Palmer Massachusetts Council #376    •   1294 Ware Street   •    Palmer, Massachusetts, 01069   •    (413) 283-7904   •

• My council expressed interest in creating a webpage that would be easier for anyone to update. I felt running a web server would be costly for us since we aren't a large council (YET!). The next best thing I felt would be interfacing the website with common Microsoft programs. There are a lot of technologies that would do this quite nicely but most require fancy web servers which again cost money. The next best thing I felt is the use of ActiveX's tabular data control. While not officially sanctioned by the W3C TDC works on Internet Explorer 4 and newer as well as America Online. I have used this successfully in our Activities page. Anyone who can use Microsoft Outlook can export a CSV (Comma Seperated Values) file containing dates and information for upcoming events. This will enable more council members to have an active hand in keeping the councils site up to date.
• Google Calendar has a nice to look at and extremely easy to use, configurable interface which is also free. A calendar can be added to a webpage that also includes other councils. For instance, a local Council can have its local events listed as well as nearby degree's and Church events all independently! There are already plenty of public calendars that can be listed on yours such as Holy Days of obligation, federal holidays. etc.
• Spam, I *HATE* spam. After looking at the Supreme Councils template I decided I really liked the look of their officers page. But listing peoples email address on a soon to be popular page would bring unwanted spam. I believe replacing the @ symbol with its entity @ should hopefully be enough to block spambots. I have seen javascript tricks and ROT-13 tricks to do pretty much the same thing but I believe the simplest solution is usually the best solution.
• Now for cheap hosting. I tried several 'free' hosts but the old saying you get what you pay for seemed too true. I was all settled on a final one that seemed reliable had NO banners or advertisements until the day before our Councils meeting where I was going to give out the address they emailed saying they changed the terms of service for free accounts and now everyone would have to have a banner across their site. Being a religious organization we didn't want to see advertisements across our page that might conflict with our beliefs. I soon found Doteasy.com. These guys offer free hosting when you register your domain. There are other places where you can save a few bucks but then you don't get the free hosting. Another nice thing which I think can make a site look professional is the 10 POP email and 10 email alias forwarding accounts they give you. You can also easily setup a 'catchall' email account in case someone misspells a name. One thing I setup for the email is the forwarding for our officers so chancellor@kofc376.org will always be forwarded to the current Chancellor of our Council. The closest you will find to an advertisement that they require is the free email accounts have a small footer saying "Doteasy.com free hosting." I would like to ask that if you decide to use Doteasy.com that you use council376 as a referral. They give $5 and if we get a few of these each year, the site will be free and this idea can work for other Council's as well. They do cap a 1GB per month traffic limit but I think for most councils that is easily sufficient and the 20MB also allows room for expansion. You can purchase more webspace and traffic allotment if needed. Most fancier services like ASP, CGI etc can also be added on if needed.
• Animated headers can easily be created at Flamingtext.com. I used this quick easy and free tool to create our Councils bingo and join links which can be seen on our activities and membership pages.
• I really liked the fonts the Supreme Council used to create the site links at the bottom of the webpage. I think using individual GIF's instead of one big mapped one enables the browser to format the webpage better for different width screens. Pretty soon people browsing from Cell phones and wireless PDA's will be more common place and we have to think ahead. Also, having links from each of your pages to each of your other pages makes it a LOT easier for people to get around your website and insures that search engines will spider each of your pages. Google also gives a higher rating to pages that are listed on other pages even if they are from the same site.
• Being a long time programmer I have been told many times that "Good programmers know how to program but GREAT programmers know how to steal." Sure, why re-write a bubble or shell metzner sort routine that has been typed in thousands of times already. I think the best webmasters are the creative ones, if you can imagine it, give it a try! It might work! For instance the TITLE description can be added to most HTML commands to create a pop-up description of that item. For example move your cursor over this list entry. If you do steal code however do *NOT* put your name on it. Other people will know where it originally came from and won't be very impressed.

Useful sites and tools:

Supreme Council Template
Supreme Council clipart

Websitemedics.com - Spell and link check your webpages

HTML Gear from Lycos powerful add-ons to enhance your website for the small price of a banner on your pages. Here you can find Guestbooks, Link Managers, Feedback, News headlines and the ever popular webpolls!

Use this to create text for your website:

This webmaster's personal site for HTML tips