Finishing Touches and Site Settings during the Off Season
Once your event has concluded, there are a number of steps you should take to shutter your site:
1. Imagine someone happens to visit the site after the event. What will they see? It's a good idea to change your homepage message from an Invitation to a sincere Thank you and recap.
2. Turn off external purchasing links.
3. Purge credit cards that are vaulted.
4. If you are certain you will not be processing credit cards until next year, you may want to consider suspending your account.
5. To prevent search engines from crawling your old items and their donors, set all items to hidden and turn off the index setting.
6. If you will have new Auction Chair(s) for your next event, add them to the Account Manager list so they will be able to create the new event site and get started. Then be sure to send them a bookmark to the Account page as well as that list you kept: "Things I wish someone had told me"!
1. Place a Thank You Note on the Homepage
Go to Admin > Site Settings > Customize Your Site > Homepage
2. Turn off External Purchasing Links:
Go to: Admin > Site Settings
1. > Ticket Sale > Online > Turn off Online Ticket Sales
2. > Online Auction > General > Close to Public Viewing
3. > Online Donation Forms > Donate Cash and Online Store > Turn off Donate Now Page (if not monitored)
3. Purging Vaulted Guest Credit Card Data
Go to: Admin > Site Settings > Payment / Credit Card > Credit Card General (requires User account with Chair role)
1. Uncheck "Store customer card data in secure gateway"
2. Save the change.
3. Permanently Purge stored credit cards.
4. Contact your Gateway and Merchant Account provider to discuss suspending your accounts.
If you are certain you will not use a credit card account again until next year, it may make sense for you to suspend/inactivate/turn off your gateway and merchant account. Before deciding, be aware:
A. That BOTH the gateway and the merchant account must be suspended to avoid monthly fees.
B. Of any fees associated with suspending and reactivating BOTH accounts.
Also - be sure to document and share all of the information that will be needed to reactivate the accounts to avoid future headaches for yourself or your successor.
5. Discourage Search engines from crawling old items and donors
Go to: Admin > Site Settings > Customize Your Site > General
1. Uncheck Allow Search Engines to index your site
2. Remove search tags.
Don't forget to save your changes.
Block Search engines from crawling old items and donors by hiding items:
Go to Catalog
1. Select All > Bulk Actions > Edit Items
2. Edit to Visible to Public = No
3. Save Changes
6. To add next year's Chair as an Account Manager:
Go to: https://my.schoolauction.net/ or https://my.tofinoauctions.com/ and login
1. Create New Account Manager for next year's chair(s) to provide access to the Account.
2. Bookmark the account site url and forward to the New Chair(s) along with their Account Manager login and a link to instructions for getting started with a new event site.