Today I shall tell the ongoing saga of our website.

Winter of 2024 was a busy one for Miss Lisa, Miss Anna and I as we worked on redesigning the website and created images for it to make it more visually appealing. The site went live in February 2024. In March, I learned about new Federal regulations regarding websites and ADA compliance. Basically, all the images we had just switched to provided too much information not accessible by screen readers used by the sight impaired. We were going to have to learn the new rules and rework the new website’s design. Annoying, but understandable and at least we had a layout we liked.

Fast forward to the middle of the Summer Reading Program, the busiest time of year, when our webmaster announcing his retirement and the closing of the business. This will require finding a different provider and a complete redesign. We had a year, but the first step, finding a provider was going to be the most difficult largely do to cost. We had just paid for an updated platform and redesign which took nearly a year to complete. There was no money in the budget for a new one.

This is where Prairie Lakes Library System and its IT Department became our heroes. They learned of our dilemma during their 2025 Operational Budget season, asked other libraries about their website needs and wrote web design fees into their budget. In addition, they will be housing our website on their server eliminating that annual fee completely.

Miss Lisa and I had our first meeting with Cathy Dinnes of Blue Cape Marketing (not to be confused with Blue Bird Custom Creations of the Sourdough Made Simple fame) on March 4^th. The new site went live on July 22^nd. It’s on a different platform which means it is very different than the February 2024 site. However, I like it more. We learned from the last redesign and Cathy was more collaborative. Her input was very helpful.

The new website also allowed us to make the switch to LocalHop for our Events calendar and the Community Calendar. Users may filter events by type (for example Arts & Crafts or Food) and by audience (infant/toddler, youth, teen, adult, and senior). Registration for events requiring it can be made directly from the calendar.

Which means the calendar went live just in time for last minute registration for our Sourdough Bake Off and Sourdough Made Simple programs. That’s a story we hope ends well.

READING NOW: Killing the Witches by Bill O’Reilly (Adult Book Club’s August title)

LISTENING TO NOW: The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd