The October meeting of the Mountain Lakes Web Site Committee was held on Oct 13, 2004 at Borough Hall. In attendance were Chairman Andy Bulfer and Borough Council Liaison, Blair Wilson.

Activities Since Last Meeting

• Andy Bulfer updated Blair Wilson's biography on the Web site as she had requested.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer received a large amount of material about the Woodlands Committee from Chairman Jerry Uhrig and installed it on the Web site. Included are copies of every meeting minutes since late last year. Also included is the complete interim Status Report PowerPoint presentation given to the Borough Council on June 14, 2004. Bulfer used a software package he had earlier developed for family photos that allows you to click through the slide show and shows you the speaker's notes for each slide.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer put on material about the Senior Citizens given to him by Marion Goodyear and Sonja Muesser.
  
  
• There is a new organization in town called "Welcome Women". It consists of two women (Alyce Garver & Sharon Wendler) who offer assistance to anyone who has newly purchased a home in Mountain Lakes. They have compiled a list of resources to help ease the transition into town and would be glad to meet with anyone new and offer their support. Andy Bulfer put information about them in the Community section. Blair Wilson requested that a note be put on the front page as well. Bulfer agreed to do so.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer put information about the 9-11 Memorial Ceremony prior to the dedication. He later took it off after the Ceremony.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer installed the October Home and School Bulletin in its entirety on the Web site. This is something he does every month.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer updated the Library New Acquisitions page. This is a list of new books in the Library. It is apparently a popular feature of the Library Web page. Updating it is also something Bulfer does roughly every month.
  
  
• Emily Wolfe put a patriotic jpg on the front page, urging everyone to register to vote.
  
  
• Emily Wolfe put up-to-date information about the Medical Needs Foundation including material about the Spirit 5K and the Rockaway Country Club fund raiser.
  
  
• Mark Watrous updated the information about the UN Weekend.
  
  

New Discussion Items

• Our hosting company, GTI of Morristown, is moving us to a new server. They insist the old one is obsolete, unreliable, difficult to maintain, and insecure. Unfortunately this will be a lot of work for the Web committee. A new server is already in place beside the old one. While the work is being done, the old server will continue to operate. All the users with their passwords will have to be installed on the new machine. There are 35 users on the current machine including all the users at Borough Hall who use it for e-mail, the community organizations who manage their own Web content, and the members of the Web Committee. All the Web files of which there are thousands, will have to be tarred up (a Unix term meaning packaged into one big file), copied over to the new server, and untarred (unpacked). Then thorough testing will have to be done. When all is in readiness, DNS will be switched and the new server will take over the load. Andy Bulfer said he planned to work with Mark Watrous, another computer expert who is relatively new to the Web committee, to plan and execute the move. Hopefully it can be done smoothly. A side benefit is it will bring Watrous up-to-speed on the details of the Web site.
  
  
• The committee has been informed that some of our Web pages do not display properly on some computers. OUR PAGES ARE ALL TOTALLY VALID HTML/JAVASCRIPT. However, it turns out that there is a heavy-handed Norton Symantec Pop-Up Ad blocker that interacts improperly with the valid javascript function we use to scramble and hide e-mail addresses from spammers whose bots to roam the Web looking for valid e-mail addresses. We are not alone in having this problem with Symantec. There has been a lot of discussion of it in various Internet forums. Unfortunately, no solution is known other than to tell Symantec customers to turn off the ad blocker software and/or complain to Norton.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer mentioned that Borough continues to put material in the Home and School Bulletin that is not on the Web site. Most recently the details of Trash Day including prices and policies were in the H&S Bulletin but not on the Web site. We need to urge Borough Hall to remember the Web site. The Health Commission is the exception. Their clinics are always announced promptly on the site.
  
  

Review of Past Items

Unfortunately, little progress has been made on the following older items:

• The Web site is getting near it's maximum allowed disk capacity. It is thought there are many unused obsolete files on the system. Andy Bulfer has a program to identify such files. He has run it and has generated a long list of unused files but has not removed them yet. A good time to do this is in conjunction with the migration to the new server.
  
  
• Jay Eveleth, the Shade Tree representative, has told Andy Bulfer in the past that the Shade Tree Commission wishes to have some type of interactive page in which a person can put in their address and determine how wide the Borough Right-of-Way is adjacent to their property. The details have not yet been worked out and Bulfer has not heard from Eveleth. He will contact him to find out the status.
  
  
• The committee decided last time to draft a letter to all the committees and community organizations telling them how to create their own material for the site. Emily has been assigned to draft a proposed letter for the committee to review but she has not done so yet.
  
  
• Last time, Blair proposed a new committee member, John Riley. This time she also mentioned Jimmy Emr. Andy Bulfer will contact them.
  
  
• A project to display in the “What’s New” section, the material on the Bulletin Board (the physical one on the corner) has been discussed often by the committee. However, it has always appeared too burdensome for the Bulletin Board volunteers. Although at one time it had been planned to meet with the entire Bulletin Board committee, this committee is loosely organized and does not have regular meetings. Blair Wilson said a relevant member may be Elyse Ross. Wilson will contact her.
  
  
• The Garden Club has requested we update their material including officers and events listing. However, so far we have not received anything.
  
  

Date for Next Meeting

The next regular meeting will be on Weds Nov 10, 2004 at Borough Hall.

Andy Bulfer,
Chairman