Web Development Team
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The Web Development Team is a team which is tasked with the creation and upkeep of ship websites.
Purpose of ship websites
A vessel's website may not have the exact purpose that many seem to think it does. The information below, based on a memo to the Captains Council from FltAdml. Wolf, will give you a better understanding what the exact purpose of a vessel website is, and how you can avoid creating a site which exceeds the needs of your vessel.
Primary use
Let's prefix all this by giving you something to say over-and-over to yourself while creating your website: it's all propaganda. That's right -- for the most part, your vessel's website isn't going to be all that much use to your actual crewmates, at least, if you do it right!
Why is that? As you'll see below, you'll actually have better luck keeping your crew informed and educated about your ship and happenings with other tools you will find throughout our website, including (most notably) the wiki itself. As such, the vessel's website generally has one core use: look pretty and attract new people!
Act as a satellite
While we attempt to funnel everyone to our main website, there's nothing wrong with having prospective members who browse a ship's website before they move to our main site. Our main website can be daunting for someone who's not very techno-savvy, so it's great if they can get excited about simming by a ship's website.
First reference only
We will grant you that a ship's website can act as a "quick" and first reference for your crewmates. Sometimes it's just easier to type in your ship's website and hit the stats instead of going to the wiki, especially if you haven't set a bookmark.
That being said, remember that your ship site should be quick and easy to navigate. Don't go over the top with dynamic content like flash, because it'll slow down your visitors and your crewmates, making it more difficult for them to just hit the site for a byte of information.
Okay... it's news, too!
So maybe we were a little too quick to say it's nothing but propaganda. The ship site, especially if it's a WordPress-powered site, can also be a great place for news. Keeping your crew informed of what's going on will keep them coming back to the site, and keep people interested, as well as show visitors that you're an active ship!
And a place for policy info
It's probably a good idea, in keeping with the "first reference only" idea, to also post things like your ship's posting-frequency policy, and information on how people get promoted.
What it's not
A ship website is not the "end-all, be-all" reference for your ship. There is good reasoning behind this: No matter how easy we make it to update a site, there will always be crews that just don't have anyone who is knowledgeable or motivated enough to help update it. As such, a ship's website will inevitably fall into disrepair which looks bad for our group. We are trying to avoid that at all costs. What the goal should always be, in creating a site, is to set up something that can be static, and still relevant after a long period of time.