So just got back from the airport essentially (only an hour or two ago) and Emily had emailed me while I was away asking me to post on the website thread on the board meeting forum. I posted a little ditty about what I was currently doing for the organization and what my future plans where to help. I did mention how I would like for more people to visit the website more often, because most of the questions I get can be easily answered by going to the website and clicking around to find the answer.

I was a little put off when some of the members expressed disdain for the website. I figured since their dues are helping pay for it, they could express a little more interest in helping fix it up.

Hi, just wanted to let you know I’m going to be on vacation from tomorrow (the 3^rd) until the 12^th. Washington, here I come!

Kari Ann Owens emailed me saying please post her message to the listserv, because it wasn’t posting. So I checked the archives at lists.netspace.org and found that she had indeed posted the message she sent me (both of them). So I emailed her and told her that her posts were showing up on the list and that they went through. On a whim, I checked her settings for her listserv account and found that she wanted getting a confirmation email with a copy of her post being sent to her when she posted to the listerv. I asked if she would like a email and she said yes. Problem solved

So I added Andrea Stolowitz back to the listserv after she had been deleted off of it. In actuality, she had been signed up for the listserv under a different email address. So I added her again. I also changed her membership join date so that it could accurately reflect on her member profile page.

Revised To-Do list:

1. finish adding all past events to events page
1. email mags about pictures from dayton conference ‘99
2. add techsoup info to communication page
3. help claire with listserv
1. ask claire exactly what she needs help WITH (emailed her and awaiting reply) (didn’t need my help after all)
4. find out about email bounces at the icwpboard @ googlemail.com account
5. make welcome message to new memebers on listserv
1. add new members to listserv
2. email direct apology letter
6. make new gmail account for icwpwebmaster @ gmail.com
7. help two members with membership problems
8. compose bi-monthly email of my work within ICWP to board members (might become less often than bi-monthly)

So as you can see, I’ve pretty much done almost everything on the list. Well, the adding members to the listserv is still ongoing. But we’ve recently added 4 new members and I plan on adding 4 more tomorrow (Friday). I went ahead and added the Tech Soup information, as well as the icwpwebmaster @ gmail.com account I made to the Communication page. I’ll be meeting with Emily sometime again next week to discuss the more finer workings of ICWP, specifically membership stuff.

I need to start working a lot harder on finishing up the past events pages. But first, I’m going to have a wonderful weekend. My parents and I are going to go see Up! in 3D and go see the Parade of Homes here in Austina. So that will be very fun. I hope you have a wonderful weekend too!

I’ve finished all the International Readings events in 1998 and 1999. Those should be available to see now. I forgot about the ICWP Regional Conference in Dayton in 1999, so I’ve been working on getting that page ready. It is ridiculously long; it might take me a full day’s work just to finish it, if I worked an 8-10 hour day with breaks. Plus I need to email Mags and ask if she can find the photos that were originally included with the webpage(s). This conference is the longest one and I might just have to hold off on it, just so I can get the others done. The only really sad thing is that I don’t have much control over the pictures. They’re already resized (small) and compressed. So that’s just the way it is.

I’ve gotten a couple of emails from Emily asking me to help some members resume their membership. Apparently, these two member’s memberships were archived three months after they were asked to renew. So I unarchived them and sent them an email letting them know that. Then I realized that just because the contact has been unarchived doesn’t mean the membership has been resumed so I have to also resume their membership (unsuspend their membership status). So I did that too.

I went ahead and made a to-do list of the things that I need to take care of. It’s turned into a pretty big list (in my opinion):

1. finish adding all past events to events page
1. email mags about pictures from dayton conference ‘99
2. add techsoup info to communication page
3. help claire with listserv
1. ask claire exactly what she needs help WITH (emailed her and awaiting reply)
4. find out about email bounces at the icwpboard @ googlemail.com account
5. make welcome message to new memebers on listserv
1. add new members to listserv
2. email direct apology letter
6. make new gmail account for icwpwebmaster @ gmail.com
7. help two members with membership problems
8. compose bi-monthly email of my work within ICWP to board members (might become less often than bi-monthly)

At least some of those things I can strikeout because I did them. YAY! Tomorrow’s the first of June so I’ll be working a little bit more actively to try to complete all these things (not including all the new things I know will pop up) by mid-June (IhopeIhopeIhope!).

I met with Emily yesterday and we went over the basics of the ListServ. I had told Emily earlier that I probably haven’t messed with ListServ’s since I was in high school. However, now that I think about it, I can’t recall that I ever learned about ListServs. I suppose I must have. From my (renewed) understanding, a ListServ is a list of emails, and when you send a message to the ListServ, then everyone who is subscribed to the ListServ receives the message. The ICWP ListServ is being used more like a forum, than a traditional ListServ. It’s too bad we can’t update and use a forum instead of the ListServ, which would be infinitely easier to navigate and learn. But I’m extremely reluctant to switch to a different technology, when the ListServ is used so heavily. Maybe it’s something to think about.

