A meeting of the Mountain Lakes Web Site Committee was held on May 18, 2005 at Borough Hall.  In attendance were Clive Knowles, Emily Wolfe, Council Liaison Ralph Loveys and Chairman Andy Bulfer.  Absent were Mark Watrous and Jud Breslin.

Activities Since Last Meeting

• Emily Wolfe redesigned the Borough and Community Pages.  The Committee felt she did a terrific job and they now look very attractive.
  
  
• Clive Knowles completed the Notice Board on the front page.  He added an editing capability requested by Elise Ross, the Bulletin Board trustee, who reviews and approves new notices.
  
  
• Emily Wolfe fixed up the Recreation pages which are badly out of date as much as she could.  She updated the format of the front page and added content to the track pages with which she is familiar.
  
  
• Clive Knowles revised the Perl program used to display Meeting Minutes to have the display sorted by most-recent first.  It makes it more convenient for Web site visitors looking for the most recent minutes to not have to go to the end of a very long list.
  
  
• Emily Wolfe was contacted by Fran Patten, technology czar for the schools, who requested a new link on the Schools page.  Wolfe installed it as requested.
  
  
• Clive Knowles fixed up the search engine which had been broken since the migration to the new server.
  
  
• Emily Wolfe added a bio of the planned Memorial Day speaker.
  
  
• Clive Knowles with help from Emily Wolfe designed and installed 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.  The design is a blue capital M and L linked together on a field of orange.  Although it is only 16x16, it adds a professional touch and a visual identity for the Web site.
  
  

Migration to the New Server

The Committee discussed the aftermath of the move to the new server and if there is anything left to do.  Some points were:

• 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 still develop their own content if they wish and the Web Committee will upload it.
  
  
• 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.
  
  

Mountain Lakes Notice Board

The project to permit residents to upload their own community announcements was discussed.  The software system programmed by Clive Knowles was somewhat more extensive than had originally been planned because of the security and review features that were required.  The Committee felt Knowles did a great job with it and thanked him.

It was felt that too few people know about the capability.  It was suggested that a note about it be put on the inbox in Borough Hall where the Bulletin Board notices are submitted.  It was also suggested that the Borough Hall staff be briefed about it since they submit a lot of notices to the Bulletin Board.  Clive Knowles said he would do the latter and discuss the former with Elise Ross.

Review of Past Items

• It was decided to defer the Beach/Tennis tags project until next year.
  
  
• It is becoming apparent that the HTTP file uploading capability is really needed 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 has developed an awk program (awk is a computer language) to do so.  Although it can only do ASCII text files (not binary ones such as image files or pdfs) it was decided to begin using it, especially for Borough Council minutes and agendas.  Andy Bulfer said he would discuss it with Watrous.
  
  

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

• 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.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• 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.
  
  

New Discussion Items

• The Recreation, Environment, and HPC sections are badly out of date.  Ralph Loveys led this discussion.  It was decided to ask each Borough committee to update their own content.  If there are minor changes to existing material, they can simply print out the pages and mark them up.  If there is new material, we need it electronically in any of the common word processing or business graphics formats (doc, txt, rtf, ppt, wmf, etc.).  All images must be jpg or gif.  The Committee would be happy to work with anyone who is having a problem but the Web Committee can't generate the material.  Only the other committees can.
  
  
• There was discussion whether to eliminate the Houses of Worship page in favor of a more secular "Contacts Page" similar to the front page of the Mountain Lakes Telephone Directory.  No decision was made.
  
  
• There was a feeling that the front page of the Environmental Section was dowdy and dated looking.  The Committee authorized Emily Wolfe to update it.  (Andy Bulfer privately sobbed quietly at this since he was the one who designed it initially and he still thinks it looks fine.  But he was overruled.)

Date for Next Meeting

The next regular meeting will be on Wed Jun 18, 2005 at Borough Hall.  Note: this is the third Wed. 

Andy Bulfer,
Chairman