As part of a comprehensive effort to update its communications strategy, the BJCP is undergoing a complete overhaul of its web presence. One of the most visible components of that strategy is a holistic, top-to-bottom makeover of the BJCP's web site.

Background

The BJCP has had a web site since November 25, 1997. The original site (see above) included basic resources (scoresheets, guidelines, program guidelines) as well as sections on officers and updates on news. Over time, as the program has grown, the hosting provider has been changed several times, and additional content has been regularly uploaded to numerous directories.

While the site is one of the first places people visit to learn about the program, it's also a very highly-trafficked site for existing program members accessing downloadable resources, and seeking information about program events (competitions, exams) and program news. Also included in the current web site are a series of applications, providing forums, access to a member's judging record, and support for ordering badges and casting election ballots. While all these capabilities have the same look and feel, they are separate applications, loosely tied together on the same hosting platform.

The BJCP also has a communications presence outside of its own web site, including JudgeNet, a Facebook group, a Twitter feed, a Google+ Group, a bulk emailing service, and a series of invitation-only discussion board groups for board members. Program members have also created various mobile apps on multiple platforms.

Because of

• rapid growth of communications on these channels,
• a need for a fresher branding look and feel,
• a need to create an updated extensible information architecture, and
• a desire to drive traffic back to the BJCP web site for social interaction,

it was clear the site had to be re-written from scratch and re-hosted. Until recently, the BJCP hosted its web site for free thanks to homebrew supply store Beer, Beer and More Beer (http://www.morebeer.com).

"We were constrained by the limits of the service offered through our old hosting provider," said BJCP IT Director Gordon Strong. "It was hard for us to add applications, make significant database changes, perform administrative functions, or add new services. The provider, MoreBeer, was letting us use their host for free, and they had a high bandwidth pipe, so the arrangement was attractive. However, demand for new services kept bumping up against what was possible using the technology on that service. The last straw was a wiki app we intended to use for the vocabulary application. I had it up and running and the provider made some unannounced change to the system and broke it horribly. Then they wouldn't give us the rights to fix it, and wouldn't do the work for us. So we were kind of stuck."

Planning

In late 2010, IT Director Gordon Strong began analyzing what it would take to not only re-host but undertake a broader, more complex effort. With a need for more scalability, more extensibility, and higher traffic to the site using more resources, he began a search for IT support resources as well.

Strong began an effort to identify a new hosting provider that could, over time, expand to include additional capabilities, that was affordable for a 501c3 non-profit, but also that had a reputation of good service and high uptime.

At the same time, he posted on the BJCP web site soliciting for help in the effort. Strong's background is that of an IT Architect and Product Manager, not a web professional. He knew he would have to begin putting together a team that would bring their unique talents and experience to the effort.

"I could keep the current system running, but I couldn't put together a next generation system. But I did need to find people with skills in key roles," he noted.

Building the Team

The Brewer's Association recently completed a makeover of its web presence, including new web sites for the Brewer's Association, Craft Brewer's Association, and American Homebrewing Association, as well as the large-scale events they support. One of the key contributors to this effort was Lindsay Stepp (Hustead), who served as the Information Architect and Project Manager of the BA's well-received efforts for over four years.

"Lindsay did a tremendous job as our web architect when we made the dramatic change from having all of the Brewers Association's web presence under beertown.org to completely new and separate websites for the AHA, Brewers Association Professional Division and the CraftBeer.com site, the latter being entirely new content that had never been on beertown.org", Gary Glass, Director of the AHA noted when asked for a comment on working with Lindsay. "Lindsay is a very talented web architect. If she is helping on your website redesign project, I would say you are in very good hands."

"Lindsay contacted me later in 2010 about helping with the web site to get experience points," Strong noted. "That's when I started having the detailed discussions around what we wanted to do. I needed someone to 'take a fresh look at what we have and what we want to do, and to envision the next generation site. Then come up with an implementation plan to do it in whatever phases make the most sense.' Things went slowly until around GABF time in 2011 when we met in person and discussed specific plans to help. We gave her access, and she added analytics to our site and started cataloguing things. Lindsay made the recommendation to use BlueHost in late 2011. We first signed up with them in the fall of 2012. The new exam program took priority over everything else, and I didn't have any additional helpers to assist with the IT work. Lindsay was working in volunteer mode, and we had pretty much scoped the project."

Husted's technical background includes strengths in Information Architecture, Web Design, Branding, and Content Management Systems. Information Architecture, according to Wikipedia, is the "structural design of shared information environments; the art and science of organizing and labeling websites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability and findability; and an emerging community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape. Typically, it involves a model or concept of information which is used and applied to activities that require explicit details of complex information systems. These activities include library systems and database development."

Because the existing site is the result of an evolving hodgepodge of systems, content, and data, it was clear this role would be a fundamental one. Lindsay has since recommended basing the new site around WordPress to do most of the work, while leveraging our existing PHPBB forum, adding our planned mediawiki app, and rehosting our existing custom applications.

"Another issue was the underlying platform, migration, cleaning up apps, and administration," Strong stated. "We have such a large investment in PHP and MySQL, and we've had volunteers in the past who have sought to re-platform away from these core technologies. With 17 years of content, code, and data out there, jettisoning everything we had would mean a new site would take even longer and likely never happen."

BJCP member James Golovich answered another post for help in late 2012, this time for someone to help with working on our applications. "James worked on the mediawiki project first for the better part of a year. Getting the content from our earlier system has been the hold up here."

Later in 2013, Golovich became more involved in the other applications. He started by helping work issues supporting the PHPBB forum software. He was asked to look at the whole application portfolio and get it ready to migrate to the new server. He had to update some of the applications to deal with later versions of PHP, and to generally try to standardize the work that had been done by multiple people.

