Archive for July, 2008

Published by Rob Scaife on 29 Jul 2008

Webhosting that supports Rotary

I use a web hosting company, www.dreamhost.com, that has an incentive program that gives a $97 referral bonus, of which they will allow up to $50 to be kicked back to the new customer as a discount.

My standing offer to Rotarians is that if they use the SCAIFEROTARY referral code when signing up at www.dreamhost.com, I will give them the $50 discount (that’s applied automatic when you sign up) and donate the other $47 to the Rotary Foundation on top of my regular annual donation.

In this way I don’t benefit personally, which is as it should be in Rotary, but the club and/or Rotarian and the Rotary Foundation benefit to the tune of $97.

Published by Rob Scaife on 27 Jul 2008

Changing your From address in an email message

Those of us with District email addresses will want our emails to come from that address when we sent Rotary emails, and replies to those messages to come back to that address. Here’s a rundown on how to do this in different email clients. If you know how in an email program not covered here, please let me know!

If your program isn’t listed, odds are the instructions below will point you in the right direction.

Microsoft Outlook

In your email message form, click View on the menu, then From Field on the submenu. This will cause the From: line to appear on your message forms. Leave it blank to send as you always have. To send from your Rotary address, type Your Name <your.name@rotary7040.com> in the from line when you want to send a message from your Rotary address. (All you really need is the email address itself, but putting your name separately in that format makes it look a little better.)

In Outlook 2000, I’m told that you can do it by selecting File | Send Using | <Account>, though I have no way to test that out.

Leo Notenboom also has a great article on how to set up a send-only address.

Gmail

From the Settings page, select the Accounts tab and click Add another address. You’ll be sent a message requiring a response to prove you own the address. Once you confirm, you’ll be able to send mail from that address in gmail, or even use it as your default address.

James Huggins has written some great material on this topic in this article. I won’t try to better it, but I’ll attach an excerpt;

One Email Account, Multiple Addresses

Now you ask how this is possible.

This most common reason is that you are using an email forwarder in order to “own your own email address”. I explain how to do this on this page.

If you are using an email forwarder, then you may have different addresses forwarded to your one “real” email address.

Consider this example. Assume that you are Gaspar Aluzo. Your “real” address is GAluzo@Earthlink.net. But you own a domain name of GasparAluzo.com. You are using a registrar like NameCheap to forward your email. All email addressed to anything@GasparAluzo.com is actually forwarded to GAluzo@ATT.net. Most people write you as GAluzo@GasparAluzo.com and you have set your reply address to show as GAluzo@GasparAluzo.com (like I explain on this page).

Now you would also like to use another email address. You would like to use TheBigGuy@GasparAluzo.com in your email as a reply address.

(Note that this address will already forward to you. All we are talking about is setting up a second account so you can send some mail with this reply address.)

Because, in this example, you have one real, incoming account, you just need to create an “outgoing” email account in Outlook using this second email address. Here is how:

1. Click “Tools”

2. Click “Accounts”

3. Click on the “Mail Tab”

4. Click on your “primary” or “default” account. This should say “mail (default)” in the “Type” column.

5. Click “Properties”

6. Click on the “Servers” tab

7. Make a note of the value in the “Outgoing mail (SMTP) box. You will use this value below.

8. Click “Cancel”

9. Click “Add”, then “Mail”

10. In the box labeled “Display Name” type your name as you would like it to appear on outgoing email. For example, Gaspar Aluzo might type “Gaspar Aluzo”.

11. Click “Next”

12. In the box labeled “E-mail Address” type the reply address you would like to use. In our example, Gaspar Aluzo would type TheBigGuy@GasparAluzo.com.

13. Click “Next”

14. In the box labeled “Incoming mail (POP3 or IMAP) server”, type five or six zeros. This box is not necessary because this account won’t really “receive” any mail. It will only be used to send mail.

15. In the box labeled “Outgoing mail (SMTP) server”, type the address of the outgoing mail server that you use for your primary account. This is the value you obtained at the start of this process. This second account will send mail through the same outgoing mail server. It will just have a unique “reply address”.

