A friend lamented about his high school alumni website

Good luck trying to get the Alumni Association to pony up for any software. They can't even get their mailing list in a database. Their website looks like hell, too. It never changes and there's little or no functionality or content that would bring anybody back.

That's probably typical of a lot of alumni organizations! For most high schools, it's just a link from the main page of the high school website to a couple of pages about alumni. If you are really lucky, there will be a few issues of an alumni newsletter online. And some information about the next reunion dinner.

Certainly a lot more is possible. Of course, as Mr. Wiki, I'd recommend it be a wiki so all the alumni could help contribute to the site.

Maybe the real way to make an alumni type website popular would be to include documentation about what is happening with the school sports teams. Sports generates a lot more interest than old geezers planning reunion dinners. Especially if one could get the kids from the teams involved in helping to update the site..... Maybe someone in the English department would grace the site with some regular writing or poetry or something.... "What are our teachers doing now?" features... Old science teachers talking about their favorite science lab accidents....

Yes, if there could be a salacious angle, that would help too.....