How to manage people in Burstows' care
The families' pages are already across on the new website, and this page is about where your own people will sit to write in them. It is a private website of its own called Sanity, where a member of the media team will sign in, see the list of people, open one, change a date or add a service in a form, and press Publish. A few minutes later burstows.com.au will have updated itself. I want to be plain that it is not switched on for Burstows yet, Don. Switching it on is part of going live.
What it looks like
Because administration is not switched on yet, I can't show you a photograph of it. What I can show you is four pictures we have drawn of the screens your team will see, filled in with real Burstows records, so the names, dates and boxes below are the true ones.
The list
This is the first thing a member of the team will see when they sign in. Every person is there with their photo, their name and their years, kept in order of date of death with the newest at the top, and there is a search box for finding someone by name.
The six people shown are a sample from this year and not the six most recent. George Brady has no photo on record, so administration shows a plain blank square for him. The garden pictures are something the website adds for visitors.
One person's record
Here Nan Eileen Pike's record is open. You can read the boxes down the page: Title, Name (first, middle, last and also known as), Date of birth, Date of death, Profile picture, Page banner, Obituary, Services, Press notices and Stationery. Her funeral service at the T.S Burstow Chapel and her burial at the Toowoomba Garden of Remembrance are the two rows under Services.
There is nothing in it that moves a column or changes a colour, and that is what makes it safe to hand to the team without turning them into designers.
Messages on a page
Further down the same record are three controls for the messages families leave: Hide condolences, Condolences closed and Condolences heading. Beside them is the number of messages that came across with her page on 01/10/2026, which for Nan Pike is 8.
The list of messages underneath is drawn as plain grey bars on purpose, because what people wrote to her family is not mine to put in a presentation. That list is also something we build as part of switching administration on, and it does not exist yet.
Adding a person
This is the same form with nothing in it, which is what the team will see after pressing the plus button at the top of the list. They fill in the name and the dates, drop in a photo, add the services, and press Publish.
A few minutes after that, the person's page will be on burstows.com.au and they will appear in the Tribute Centre and in Currently in Our Care.
Who can do what
This is how administration will be set up when it is switched on. Michelle and the media team give us the names while we are getting ready.
| Who | What they can do in administration |
|---|---|
| The media team | Add and change people, services, notices and service sheets, hide or close the messages on a page, publish news and update the 85 pieces of everyday content described below. They cannot change how a page is laid out. |
| Rory | Everything above, and he will hold the keys, which means he decides who has an account and who does not. |
| Yoonet | We look after the building itself and administration. We never need to touch a record for the team to publish one. |
What else is managed there
The everyday content of the website, 85 pieces in all (13 services, 16 facilities, 26 news posts, 15 arranging guides, 5 support articles, 9 urns and 1 position), moves into administration before launch, so the media team changes those from one place. Job applications from the employment page will arrive there too, which is the third entry you can see on the left of the pictures, and there are 0 in it today because that form is not connected until launch.
Where it sits
The records sit in an account set up in Burstows' name as part of going live, kept separately from any funeral software, and they can be copied out in full at any time. We know that, because on 01/10/2026 we copied 7,980 records out of the old system. If Burstows ever changes funeral software, the tributes stay where they are.
Sanity is the company that makes administration. We look after its subscription.
What is there today, and what is not
I would rather you heard this from me than found it out later, so here it is side by side.
Built today
- The records themselves: 7,980 people, 1,210 of them carried across in full, and 1,992 messages of condolence.
- Every box you can see in the pictures above, already holding the real details for each person.
- The switches for hiding or closing the messages on a page, as part of the record for each of the 1,210 people carried across in full.
Finished before launch day
- Administration is switched on and the media team can sign in. Today nobody at Burstows can.
- The website refreshes itself within a few minutes whenever something changes in administration. Today nothing does.
- The media team is trained in administration on launch day.
Those three are the ones that belong to administration, and they happen between your yes and launch day. The rest of the launch work is set out in full on the last page, which is the yes itself.