16. Click “Next”

17. In the box labeled “Account name”, leave whatever value appears. It does not matter.

18. In the box labeled “Password”, do not type anything. It does not matter.

19. Leave the box labeled “Remember password” however it is set. It does not matter.

20. Click “Next”

21. On the panel that asks “Which method do you want to use to connect to the Internet?”, I recommend selecting “manually”.

22. Click “Next”

23. Click “Finish”

24. Immediately click on “Properties”. This will reopen the “account” you have just created.

25. Note that the account used the value you specified as the incoming account with your ISP as the “name” of the account. This will be the 5 or six zeros you typed. This name is only used to identify the account within Outlook or Outlook Express. Change this value to something you will easily recognize.

26. Uncheck the box labeled “Include this account when receiving mail or synchronizing”. Remember, this is not an account you will use to receive mail. All your mail is forwarded to your primary account. This is just an account to use to have a special “reply address”.

27. Click “OK”

28. Voila. You are done.

To use this account, click the “pull down” arrow next to the “Send” button on any email. Outlook will reveal all your defined accounts and let you specify which one to use.

In our example, using this second account would cause the email to be sent with a reply address of TheBigGuy@GasparAluzo.com. And anyone who sends mail to that address, will have the mail automatically forwarded to the “real” account at GAluzo@Earthlink.net.

Published by Rob Scaife on 23 Jul 2008

Creating a Club Website and Services in Google Apps

This post is a work in progress.  It has been published early for the benefit of those who wish to use it.  Stay tuned for updates.

Google has introduced a powerful set of free services which allow an organization such as a Rotary Club to create a powerful suite of electronic services to serve the club and communicate with the public.

Combined with an Internet domain like www.mainvillerotary.org (easy and very inexpensive to obtain) these tools allow a club, without requiring any web programming skills, to;

  • Create a club website.
  • Establish email accounts like sue.smith@mainvillerotary.org or lobsterfestival@mainvillrotary.org - up to 200 accounts.
  • Create an online calendar (you can give all your club officers and committee chairs access to create and edit events.)
  • Create online documents like spreadsheets, presentations and word processor documents. You can make these public or restrict them to club members. You can set permissions for certain people to edit them.

Powerful, free, and you don’t have to have any programming skills at all. It’s all done through a web browser.

Here’s a step by step look at how to get this set up quickly.

First, obtain an Internet domain

The first step is to decide what you want as a domain name. The key is to pick something as short and easy as possible, yet instantly recognizable. www.rcsn.ca is nice and short, but it is hard to recognize that is is for the Rotary Club of South Nepean. www.rotarynepean.ca worked much better for my club.

Many domain registrars are available, and many will offer very low prices, often requiring that you purchase a webhosting account as well. My practice is to register my domains with a registrar that does not offer webhosting. I’ve used www.easydns.com for about 7 years without problems, and feel comfortable recommending them. They charge just over $20-$25 per year for a domain name registration. I recommend a .ca domain for Canadian clubs, .org for American clubs.

Beware the name trap

Some organizations have fallen into a trap registering domains. Down the road, they find that the web host that registered their domain for them actually owns the domain, or is reluctant to release it. (District 7040 once lost a domain name in this way.) This can cause serious problems when the domain name ends up in the hands of someone who places advertising on it, which might not be suitable to a Rotary Club.

When registering a domain name I follow the practice of registering in one place and hosting in another place. This way the company that hosts my websites have no control over my domains. At the very least, get it IN WRITING, from the web host that you and not the host own and control the Internet domain name before you invest the time to create your website.

Want to check your present domain? Visit www.easywhois.com and check. The registrant should be your club, or you in the case of a personal domain. Your web hosting company may be listed as the administrative or technical contact. Print that page and file it away in a safe place as prove that on this date that was the status of the registration. This can be important if a dispute ever arises.

Set up your Web Hosting

This section assumes two things: 1) you have an Internet domain registered, and 2) that your web hosting company is www.dreamhost.com. If you have a different hosting company contact them to see if they support Google Apps for Domains. If you do not yet have a web hosting company, and wish to sign up with dreamhost.com, you can take advantage of a $97 sign-up incentive that will see the first $50 taken off your bill and the other $47 donated to the Rotary Foundation. Visit https://signup.dreamhost.com/ and enter promo code SCAIFEROTARY. All of this incentive goes to Rotary, through the $50 discount (the maximum allowed) on your hosting bill and a $47 donation I will make to the Rotary Foundation on top of my regular annual donation. I will receive no personal benefit.