Emily also sent me a list of things to add to the ICWP archives (Past Events, Seasons Newsletters, and other miscellaneous things) ranging from 1998 to 2007. So look forward to seeing those things at the ICWP website soon. Some things will be able to be uploaded very soon, but other things have missing pictures or need to be edited.

The Wild Apricot software was updated on the 20^th and there were some changes to the Wild Apricot CMS. I haven’t noted all the changes yet but I’ve started familiarizing myself with the CMS. I already made my first edits today on the website by adding Terri Febuary’s comment on Rebecca Ritchie’s memorial page and adding myself as a owner of the ListServ on the communication page.

Well, I was going to log into the CMS (Wild Apricot) for ICWP today and start familiarizing myself with all the different settings and layout and stuff, but Emily shot me an email saying they’re going to be updating the system on the 20^th (5 days from now). Not that I expect the entire layout of the cms to change, but the update email made it seem that enough things were going to be different. So I’m wondering if I should bother familiarizing myself now or just wait. I think I should go ahead (I already got a pretty good look with Emily on Monday).

I know the Wild Apricot CMS is pretty different from mine at Host Rocket. In fact, it seems wild apricot is just a really fancy WYSIWYG online system. My CMS lets you have full customability (is that even a word? – no? well I made it one) over EVERYTHING. I decide how things look and am able to upload via FTP. Wild Apricot already has themes you can choose from and you have limited HTML editing. BUT! I think wild apricot has really cool widgets and things you can install and use (like forums and blogs and paypal!). Not that I think those things don’t exist on my host. I’m sure they do. But it’s not very user-friendly. It seems like on wild apricot, the CMS says, You want a forum? OK here you go! You want paypal thingy? OK here you go! I wish things were that easy to figure out on my CMS.

Well, I’m just going approach this the same way I approached WordPress. When I was making the Med Terms website, I was restricted by the way WordPress sets up their website and only had control over the CSS (pretty much like the ICWP website). So, hopefully my experience with Med Terms will be beneficial to learning Wild Apricot.

I was also trying to think of other pages I could make for this blog. I made the how-to page, which completely ran away from me and turned into a what is a blog and how does it work page. I would put a resume or past projects kind-of-thing up but my make website already has those things. I was kind of thinking maybe a page that has a list of helpful links that help with programming/designing or something. I wouldn’t want to make tutorials. I’ll have to think about it some more.

So today I hoped I learned how-to embed a RSS feed into a HTML file. Emily asked if I could find a way to add the ICWP Marquee to the facebook page (which makes sense, so facebook users can see what news is available). So I found this cool google gadget that allows you to edit how the RSS feed is formatted (very limited editing, however) and produces a script to embed your RSS feed. Voila!

But since I can’t edit anything in the group’s information, I can’t see myself that it worked yet. I gave the code to Emily to see if she wanted to insert it but I imagine I’ll just be given administrative access soon.

Here is the code for the google gadget:

http://www.gmodules.com/ig/creator?url=http://www.womenplaywrights.org/Content/RSS/blog.ashx?pageId=210961

As you can see, you can edit the border and size of the box. Notice how there’s nothing in the box. That’s why I’m unsure it will work. But I used the same url to add the RSS feed to my igoogle homepage, and that worked.

Anyway, here’s the script it produced:

< script src="http://www.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://www.womenplaywrights.org/Content/RSS/blog.ashx%3FpageId%3D210961&synd=open&w=320&h=200&title=&border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C1px+solid+%23999999&output=js">< /script>

[EDIT] – OK, so I tried embedding it here to see if it would work (no it didn’t). So I did some more research. So I found the Google Dynamic Feed Control Wizard. You enter in keywords and it finds the RSS feed for you (good thing because I was having a hard time trying to figure out how http://www.womenplaywrights.org/Content/RSS/blog.ashx?pageId=210961 equaled an RSS URL). After several attempts, I finally found the right ICWP Marquee feed! YAY!

So here’s the finished product:

[EDIT 02] – So if you didn’t notice, the google dynamic feed control script just says loading. *sigh* So I found ANOTHER website called Feed Source and it has a widget that makes RSS feeds. So let’s see if this one works:

OMG it works. Hallelujah! It really is too bad the google one didn’t work though. It had some nicer scripting.

[EDIT 03] – Ok, so you can’t use HTML in facebook. So thats a drag. I’m not even sure you’d be able to put any kind of RSS feed into facebook like that. Until facebook thinks, oh hey, wouldn’t it be cool to allow groups to have an RSS feed in their recent news section? yeah that would be cool!, it just ain’t happening.

I wanted to test out my new poll plug-in. This poll is actually related to the previous post about the book I am currently reading The Holocaust in American Life.