites and conferences. We will register a domain name of your selection, ensure the site is secure and backed up, and retain administrator access just in case.
The cost to have a basic basic conference site built, populated and launched is $1,500. We don't actually do this work in the DE team, rather we introduce you to a trusted developer with whom you contract directly. DE continues to provide level 2 support to the developer and for the technical aspects of the platform and site, but we don't actually do any of the design, development or content work.
This price is very reasonable, covers about 15-20 person hours, so has some constraints:
- You won't get a customer design and build web site, as this would cost many times the asking price.This means you must accept the design and some functional modules as is.
- You must prepare your own media and content. This means you must source images (feel free to ask Image Services for assistance), prepare and specific logos or design files, decide on the site architecture/layout and write the content.
- You will need to learn how to administer the site. This means managing users (in your team), making small edits, using the registration module to answer questions about payments, etc.
- what has been previously used as the starting will require you to perform some of the content writing and maintenance activities, certainly once the site is live. You may do these support activities yourself, engage the developer to for additional support or find your own support person.