Set up Google Apps for Domains

This section assumes two things: 1) you have an Internet domain registered, and b) that your web hosting company is www.dreamhost.com. If you have a different hosting company contact them to see if they support Google Apps for Domains. If so, the instructions should be similar. Otherwise, visit http://www.google.com/apps/.

First, let’s get registered with Google Apps.

  1. Go to the Dreamhost Manage Domains page in your Dreamhost control panel.
  2. Click Add new Domain / Sub-Domain.
  3. Scroll down to the Google Hosted section of the page.
  4. Create your domain in the space provided and click Google Host this domain now!.
  5. Click the supplied link to register at Google Apps for your Domain.
  6. Create the Administrator’s account. It is important to create a generic administrator’s account like ‘Admin’ and ensure that the password is not lost.
  7. Click I accept Continue with set up after reviewing the terms and conditions.
  8. Now you are at the Google Apps dashboard for your club. From here you can create email accounts, web pages for your club, an online club calendar, online documents like spreadsheets and presentations, etc.

So now you’re registered with Google Apps, and it’s time to create your services.

Published by Rob Scaife on 21 Jul 2008

Using WordPress

What the heck is WordPress, anyway?

WordPress is a publishing phenomenon that allows people with no programming skills to publish on the Internet.  This is what people refer to as a blog, but don’t be put off by the term.  It’s really just an online newsletter.  If you can use a simple word processor and a web browser, you’re good to go with WordPress.

We’ve implemented WordPress on the District 7040 website in order to allow district leaders to publish directly to the district membership through electronic newsletters.  You can find them under the Newsletters item on the district website menu.

WordPress newsletters can have two types of content.

  • First, we can have pages which are fixed information, more or less permanent in nature, like the front page of a club website.
  • The second is a post, which is a periodic posting, more chronological in nature, like a daily diary entry or a monthly newsletter.

We can choose what visitors see first when they visit a blog on our site; a page or the most recent post.

In order to help you get the most of this, I’ve prepared a few tips to remember, and a list of resources to help you learn how to use WordPress.

Learning Resources

Here are some links to use WordPress;

Types of Users: Admin, Editor or Author

There are various types of users in WordPress.  The District Webmaster is the admin or Administrator user.  Comittee chairs are likely to be authors which allows them to add and edit their own pages or posts, or editors, which allows them to do that edit thier own or other peoples posts.

Posting and Administration

Simply visit your newsletter and add ‘/wp-admin/’ to the end of the address to access the administrative facilities.  Enter your username and password, then click ‘remember me’ so you’ll stay logged in.

If you want to change your email or password, click your name in the top right corner of the page, beside the word ‘howdy’.  (A little corny I know, but I didn’t put it there!)

Tips

  • WordPress operates as a series of Posts, or articles, that can be added at any time.  These are ideal for periodic newsletters, meeting minutes, and any other information that you want to pubish from time to time.
  • We can choose to have pages which contain more permanent information, like a page that describes a Rotary program.   Being more permanent in nature doesn’t mean we can’t edit it from time to time as we wish!
  • Every WordPress newsletter has certain authorized users.  The people who write and translate the newsletters will have Author privileges enabling them to write and edit posts on the newsletter applicable to them.  The district webmaster will have Administrator rights on all newsletters.
  • You can work on WordPress from any where you can access the internet with a web browser.
  • You can start a post early, then work on an unpublished draft often as you want and publish it when you’re finished simply by clicking ‘Publish’.
  • Published posts can be edited after they are published.
  • If you are working on WordPress, you’ll be given an account in WordPress with Author’s rights.  If your newsletter is to be published in two languages, the translator can be given author rights on the alternate language newsletter so they can publish the translation directly.

Uploading Documents

Here’s a good article on uploading documents to make them available through your WordPress newsletter.

Published by Rob Scaife on 18 Jul 2008

Online Form Generator

Jotform.com provides a great resource for generating web forms in a drag-and-drop environment.  Reportedly you can even host the form on their site.  Otherwise, it looks great for simply designing a form and copying the code to your own site.