Our newly overhauled website was a two-month project that we’ve been wanting to do for the past five years. Jordan and Scott will take you behind the scenes in their next blog post; in the meantime, here are some of the basics about the new site.
E-commerce changes
We now use Stripe for all credit card transactions on the site. That includes memberships and gifts, conference registrations, books, and back issues of Railroad Heritage. Publication sales now run through an integrated Shopify storefront. The View Cart link at upper right will show all items currently in your shopping cart. We can still take checks by mail, too. If you have any questions, just send an email to info [at] railphoto-art.org or call 608-251-5785.
Navigation notes and changes
As before, our logo at the top is clickable and will return you to the homepage. The icons next to it are also clickable and will take you to the relevant social media channel.
The main menu at top is a consolidation of the previous menu. The Center’s tremendous growth over the past several years—especially that of our archival collections—led to more options than the previous menu structure could handle.
Individual collections now appear on the Browse Collections page in a grid of thumbnails with basic information about each one.
Events & Programs include our conferences, creative photography awards, and webinar series. Most of the information about past conferences has been consolidated onto the main Conference page. Scroll down to find links to programs and image galleries from prior years. Likewise, every year of the awards program now appears on a single page; expandable “accordion” links will open with a click to reveal winning images and other information from past years. Information about each webinar appears in a blog post, with embedded recordings from our YouTube channel for all of our public programs that are available for viewing there.
Our many traveling exhibitions now appear in two grids on the Exhibitions page, with shows currently in circulation in the upper grid and older shows no longer circulating in the lower grid.
The Join & Support tab is where to go to join or renew your membership and learn about other ways you can support our work and mission. There’s also a link there to sign up for our e-newsletter. We use Constant Contact and typically send 2-4 messages per month including announcements about our webinars and other events.
How to find other content
There’s a search bar in the footer that appears at the bottom of each page. Most announcements about our events, publications, and exhibitions are blog posts that are archived on the site. The easiest way to browse them is by going to “Browse previous posts” near the middle of the homepage (just above the “What we do” heading) and selecting a year from the drop down menu.
Let us know what you think
We welcome your thoughts and suggestions about the new site and everything else we do. Please send them to: info [at] railphoto-art.org
