THIS SUMMER: THE GUILD’S NEW WEBSITE
We are getting closer to the projected launch date for the Guild’s new website! The gallery below reproduces the presentation given at our March 2026 meeting, explaining why we are revamping the site and giving you a glimpse behind the curtains.
This project began in Fall 2024 with Board approval of a new overall look for Guild graphics: lighter, more “San Diego” colors and an updated logo. Don’t worry — our sheep is still knitting under the palm trees!
Hint: Some of the yarn dyers holding pop-up sales at our July 7 Holidays in July Party may have custom-dyed yarns in our new palette!
With these graphic standards, Denise Caballero and a small working group of site stakeholders took on the arduous task of converting our original website into a 21st-century destination, featuring:
- A public-access site that promotes the benefits of Guild membership to prospective members
- Easier, more intuitive site navigation
- Member-only content (for increased privacy and better control of Guild intellectual assets)
- Expanded and streamlined online purchase of memberships, workshops, event tickets, etc.
- Automated processes that will save our volunteers untold hours of manual data handling (while improving the accuracy of results)
Denise has done the lion’s share of this work, leading the working group through at-least-monthly Zoom meetings to turn concepts into reality. Beta testing began in mid-April 2026 with additional Guild volunteers (who had never seen the new site) working through an extensive list of tasks. Results were documented, need for changes prioritized, and Denise is working through all the requests — from larger issues to “add a comma here” notes.
The schedule for change-over is still fluid, but the current milestones are:
- In late June the current website will be “frozen” (no more updates) so that the new site can match its content.
- About a week later, the current site will be taken offline. This 1-week downtime coincides with a lull in Guild activity, as the July meeting has no workshops and the August meeting/workshop information will have been available for about three months. Sign up now for August workshops — don’t leave it til the last minute!
The new website will come online about a week later:
- Your bookmark for SanDiegoKnitters.com will still work; you’ll just be taken to an all-new destination.
- We’ll distribute a “cheat sheet” to help you create your member account, including a password to log in to the new member-only section. The process is very similar to other sites where most of us have accounts, such as Ravelry, Amazon, and others.
- Help will be available before and after the August meeting and through recorded Zoom sessions, walking you through all the features of the new website.
The entire working group and additional beta-testers are excited to release this new and improved site to the general Guild membership. There will be a learning curve, as with any change, but we sincerely believe that the new site is a huge step forward for our Guild. Faster purchase processing, easier navigation, advanced privacy, information more readily available, reduced workload for volunteers — all under a fresh, blue sky.
We hope you love it as much as we do!
We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Linda Erlich, Mar Gee Far, Sheila Kirschenbaum, subsequent webmasters, and other Guild volunteers who created and maintain our current website. Without this solid foundation, the new website would have required even more effort to design and populate. Thank you!
— The website working group and beta testers
Click on the first slide to advance through a full-screen slideshow.
