Web Site Committee

Minutes – July 25, 2001

The July meeting was was held on July 25, 2001 at Borough Hall. In attendance were Emily Wolfe, Sally Santiago, Andy Bulfer, and George Jackson.

Accomplishments

  • Sally Santiago put a picture of the lake from Glenn Tippy on the front page of the Lakes Management Committee similar to the tree on the Shade Tree Commission home page.

  • Andy Bulfer added a “What’s New” item about the new Parking Permit form.

  • Andy Bulfer added the better logo image to all the Borough Committee pages.

  • Emily Wolfe and Sally Santiago got the module on the police department on the web site. It looks wonderful.

  • Andy Bulfer added the census information that was sent to him by Borough Hall. Gary Webb had requested that it be added to the site. It was put on a page that can be reached from the FAQs page and from the Borough Clerk section of the Borough page. Andy also added a “What's New” item about it.

  • Because of the continuing problem with MS Front Page, Andy Bulfer set up another user-id/password for Stephanie Johns and also send her information on obtaining a free FTP client to use instead of Front Page.

  • Andy Bulfer put the link in HofW that George Jackson provided that leads to an external page containing the Jewish Houses of Worship in Northern NJ.

  • Andy Bulfer ran a check of all the links on the site to determine which if any are no longer valid. He has developed a software program to do this automatically. There were only a handful of links broken which Andy fixed. There are some unused (unlinked) files on the site They are taking up space and should be removed at some point but are not considered a problem.

  • Andy Bulfer changed the front page to have only the most recent “What’s New” items on it and a link, “Previous What’s New items”, pointing to a second page that has the older items that we still want to keep around.

  • To get going on the Volunteer Fire Department pages. Andy Bulfer will send George Jackson a copy of the content outline we used for the Police Dept. George will modify it appropriately and approach representatives of the Volunteer Fire Dept. to urge them to submit the information.

  • Since Emily Wolfe had not made much progress in obtaining information about the YMCA. She got started by putting some simple stuff on a single page so it is not totally empty.

Discussion and Action Items

  • Since Emily Wolfe has not been able to get buy-in on the Community Church material from Pastor Larry Keller, she will put the draft material on.. When the pastor returns, she will modify it to his liking.

  • We still need pictures of the School Board members. Sally Santiago will arrange a time to go to a School Board meeting to take the pictures.

  • Andy Bulfer will add the Water Quality information sent to him by Robin at Borough Hall.

  • The Borough is moving on recodifying the ordinances. After the Borough Council has approved them, they will be installed on the web site of the company doing the work. They will have a Ordinance search engine to navigate through them. At that point, we can add a link to the search engine and we will be done. This should be in about 8-12 weeks. Andy Bulfer will ask Gary Webb about when we can expect it.

  • Andy Bulfer expressed reservations about the quality of the search engine’s user interface. He was concerned that the search engine woould not look like the search engines out on the web that people are used to (e.g. Google or Altavista) and people will not be able to use it easily. We will revisit this issue when the project is completed and the site is operative.

  • The Borough has engaged a consultant, Carisa Wangsness, to prepare a “Residents Guide” to be distributed in printed form to Mountain Lakes homeowners. There is a desire to put the material also on the Borough web site.

  • Fran Patten has taken over the School’s Technology Office replacing Elle Douglass who has retired. In addition, the School Superintendent started on July 1. After giving them a decent time interval to settle into their new jobs, we need to approach them about pointing the mtlakes.org domain toward our site. George Jackson will remind Kate Lareau.

  • George Jackson will discuss with Gary Webb getting more information about the recreation program on the web site.

  • Sally Santiago will try to get a link for Hub Lakes and put it on the Community page.

  • Andy Bulfer will finish the Community Calendar.

  • Stephanie Johns will fix the Boy Scouts Troop 41 page.

  • Emily Wolfe will add current material on the Swim Team.

  • Emily Wolfe has received “a ton” of stuff about the Medical Needs Foundation. Sally Santiago volunteered to implement it. The Spirit 5K event will be held Nov 3. It would be nice to have our URL on their brochure.

  • We need to figure out a way to weed out or replace obsolete material on the web site. It was felt that a formal effort to do so should be deferred until fall when all the Committees organize and become active again.

    • We had received a request from the Nite Owls, and offshoot of the Town Club to host their web content. The Committee discussed it and decided to grant permission for them to be a Type 3 organization.

  • We need to include material on Gary Webb. It is desired to have a picture and bio. The Borough Manager should be first on the Borough Hall page. One suggestion was to have side-by-side pictures of him when he was a Philadelphia Eagle and him today. Andy Bulfer will e-mail him and ask for a bio. Emily Wolfe will put the material on the Borough Hall page.

  • Andy Bulfer will investigate the various School Reunions and figure out what we should do about them.

  • Andy Bulfer mentioned that interest was expressed about an old-timers mailing list. The committee liked the idea and urged Bulfer to implement it.

  • A new person in town, Gerry Libertelli has offered to volunteer for web related work. He says he is an experienced professional who started his own company in this field. It was decided to explore using him to do a recreation section, a community calendar, or supporting the Schools web site. Andy was asked to invite him to the next meeting.

The next meeting will be held on Sep 12, 2001.

Andy Bulfer,
Chairman

The types of content are:

Type 1 – Relatively simple and minor content, doesn’t change often (e.g. Senior Citizens). The web committee installs it using a standard template.
Type 2 – Major, important organization (e.g. Environmental Commission) but doesn’t have the skills or interest to do it themselves. Web committee prepares customized pages on their behalf.
Type 3 – Important organization that has the skills and interest to do it themselves (e.g. League of Women Voters). Web committee provides a login and space on the Borough server. Web committee also monitors quality and offers help where needed.
Type 4 – Organization has their content on another system (e.g. St. Peters Episcopal Church). Web committee provides a link to them.