Insight into National Website
So I had been changing my personal info on the members only site becasue that its about all we can do right now when I got this email from Becky Walsh (our national webmaster) saying that she is glad i updated my info bla bla bla standard stuff, it also said to reply if I had any suggestions. So I decided i woud, because i think we all had a lot of really good ideas on this forum. So i replyed and gave her a few of my ideas and linked her to this forum for the rest. Not even 2 hours later she replyed back! (Personally I think that in itself is amazing considering it was a sunday!!!) Anyway...This is some of what she had to say:
I have to begin with the message board being removed. On July 1st the "members only" portion was moved to a new host. This new host was purchased because in the old system, when you made changes to your address, Nationals was not notified - nobody was - it was just put into a basic Access database. So, we went with a new host that could link the National Database & the website together. We thought that this was a great way for members to be able to update their addresses & find out information on others at their own fingertips. Now if you are organizing an alum group, you can type in your city & find all the members within that city OR you can put in "Alpha" chapter and get all the names & addresses of Alpha chapter members. This was done so members could do it themselves instead of having to wait on a mailing list via snail mail.
After 2 months of working with the host (telling them that the bulletin board was not working as before), they told us in September that they could not support the "bulletin board". So, at that time we opted to just have it removed. We are working on our options to bring it back, but we don't have a "secured" area to host it other than "members only", so we are not sure where to go to from here, but please know that we are working on getting it back up in the future. So there lies the problem, members only doesn't allow anything other than the "find a member" option at this time, so everything has to go on the main portion of the website.
There is more, but I thought this was the most relevant. I am so glad we at least know what is going on now. I just thought I would share with everyone so that we all know that it is being worked on. Also, did anyone else know that the webmaster isnt a paid national postion? It is basically a volunteer alumni position. I had no idea. Just thought I would check in with everyone about what I found out.
SLAM,
brenda
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Updated!
As soon as I read your post I checked to see if there were some boards, but sadly there isn't yet. I ams ure that the National Organization is doing there best to do something about it though.
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