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Website Specific Questions and
Answers
Feel free to contact the webmaster with any questions you
may have relating to our website.
I've tried to answer many of the
questions that I get emails on regarding both this site
and my original site that I developed for
Cub
Pack 88 in Nazareth PA.
If your developing your own site.
Email the webmaster and we can talk live about what you
need to do and how we did it. Its not easy, but
its not so hard that you can't get a pretty good site up
and rolling before you know it.
How do I email the webmaster for comments
or additions to the Troop site.
 | Simply email the Troop 44 webmaster
by clinking on Webmaster or Contact Us anywhere on this
site. |
Can you use code from your website.
| Absolutely, feel free
to use any of the code to make your
website better. If you need help
with anything feel free to contact the
webmaster via email. |
| The only caveat is
that the webmaster asks that you don't
try to hardcode any links to images or
files on the site. |
Was your site written by a hosting
firm or professional developer
| Our website was not professionally
developed or scripted. It was basically drawn
out on paper for flow and organization then slowly converted
into a website over a period of weeks using FrontPage
and a basic template for a website design.
The site is now managed with Microsoft SharePoint
Designer 2007. |
| You can start with a basic shareware
template or you can opt for a semi professionally done
one for less than $200. Countless websites are
dedicated to selling templates for FrontPage, SharePoint
Designer and Expression Web to get an organizations
website up and running. The basic templates provided
with the application will get you started, but you will
have to decide how to add a Scouting feel to the website. |
| Start simple and develop the website
as the site matures and content is added. |
| I really hate to
see Packs or Troops spend serious money for a
website when its not needed. Someone in your
Pack or Troop will have or be able to learn the
skills to get a website working. |
What software did you use to generate
your website?
| Out website was developed primarily
with Microsoft FrontPage, Microsoft SharePoint Designer
and Dreamweaver Ultra Dev with graphical and text formatting
and design supplied from PhotoShop, Paint.NET, CompuPic
Pro, Visio, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel.
Once the general outline for the site was completed
the domain was registered at
www.godaddy.com
and is also hosted by GoDaddy. Several databases are
also used within the website for various functions.
Microsoft Access and asp are the most commonly used. |
| Java scripting is used within the
website for several features. |
| Picture galleries, images and thumbnails
within the website are handled entirely by the
built-in photo gallery features of SharePoint
Designer. Its simple to use and pretty full
proof for the users. |
| The website is also developed with
a minimum screen resolution of 800 x 600 in mind.
The site has since been redesigned to have a minimum
resolution of 1024 x 768 to allow for more content with
a more organized display. |
Why didn't you use one of the website
in a 'box' services available for Cub and Boy Scout organizations?
| The services that are available on
the web offer all kinds of pre-build websites that can
be purchased and even hosted by the same firm.
While these may be quick and dirty ways to get a website
you will be very limited on what you can do and will
able to develop. Your online storage size and
ability to provide information to your users will be
limited. |
| An example of the limiting factor
will be graphic images. A large photo gallery
can be several Gigabits and well over the normal 5 Megabit
and 10 Megabit websites that are offered. The
same goes if you want to have registration flyers online
for your users to register for Pack or Troop events.
|
| The available bandwidth, or the amount
of data you are allowed to upload and download, is always
below the limits that you would want for a robust and
useful website. |
| In a nutshell,
they get the job done, but generally end up looking
cheesy and have too many limitations when compared
to a hosted site like GoDaddy.com |
How do you prevent spammers from
lifting all your email addresses?
| How do we protect
our email addresses from spammers, learn how at
TalkFrontPage. |
What size hosting account do you use?
| The hosting plan for Troop 44 is limited
to 10000 Mb of total storage with a maximum of 300,000
Mb of bandwidth monthly. A larger hosting account that
provides more bandwidth is not needed since the site
does not offer a significant about of downloadable files.
Sites with very active photo galleries, heavily downloaded
files, and very high user volumes may need a larger
hosting package. |
| We are also using a 1000Mb Online
File Folder option for temporary storage for users to transmit
files to the webmaster. A larger file folder from GoDaddy was not needed since the files are only stored
temporarily online until they can be downloaded and
then hosted. |
What's up with Firefox? Not all
the pages display properly.
| The website is almost entirely developed
and published with Microsoft SharePoint Designer . That being
said, that may have caused some of the issues with Firefox
not always displaying everything the way it was designed.
The major issues are with tables and some of the Frontpage
extension
embedded items like the photo galleries. Hopefully,
over time the site will be 100% compatible with Microsoft
Explorer and Firefox. If you have any technical
suggestions, contact the webmaster. |
Details on the url.
| The www.troop44bushkill.org url is privately
owned by the webmaster and will not be traded for a
similar url. |
| The www.troop44bushkill.org url is currently
not for sale. |
| The Webmaster is aware of the similar
sites that are Scouting and non-Scouting related.
Many of these sites are url squatters that are hoping
for incorrectly entered web addresses to draw traffic
to them. The .org extension is reflective of
Troop 44 being an organization. |
| Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts are considered
organization and not commercial entities so the selection
of the .org suffix was more appropriate. We do
not own the .com version of our url, just the .org version. |
How do you verify all your links on
your site.
| To check the links within the website
and to verify that the links I use to external sites
I use a program called
Xenu. Out site currently has over 2200
pages and 5000 URL
links to sites, files, and images. Xenu can be downloaded
for free and makes checking all the links an automated
process. I run the program on a monthly basis
to make sure the website is working as best it can. |
Site Maps
| A site map was generated for Google
and the research engines using a free service from
XML-SITEMAPS. The sitemap for Google is updated
on a weekly basis via an automated script run on the
GoDaddy hosting service. |
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