"As he started to contribute more, I asked him if he'd take a more permanent position and not just work on projects," Strong stated. "He's since made several key contributions on our software applications, fixing bugs, adding new functionality, and generally getting us ready to migrate. I've been working with him to identify functions performed in our PC-based systems that can be migrated to web functionality, which is a key step to moving to a full web-based database solution."

Golovich was appointed to the position of BJCP Assistant Director of IT. His efforts have focused on migration of the existing applications to the new hosting provider, cleaning up and standardizing their implementation, tying them to the wiki and Wordpress, and doing the infrastructure work.

"I'm really happy to have James on board not just for this effort, but also for other IT projects that are being planned," Strong stated.

Lastly Strong looked for someone with an in-depth working knowledge of the BJCP, who had been part of the program, served on the staff, and had a background in communications to assist with the effort.

"I met Jeff Sanders in person at the NHC 2013 in Philadelphia, and we had emailed back and forth before. He approached me about the web site, and a number of different efforts, and explained how he still felt that Information Architecture and content strategy would be a big part of a revamped web site," Strong said. Sanders has a background and experience in Mass Communications, as well as digital marketing, content strategy, and collaboration systems.

Designing the Site

One of the core challenges with the existing web site is the way content is shared and consumed. News updates are posted on the front page using static HTML, but some sections of the site use PHP to display dynamic content (such as showing available seats left for CEP events). The IT Directorate maintains content updates to the site, although each of the directorates creates content that's revised, HTML-encoded, and then published to each of the different sections of the site by the IT Directorate.

"It could become a bottleneck to have a limited group with publishing capabilities," Strong noted, "but thankfully it hasn't to date. One of the primary goals of the new site is to enable Directors from each of the directorates to update their own content and publish their own news and updates using simple, easy to use tools. We'd rather they focus on doing what they do best, instead of having to code HTML or use other tools and jump through technical hurdles."

Another challenge is content creation and authority.

"We have one of the most passionate memberships who regularly have a lot to say when it comes to judging, competitions, exams, styles, and so forth. We definitely want to harness that crowdsourced content, energy, and bottoms-up approach to collaboration. At the same time, we need to ensure that it's clear what is the official BJCP position and policies, versus what may be someone's opinion or perception," Strong continued. "We're working on the ability to bring in content from social media channels, as well as commenting and feedback mechanisms directly in the site, as opposed to forums and the rather antiquated discussion board model."

Brand identity is another subject that's a regular topic of conversation when discussing the BJCP's web site.

"When people discuss the BJCP web site, I like to joke that it was ahead of its time and designed to work on all mobile devices," Sanders joked. "Lindsay's doing a great job of creating a look and feel that really underscores what the BJCP is, its rich history as a certification organization, but also bringing an updated, not overly modern look and feel. You don't see many web sites nowadays that use two shades of brown, navy blue, and orange as their primary color palette." Sanders also noted that with the BJCP merchandise selling at a brisk pace, one of Stepp's charges as well is to keep the updated logo as a core part of the branding re-design.

One of the latest buzzwords in Internet technologies is "the Internet of Things," which loosely describes devices and other integration between applications connected to the Internet.

"The Internet of Things, at its core, is about making the web work for you or do things for you. If you look at sites like https://ifttt.com/ and others, it's about how different services, applications, and devices can be put to better use to make the web less about pure content consumption, and more about action. One of the key user strategy principles of the new site in the future will be to make it more actionable -- what is it you want to do? Instead of an email address of whom to contact to start requesting an exam site, why not make that a core part of the site itself, and have the site do the work on planning and suggesting where exams should and will take place?" Sanders noted. "The Exam Directorate is one of the hardest working groups within the BJCP, but they're constantly under fire about the time it takes to grade exams. Why not the ability to check on the status of your exam and an ETA, but also, make it so that the graders don't have to spend the time updating their status," Sanders mentioned. "Obviously, that's not going to happen with the first release, but it's the kind of capabilities for the site that are on the table."

"There are a lot of great ideas we're working on, and the first release will really set the foundation for what's to come and how the BJCP will really embrace using Internet-technology to improve its processes and communications," Strong said.

Going Live

With such a sizable project, and regular feedback from BJCP members on how the site needs to be updated urgently, Strong recognized that a "crawl, walk, run" and more iterative approach to the deployment would have to be used.

The first release is planned to include

• the new hosting provider, and new underlying infrastructure
• the new Wiki platform, and a large amount of migrated content
• a new information architecture and means of storing and accessing content
• a new content tagging taxonomy and way of searching for content by keywords
• a new look and feel and overall site design

"The goal for the first release is before the NHC 2014, but I'm not going to force it to hit an artificial deadline. There is a lot to move," Strong stated.

A second release is planned for later this year into 2015, and is planned to include updates and additional capabilities.

"We're not just 'righting the ship,'" Strong said, "but instead transitioning to a faster fleet that's all headed in the same direction. It's not that we ever went off course either, but more that the existing site has grown to be so large, making any changes, especially from an all volunteer organization, to seem like such a massive undertaking, while keeping the ship moving. I'm really confident of our path forward, that we're putting in place the mechanisms to move out faster, while also leveraging all the great work our volunteers have put forth through the years. The big idea is that we need to change underlying technologies to be able to support future growth. We've taken our current model about as far as it can go. I just hope that people calling for change understand what it means to get change delivered. Things will be different. But I'm happy we're heading this way. It will give us so many more options for the future, and allow us to respond quicker to new needs."

[Editor's Note: In addition to his role within the Communications Directorate, Assistant Communication Director Jeff Sanders serves on the Web Site committee, a joint effort with the Information Technology Directorate.]

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