A meeting of the Mountain Lakes Web Site Committee was held on March 09, 2005 at Borough Hall.  In attendance were Clive Knowles, Mark Watrous, and Chairman Andy Bulfer.  Absent were Jud Breslin, Emily Wolfe, and Council Liaison Ralph Loveys.

Activities Since Last Meeting

• Andy Bulfer added the current schedule of upcoming Senior Citizens events (now called "55 PLUS") and a notice for the next one on the front page.
  
  
• Mark Watrous added the March HSA Bulletin to the site.
  
  
• It was requested that the Borough Council meeting time be clarified on the Borough Council page.  Andy Bulfer made the change.
  
  
• Emily Wolfe added a new background to the front page and several internal pages.
  
  
• Mark Watrous updated the Troop 41 pages with new information.
  
  
• Emily Wolfe improved the font, size, and color of the shortcut links on the left side of the front page.
  
  
• Mark Watrous added the Recreation Commission's 2005 Goals and installed two meeting minutes that were received from them.
  
  
• Mark Watrous, Clive Knowles, and Andy Bulfer spent a great deal of time cleaning up, testing and preparing for the migration to the new server.
  
  

Migration to the New Server

The Committee discussed final plans and timing of the move to the new server.  Some points were:

• As the Committee decided last time, several organizations will no longer able to upload their own content including: Borough Hall (used for agendas/minutes), Environmental Commission, Recreation Commission.  These groups may develop their own content but must depend on the members of the Web Committee to upload it.  This is due to the characteristics of the new server which is less flexible than the old one.
  
  
• Some organizations can still manage their own content: LWV, Nite Owls, Municipal Alliance, ML Community Church, Town Club of ML, Boy Scouts Troop 41 but the Web Committee can no longer help, control, or be responsible for what they do.  They are on their own.
  
  
• The Committee has organized the new server technically so that organizations will be able to upload their own meeting minutes when HTTP Upload becomes available.  Initial candidates are Borough Council, Woodlands, Shade Tree, Lakes Management, Recreation, Web Committee.
  
  
• There was discussion of the Borough Hall impact.  There are about 22 people at Borough Hall who have e-mail addresses in mtnlakes.org.  The Committee set them up with the identical account names and passwords on the new server so that the migration should be invisible to most of them.  However, several will have to change e-mail passwords in their PCs because the new server rejected the old ones.  Andy Bulfer will make sure Gary Webb knows what has to be done.
  
  
• The search engine is not working properly.  We haven't had time to debug it.  The Committee decided to remove it temporarily from the front page until we get it working.
  
  
• The Committee reviewed the status of testing on the new server.  Comprehensive testing has revealed many minor problems such as broken links and open mailto links.  However these same defects are also on the old server so the new server will be no worse.  Other than the search engine, no fatal problems have been uncovered.
  
  
• It was decided to do the migration on Friday evening, March 11, after quitting time.  Andy Bulfer will arrange it with GTI.
  
  

Community Announcements

Beach/Tennis Tags

The project to use the Web to order beach & tennis tags was discussed.  The objective would be to make the process more convenient for residents by allowing 24x7 ordering from the comfort of their home or office.  Andy Bulfer has worked out most of the details of the design.  The Committee directed him to meet with Borough Manager Gary Webb and Borough Financial Officer Dana Merville to get their reactions and approval.  Bulfer pointed out that there is some urgency.  The sale of tags begins May 1.  The availability of the Web option should be announced to the community in the April HSA Bulletin whose deadline is March 9.  Mark Watrous suggested that he may be able to negotiate a relaxation of the deadline to March 11.  The Committee decided to submit the notice announcing the project assuming Webb and Merville approve.

NOTE: On Thu Mar 10, Bulfer met with Webb, Merville, and Ralph Loveys. The project was unanimously approved. Subsequently, the HSA article was submitted and accepted.

New Discussion Items

• The Recreation, Environment, and HPC sections are seriously out of date.  The Committee decided to defer a discussion until more members are present.
  
  
• The Committee would like to have a Favicon.  This is a tiny logo for the site that appears in the history, bookmarks, and location field in users' browsers.  Many of the big commercial sites have them such as CNN and Google.  Although it is only 16x16, it would add a professional touch and be a visual identity for the Web site.  The Committee discussed several possible designs such as a blue capital M and L linked together on a field of orange within the 16x16 size restriction.  It was decided to ask Emily Wolfe to look into it.
  
  NOTE: Since the meeting, Clive Knowles has developed several very attractive possible icons.
  
  
• Modern Web usage dictates adding a DOCTYPE statement at the beginning of all Web pages.  This specifies to the browser the version of HTML that is being used.  It is a relatively recent requirement and most Mountain Lakes pages do not have it.  It is an optional technical nicety: our pages will continue to work just fine without it although it leaves browsers free to interpret the HTML and render the page any way they wish and different browsers do it differently.  Having the statement would insure our pages are rendered consistently.  The Committee decided to add the statement to all its pages.  Andy Bulfer said he could do so without much work.
  
  

Review of Past Items

• An HTTP file uploading capability has been suggested as a way for Borough committees to upload their own meeting minutes.  We already have the capability of detecting what minutes are there and formatting a table-of-contents page for them.  A capability to upload them is the only thing remaining to be done.  Mark Watrous reported he has developed an awk program (awk is a computer language) to do so.  We had hoped for a version in perl (another computer language) since awk can't handle binary files like pdf.  However the new server doesn't have the perl library routines Mark needs.  So for now, we'll have to settle for awk and live without pdf until we can figure out a work-around. 
  
  
• In the past, we have talked of the Community Church site needing updating.  We now understand they have built their own Web site on another server.  Andy Bulfer will add a link to the new site and remove the old content.
  
  

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

• The Dept.  of Public Works is a major area that is not yet represented on the Web site.  The committee would like to have a section about them.  Emily Wolfe has been assigned to undertake this project.
  
  
• The committee decided to draft a letter to all the committees and community organizations telling them how to create their own material for the site.  Emily Wolfe has been working on draft letter for the committee to review but she has not completed it.
  
  
• We still don't know what the needs of the Police are for e-mail.  The State may require all police officers to have e-mail, 23 in the case of Mountain Lakes.  The Committee is willing to set up e-mail addresses if required but is not responsible for configuring PCs or training officers in the use of e-mail.
  
  

Date for Next Meeting

The next regular meeting will be on Wed Apr 20, 2005 at Borough Hall.  Note: this is the third Wed.  For planning purposes, assume the meeting after that will be on May 11.

Andy Bulfer,
Chairman