The Yale Club of Dallas website is a central online headquarters for all of the Club’s activities.  The site provides members with an online alumni directory, career network posting board, events calendar, discussion form, and many other features.  The current site architecture relies on a service provider called Alumni Magnet, the premiere provider of alumni club software nationwide and engine behind sites for the Harvard Business School, Wharton, and companies’ alumni websites such as Merrill Lynch.

History of the YCD Website

The Yale Club of Dallas website first appeared online in the late 1990s as more members first took to the new World Wide Web.  The site evolved from a static presentation with periodic updates to a more dynamic software engine relying on content management systems.  A freely available program, Movable Type, provided the Club’s Webmaster with an early solution for more dynamic site content.

In 2007, the Club presented an intermediate transitional website relying upon a popular free content management solution, WordPress.  Moving to WordPress allowed the Club to transition from static sites depending on one webmaster’s updates to collaborative content contributions via multiple Club officers.  This in turn promoted more frequent updates.  Integration with PayPal offered the Club’s first online dues payment system, allowing greater membership retention and expansion.  WordPress “Themes” introduced the ability to change the site’s appearance dramatically at the mere click of a mouse, thanks to WordPress implementation of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).  Less observable to end-users was the important behind-the-scenes transition from private web hosting to hosting on Yale’s servers and the official Club purchase of the domain name.  As the Club’s officer roster turned over, future Boards could be assured of their ability to maintain the website as a group.

In 2008, the Club launched the first version of its current website architecture.  The new framework incorporates Alumni Magnet’s user-friendly modules.  An alumni directory, online discussion forum, and career network bulletin board all made their debut in this release.  Online dues payment improved thanks to the implementation of CyberSource’s Merchant Account and Gateway services, both of which were considered professional-grade online payment systems.  The new site also improved the Club’s ability to solicit payment in advance for events, leading to the first completely digital event pre-registration.  Club-wide emails were replaced with the Alumni Magnet Newsletter engine that allowed instantaneous updates with minimal effort.  The Club also launched an online store for selling items associated with the Yale Club of Dallas brand.   Overdue updates allowed for extensive hyperlinks collections and corporate sponsorship opportunities as well.

The current site is the result of month’s worth of research, multiple comparative quotes from competing vendors, and an extensive survey of all existing AYA websites as well as sites representing other Universities’ Clubs.  The Club has implemented the very best modern technology in all aspects of its site, from online payment processing, to back-end content management, to royalty-free image purchasing.

Please direct inquiries regarding the Yale Club of Dallas website to webmaster@yaleclubdallas.org.