BB&C Web Pages

Purpose

The purpose of the BB&C webpages (in no particular order) is to:

1. Provide timely club news.
2. Help members learn how to access and use our services.
3. Describe club activities and facilities.
4. Make HTML and PDF editions of our print newsletter produced by our Publications department available on-line.
5. Provide restricted access by club members to our membership database and to private club information.
6. Provide secure Internet access by club officers to important private club documents.
7. Foster participation in club activities by giving members interested in webpage design an opportunity to participate in the production of our webpages.
8. Publicize the club to local residents and to the world.
9. Demonstrate to the general public that amateur computer users can produce useful and interesting web pages.
10. Reciprocate for the help we get from vendors by providing news and links to their user group support sites.
11. Support the Association of PC User Groups.
12. Recognize the contribution of club volunteers.

Perhaps the overriding consideration is: we are amateurs. We must allow relatively new and unsophisticated members to participate at their level. While we would like to produce professional-looking pages, that is not our priority. Participation by our members is and should be our prime goal.

To this end, our web editors are free to use the HTML editor they prefer and to develop their own style. We guide them with templates, general guidelines, and other help. However, working at the lowest common denominator would be a mistake. We must challenge our editors. One way we do that is our use of PHP and MySQL for database access. We keep the door open for any web editor to introduce new pages and ideas.

Tools Used

Text: TextPad is used by the webmaster for these pages. Some pages, such as the O'Reilly User Group News and the web edition of our newsletter are generated from specially designed PHP scripts.

Images: Images on most pages have been enhanced or edited with Adobe Photoshop. Adobe Illustrator is used for some illustrations.

PDF: Adobe Acrobat is used for our newsletter pdf editions which are exported by our newsletter editors from our paper editions produced using Adobe InDesign.

DataBase Tools: PHP and MySQL maintained by the Systems department are used for accessing our membership and other databases and for limiting access to private pages.

Servers: HighSpeedPlus provides the server for our main pages (www.bbc.org). Most pages that access our database (bbs.bbc.org) run from a Linux Apache server in our clubhouse managed by the Systems department. (News and club mail are also provided from the clubhouse server managed by our Systems department.)