Officers Transition Guide

Are you New to your Parent Groups Website?

transition-guide-largeMost Parent Groups have a new set of officers every few years. If you are new to your Parent Groups Board and are not yet familiar with your existing Digital PTO website, this guide should serve as a “PTA / PTO Websites for Dummies” to help educate you quickly on running your site. This will not cover everything of course, but we will try to highlight the key things that are important to know as quickly as possible about your site.

These steps are written for Premium Plan Members, but can be applied to all other plans as well.

Is it time to Upgrade your Site?

If you are considering upgrading your Digital PTO website, now is the best time to do that as you will be able to enjoy the benefits of an upgraded system all school year long. If you would like to review our current plans and pricing (starting at only $5 / month!) please visit our Plan Comparison Guide.

Step 1: Take a Look at the Quick Start Guide

When your Parent Group first opened their new website, the Quick Start Guide was where they started the creation process. Many of the steps you can skip through as they’ve already been completed, but this guide will show you how to log into your site, how to update pages, how to add news to your site, how to change the contact info, teach you about the sidebar widgets and more. It’s a great resource for those new to Digital PTO websites.

Access the Quick Start Guide at http://quickstart.digitalpto.com/

Step 2: Critical Training Topics

Our Help Center is full of guides and training, but we have picked just a few guides that we feel are the most important ones for new members of the PTA or PTO Board. Below is our list of topics you need to know how to do in order to run your website.

Step 3: Review your Forms

If you have Family Registration Forms, Volunteer Forms, etc that were used last year, you will probably want to get them ready for another school year. There are three options for getting your forms ready. These tutorials are based on the built in forms, but will apply to the Wufoo Forms as well.

You can leave them as is and use Date Ranges for exporting

  1. If you want to keep using the same registration forms without cleaning out the data, you’ll want to make sure you use the date range selector when exporting your data so that you only have the current years information.
  2. Learn More about Exporting Data Here

You can DELETE the previous data and start fresh

  1. If you no longer need last years data, you can delete it all and start fresh with your form. We would suggest exporting a copy of your data before you delete it just in case.
  2. Learn More about Deleting Data Here

You can DUPLICATE your form and start fresh

  • The final option is to duplicate your form. By duplicating your form, you can keep the prior years data and still have a fresh form to work with for the new year. There are a few steps involved in duplicating your form.
  • First you’ll want to Duplicate Your Form. This will make an exact copy of your form.
  • How to Duplicate a Form
  • Second you will need to update you website with the new form. It’s important to remember that if you don’t add the new form to your website and replace your old form, the old form will continue to be used.
  • How to Add a Form to your Website.
  • Third you will need to update your payment settings. If you are collecting payments on your form, you will need to add payment settings to the new form as well. Payment Settings do not copy. (except on Wufoo Forms)
  • Adding Paypal Settings to your Form.

 Step 4: Update your Calendar

More than likely you already know quite a few of the key dates for your school and Parent Group already, so go ahead and get them on your calendar so your families can access that information. If a new member of your community this fall visits your groups website, you want it to be ready and complete so that member will continue to come back. If everything is outdated, they might not come back as readily.

Every one of our member sites has access to a premium calendar now (including free sites!), so be sure to check to make sure your calendar is active and working!

 Step 5: Update your Board Info, etc.

If you have a list of your board members online, be sure to review that list and update it if you have any new members. Typically positions only last for two years, so every year you should review the list and make sure that your board members are up to date. This applies to any other data you may also have on your website that is either out-dated or not current.

Step 6: Update your Website Users

If you have had any turnover with your board or website managers, be sure to update your users to keep things current. Delete old users that should no longer have access and add new users to the team.

Step 7: Make in your own site

Every Board has a different vision for the PTA and PTO. Your website should be the same. Don’t feel like you have to stick with the same designs and layouts as the previous Board. Changing your Theme and the Layout of your site is easy, so have fun with it! Add new pages and features! Remove outdated information and ideas. This is YOUR site, make it great.

Step 8: Watch the Ultimate Parent Group Website Video Training

In addition to the Quick Start Guide, we have created a video training series on how to create the Ultimate Parent Group Website. The series is broken into chapters so you can quickly review the topics that you might need help with. It covers everything from setting up your site to working with calendars, setting up forms and more. it really is the ultimate training guide to PTA and PTO websites.

Access the Ultimate Training Video Series at http://digitalpto.com/ultimate/