Web Report for 2008 Meeting- Alexandra Palace

To: NSOA General Committee

From: Sean Clarkson

Date: 28^th February 2008

Report on Website

Since taking over admin duties for the Squib website I have performed many tasks and made contact with many people. I have listed the major events/tasks below in chronological order.

I took over admin duties of the website, just after the new site had been implemented. The website had numerous problems and Gerard was feeling out of depth.
'E' provided us with no instructions of how to do anything. Some previous knowledge is transferrable but some knowledge is unique to this website. I could have bought a book on how to use the site, instead I taught myself how to use it. There is no chance of anyone else performing web admin duties unless they have a technical background.
After 'E' signed the site over to us the site still had a lot of problems. A lot of pages didn’t work, links didn’t work, images didn’t appear properly, unfinished pages “Click here to add content” appeared on many pages. The Contact us page/send password function seemed to work but didn’t, they didn’t tell us of this and lead to a lot of problems.
I brought the site up to a working state, repaired broken links, repaired pictures, removed “Click here to add content” that appeared on many pages. Repaired the yachts and yachting news reader on the homepage.
I setup squibpics@yachts-up.com as an email address/mailbox for receiving photos people wanted uploading to the gallery.
Created a new membership application form with Sally Everitts contact details on.
Started adding minutes of NSOA meetings and continued throughout 2007.
Created a link to the Squib class rules on the RYA website.
Added a “What's new box” onto the homepage so that people can keep track of updates to the site.
Added Malcolm Blackburns article on Squib Jib Furlers.
Added David Wines chairman’s comments to the website.
Started adding AGM minutes past and current, continued throughout 2007
Created a temporary contact us page so that people could see contact details for the Squib class. This replaced the contact us form that 'E' put on the page but didn’t setup. It appeared to work, but when messages were submitted they went nowhere.
Created a separate forum for publicity, only David West can post in it. This makes publicity messages more obvious and prevents them from getting lost on the rest of the forum.
All photos from the gallery were lost. Co-ordinated with 'E' regarding re-adding of gallery photos from backup.
In follow up to Jenny Rileys comments at 2007 AGM I created an index page for RNSYC and WOBYC fleet pages. Also added a link to the 2008 nationals website.
Obtained access to logs page so that I can track activity on site, how many people view it, poplar times, popular pages etc
After looking into the details for the domain name www.squibs.co.uk it came to my attention that we had no control of the domain and that it expires on July 2008. See below for further information regarding this.
After agreement by David Wines expenditure was authorised to setup contact us page. After 'E' had set this up I then created 4 areas of contact- membership/web/technical/general. Each area of contact has its own form to submit details.
Ensured that the sending out of passwords to people who have forgotten them functions correctly.
Ensured that the newsletter function that can contact all members of site functions as intended.
Liaised with William Bibby re takeover of online/offline membership system. I can now perform admin duties for the online membership system- remove items from for sale list etc. See below for further details on this.
Setup links page with links to weather sites and sponsors.
Archived old things on the website. Created links for 2006 etc with these things in.
Cleared out the 2007 events from the calendar and added 2008 events as they came in.
Revamped the homepage, added a new picture, created a landing page for new/current Squibbers.
Ensured that the website was still secure after a security scare by 'F' (company who owns the sever that the site is hosted on). Ensured new password was created for any parts that are connected to them.
Added a publicity article from David West. This along with the homepage revamp makes the website much more informative for new/prospective Squibbers.
Using the map that Craig Hughes originally created as a guide I created a map with details of fleets in the UK and Ireland and added clickable links to all fleet websites.
Creation of new general gallery and added a PR and advertising gallery. These galleries are much better than the old one, photos are displayed much better, more control from an admin perspective as to how the gallery works etc
Turned on email verification for all new users. All new users are sent an email to the email address provided with a verification code, on logging into the site for the first time they must provide this code in order to login. This prevents unscrupulous people joining the site by providing fake email addresses.
Liaised with William Bibby regarding takeover of his duties for producing the Squib handbook. From now on I will compile this and pass onto Lou Bibby/Pete Richards for approval.
As membership for sale section is not currently accessible by all, I have setup a temporary forum that is just to be used for listing items for sale.

