The Members’ Area of the Medford Township Division of Fire home page has been undergoing a major update project since the new year that is nearly complete. Many suggestions from members were used to create a collaborative environment that not only allows access and review to department documents such as SOPs and Memos; but also contains training reference material, scheduling, messaging, and much more.
This month, the upgrade effort is nearly complete and some members are already testing out the new features for Division of Fire Staff and Volunteers. If you are interested in joining the testing of the new Members’ Area, please fill out the form below or let your Station Chief know of your interest.
More about the Members’ Area Upgrade
The previous Division of Fire home page was based on the open source content management system, Joomla. As other organizations in town experienced, Joomla is a difficult solution to manage and can create security issues for larger departments. After watching a security compromise of another township agency, the decision was made to evaluate and replace Joomla with an easier to manage, open source system.
WordPress, our new system, is a free, open source, and easily administered content management system capable of handling our department’s needs. Using both desktop and mobile tools, along with Twitter and Facebook integration, WordPress is able to distribute information to township residents and businesses quickly and without issues. However, WordPress does not have a strong solution for a Members’ Area that would add the new features we mentioned above.
After an evaluation period this winter – Alfresco, a free and open source document management and workgroup collaboration suite, was chosen as our new solution and installed on retired hardware within the Division. Currently, testing has shown that Alfresco offers a large amount of new features that will make it easier for Division Staff and Volunteers to work together on a number of projects. Formal launch of the new members’ area is tentatively scheduled for the end of April, 2011.