12/17/2011

Web Liaison 2011 Year End Report to the Board.

 

            2011 has been a very busy year for my position.  With the advent of a new web provider and expanded responsibilities, I have had very little time to take a breath.  The web site is really taking shape as a very useful tool.

 

            With the help of a web service provider search committee,  we were able to find a competent firm to replace our former web master and the service that she provided.  We had submitted our proposed needs to six different firms or individuals.  The transition is still taking place but most of the content from the old web site has been recreated on the new site.  Leo continues to solidify our web domains with a more stable firm also.

 

            The creation process was slowed because of the loss of some of the data from the former site.  The galleries are going to be updated in the winter months because of the large amount of time that is needed to upload and post all of the pictures that were on the former site.

 

            I have attempted to make our web site a more time sensitive site.  The events page still mentions the thirty day advance notice of events but the reality is that anyone who contacts me gets same day or next day posting of any information.  You should expect to see montly based themes and messages.  I have instituted a new placing of notification of LODD in our ranks.  I have received suggestions from  various members of the Board and our rank and file have also made suggestions.

 

            I was also able to create online fill-in forms so that our membership doesn't have to download and send things by snail mail.  The online HAK form has been used well.  The online nomination form is still being worked to get the kinks out.  The really nice part about these is that they are emailed to the appropriate Board member without any further effort on the part of the person filling them out.  Just click and they are sent.

 

            There was some concern about the e-commerce section of our site and the way that the information was processed.  With the diligent work of Leo, the initial angst due to the change in submissions from the previous web service and PayPal have been mollified.

 

            We also have had a new look to our forums.  Our new web provider has update the program that we use and it has a slightly different look.  It certainly has a hugely different control panel.  George Colby continues to maintain the forums and is doing a great job. 

 

            While we have been able to install preventative measures so that application "bots" are not able to get in, real people have replaced them.  George gets fifteen to twenty bogus applications a week.  There isn't really anything that we can do to prevent a real person from making a bogus application.  Believe me, George has asked if we could.  The good thing about our updated software is that you can ban a person from the forums with a few clicks of the mouse.  The bogus applications don't even try to create a fake chapter name and they are extremely easy to identify and ZAP. 

 

            With the advent of the chapters using our redknightsmc.com mail, our communications with them have been made so much simpler.  There may still be some chapters that do not have the correct password.  I have had about six chapters that have contacted me through their Regional Director because they could not access their webmail.  It was mostly my misspelling of their password when I created it.  A couple were just not figuring out how to access it on the web.

 

            I look forward to another great year of helping the Club with the web site, forums and the emails.

 

Steve Chappell

Web Liaison

 

Bylaws Chair 2011 Year End Report to the Board

 

 

 

There is not very much to report to the Board.  There hasn't been very much that I have had to do as Bylaws Chair.  There have been a few questions that have been posed by the Board and a couple that have been posed by Chapters.

 

Keeping track of the posting of proposed bylaws changes and checking to make sure that all the appropriate related bylaws are mentioned was helped by the Board.  You did a good job of finding all of the related bylaws.  I have to say that Bill has done a great job in checking the bylaws before he sent me the updates.

 

I look forward to working with the Board again next year.

 

Steve Chappell

Bylaws Chair

 

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10/20/2011

Office of the

Web Liaison

Steven Chappell

Web Liaison Fall 2011 report to the Board for the November meeting

 

This has been a very busy time for me.  With the new web site search and then completion, I have been brought into a new realm of the information age.  I told the new web provider that I am not a programmer and have had no experience in web page creation.  They told me that they have a software program that allows me to create the pages that we want and it is just a matter of learning it.  I dug in and I know a heck of a lot more about it now than I did just a few months ago.

As far as the overall experience to date with our new web provider, I would give them a 90 to 95%.  When we decided to go with Allthatinternet.net, the sales rep have made many promises and most of them have been kept.

They were supposed to create ALL of the web pages that we had before and to my and Leo's chagrin, they failed to create a couple of very important pages and we have had to adjust to the failure.  The most glaring failure is the creation of the online order page from the old web site.  Granted, we have a huge and new e-commerce section for our regalia and it gives us so much more information than the old pages ever could but it doesn't perform the way that the old one did.  Leo and I spent a lot of time on the phone to PayPal and Allthatinternet.net trying to get this resolved.  The information is generated but not as singularly by PayPal as it was with our previous online ordering.  Leo is working around that situation.

Another page that was not created was the online MAL application page.  Once this was brought to my attention, I quickly learned how to make this type of form and created the proper page for the Vice President to use.  While learning that process, I decided that an online application for the Help-A-Knight program would be advantages  and created that one also.   When I fixed the MAL page, Chris asked if we could have a page that would allow him to direct new MALs to pay online.  Once again, he stated that we had it before and we don't have it now.  I had to do some creative investigation and I was able to figure out how to get that done too.

If you look at the Galleries main page, you will see that I have added a moving picture that states "under construction."  This is another situation where the firm did not create the complete galleries from the old site.  I was thinking ahead about this possibility and decided to download All of the pictures from the old galleries to my hard drive.  I am glad that I did.  When I looked at the galleries that the firm had made, I found that they had copied all of the text from under or over the pictures and none of the pictures.  I spent three hours downloading all of the pictures and I am going to be working into the winter to make sure that they are all added to the new galleries.  I will guess that it will be an addition four to five hours of work to get all of the pictures posted.

With the new look of the web pages, I have tried to add the "family" touch to the site.  I have used my own programs to create animated items to give the pages an active, rather than passive, look.

I have created a few new email address also.  If you look on the Contact the Officers page, you will see that we now have the committee email addresses also.

Since we no longer have Squirrel Mail, our problems with that service should no longer be a problem.  If any of you would like to change your email password, you must contact me and I can change it on the web site.  You all have one gigabyte of memory on your accounts and this should be plenty of space for all of the large files that you may receive.  Once again, do not leave any messages on the server because once you fill up your 1GB of space, there is no more.

I strongly suggest that all of you obtain some sort of email spam blocker and use it on your accounts.  There has been a rash of new spammers out there and I have had complaint from a couple of the Board that they are really getting hammered.

The question has been raised about creating email accounts for all of the chapters using our redknightsmc.com suffix.  It is possible but  it will be a lot of work and I am the only one that will be able to create the addresses because they have to be created in the same control panel that Leo and I use for the entire web site.  When creating those addresses, I will be limited to the size that is available for each.  We are talking about three hundred and fifty to four hundred new email addresses and they cannot have and the do not have to have the same capacity as the Board's email addresses.

Just a reminder that all of you have a web page dedicated to your position on the Board.  If there is anything that you want to say or if you wish to have your reports to the Board published on your page, please send any information to me at liaison@redknightsmc.com and I will get it on your page right away.

In addition to the new web pages, we have a new look to the forums also.  George Colby is still actively screening applying members and with the new measures, we have eliminated the BOT appliers but the real people filling in bogus applications has increased.  It is mirroring the increase in the spam that we all are getting.  So far, the new look to the old forum site is working well.

Respectfully submitted,

Steve Chappell

Web Liaison