Michigan Association of School Boards

The Michigan Association of School Boards’ website is critical to the more-than 600 local and intermediate school districts whose superintendents, administrative assistants and Board of Education members rely on it for up-to-the-minute news about advocacy and legislation; professional resources and events; and networking.

As the association embarked on development of a new website, two goals were key: make it easier for association staff to get information to members more quickly and make the website simpler for members to visit and navigate.

Sarah Sant, MASB communications specialist, said the association’s new website -- www.masb.org -- is getting rave reviews.

“The ease of the content management system in updating content has made my life a whole lot easier,” she said, “and the initial feedback from members is that they love the overall look and find it very easy to use.”

The MASB website was developed by i2Integration using DotNetNuke, a free, open-source content management system that gives the association full administrative control of the website, including pages, content and security.

A few of Sant’s favorite enhancements: integration with MASB’s membership database; the ability of members to utilize their existing user accounts to access secured member content and the ability of MASB to track which areas of the website are the most and least visited.

“This will help us better target information to areas we know members are visiting, and enable us to improve areas that aren’t visited as much,” she said.

i2Integration also developed the graphic design -- including Flash animation for the home page – and developed a custom security application within DotNetNuke that allows DotNetNuke to integrate directly with the iMIS not-for-profit business software system.

A custom application also was developed for MASB's Education Excellence award program, allowing visitors to search for winners of MASB's annual Education Excellence Award program since 1994. This custom application also integrates directly with MASB’s iMIS system.

"We're absolutely thrilled with the MASB website,” said John Forsberg, i2Integration CEO. “Not only does the website look great, but there is real power under the hood via DotNetNuke. DotNetNuke allowed us to cut the overall cost of the project significantly, and being that it's open-source, we were able to go in and make custom changes such as the integration with iMIS. And, through the DotNetNuke module retail websites such as Snowcovered -- www.snowcovered.com --, MASB now has endless possibilities when they want to add new functionality for their members."