Hello everyone,

All things going well, the Spanish Network should have a new website by the end of June – hooray! And about time, I know…

I had hoped it would be earlier this year, but many things got in the way, not least the complexity of our membership management plugin. There is still significant work and testing to do on the membership side of the website, so the committee has decided to take a phased approach to the new website’s go-live.

Phase 1 (June) will implement the core website without the membership features. The Home, About Us, News and Contact Us pages along with a temporary Join Us page for new members will all be part of Phase 1. This will give us a web presence that has been missing since the old website was retired last year.

Phase 2 will implement the membership features, including:

• A new Join Us and registration workflow
• Member login and logout functions
• My Account (member portal) feature where members can update their profile details, view and renew their subscription, and view their ‘order’ status (new members and renewals)
• A members’ directory available to SpanNet members only (members can choose whether to be included in the directory).

Phase 2 will also include populating the membership database with the basic details of current members and implementing various other pages and features to support payments, forgotten passwords, etc. Phase 2 is quite complicated, but we expect to be able to deliver all these features before the end of 2025 so the new website and membership system is ready for our renewals process in 2026.

To avoid adding further complexity at this point, the new website will be in English only, at least initially. We are planning to deliver a Spanish version of the main pages in 2026, after the Q2 renewals process (Phase 3).

Any questions, let me know!

Best for now,
Keith