Throughout my time as web admin I have also performed may other duties, too many to mention here. These include; taking care of day to day running of site, adding pictures to gallery received by email, adding articles people send to me, adding events to calendar, maintenance on the forum, dealing with messages received by contact us page......

Current work

Reclaiming of domain name.

o When the Squib site was originally produced the domain was registered and hosted with 'H' (a 3rd party reseller for 'F').When we wanted to switch nameservers so that the new site could become active we contacted 'H' to switch nameservers, they did as requested and hence the site works as it is today. The domain was then due to be transferred to 'E', they are also a 3rd party 'F' reseller. The problem then arose when we wanted to setup SMTP servers etc on the domain extension squibs.co.uk. I had not heard of any problems with the transfer so presumed all had gone ok. When I contacted 'E' to ask them to setup the subdomain so that I could setup mail functions they told me that the domain was not managed by them? I now tried to contact 'H' to query this, but they seemed uncontactable, after numerous emails/phone calls no response. I then contacted all people within the class who may know of any contact details for 'H'. I also looked into other avenues and found that 'F' have a scheme in place to reclaim domains registered through 3rd party resellers that have become uncontactable. Just at the last minute before contacting 'F' to initiate this scheme Richard Sullivan came up with a new email address for 'H'. I tried this and got a reply, they said that they had transferred the domain over to 'E'. I then asked them to look further as 'E' don’t have control of it. I received a reply and they said that they will initiate the domain transfer process to 'E'. This should be 24 hours at the most for inter tag transfers. I then received another email from them, stating that they couldn’t transfer the domain as they have already done so. I contacted 'E' to see if theynow have control of the domain and as if by magic they do! I thought all was sorted now....if only! 'E' went to setup the subdomain for me.... they only have partial control of the domain says the system! For subdomains to be setup 'H' need to delete any previous hosting/mail facilities associated with the domain, which they have not done. At present I have sent another email to 'H' to tell them to cancel the mail/hosting. I await a reply. 'E' have also contacted 'F' on our behalf and informed them of the problem we have been having, 'F' have contacted 'H' to tell them to delete mail/hosting. They too await a reply. If they don't receive a reply within a time period they can override 'H' and remove any association of our domain with 'H', but this time period has to pass.

Bring the online membership system up to a working state.
- At present the membership related pages on the site are static, i.e. they are not linked to the system that Sally Everitt holds. Any updates made on the membership pages do not appear in Sally Everitts system. To achieve this an SMTP server needs to be setup, as I understand 'E' was supposed to set this up initially but couldn’t due to not having access to the domain name. When 'E' have full control of the domain they can setup the subdomain mail.membership.squibs.co.uk and membership.squibs.co.uk. I can then move all pages currently on squibs.emworx.com over to membership.squibs.co.uk. The system can then be set to send mail through mail.membership.squibs.co.uk. Then I can upload the current membership database to the site. Now when members update details online Sally will receive an email informing her of the updates made.
- I have received comments from people saying that details on these associated pages are not correct. So that the website is as correct as possible when I received these comments I have manually made the relevant changes and will continue to do so until the system works fully.
Adding albums to the general gallery.

Future work

Creating a new forum. I had many comments relating to the new forum not been as good as the old one. I have contact 'E' in relation to this and they were going to send some on a development site for me to try, (email dated 11^th January 2008). I have not heard any more since, this needs looking into further. This new forum should cure problems such as of triplicate postings, delete button disappearing etc that the site seems to be suffering with at present.
After domain ownership issue has been resolved creation of original Squibs email addresses: membership@squibs.co.uk, web@squibs.co.uk and secretary@squibs.co.uk
Contact William Bibby and ask him to make all of the pages that he originally created appear in the same format as the rest of the site. He has done this with some of them but not all. It’s his system and he and he alone fully understands how it works!
Online membership application?
Online application for open events? Creation of my own system for this or the SailRacer system.