Based on a co-worker’s experience and recommendation I signed the PTA up for Google Apps Standard Edition. I also reserved the domain name (.org and .com) for them. I learned that the Gmail part of Google Apps is top-notch. I had some hiccups with the Start page and Google Docs.

I also selected Drupal for their public and member’s only website. I also seriously considered Wordpress, because I saw several posts about using Wordpress as a CMS. After I got an idea of how many committees and people were involved, I decided that Drupal gives me the most flexibility in trying to meet each committees’ needs.

The current status is that I have about 25 Google Apps accounts created, but only a handful of people using it regularly. I setup email lists (aliases) that forward mail to individual accounts. I have configured the individual accounts to also send as the email alias. This configuration solved my dilemma of the PTA using co-chairs, meaning no one person was the “leader”. I didn’t want to configure a main committee account and have it forward to a secondary account. This would also not have solved the send as requirement. So I think the email alias is the right way to go.

Part II will discuss configuring Drupal and learning about which modules and themes I decided to implement.