Website Changes for Christmas

Merry Christmas!!!

As you are undoubtedly aware by now, I have made a few modifications to this website that I need to explain.  Some of you may have noticed that the website only had a message that said maintenance was being performed for most of today that allowed me time to make the necessary changes and modifications to this live website that I had already made on my test server.

Website Design
I am certain that many of you do not know and could care less but this website was built using a simple “theme” for WordPress, which is a very popular “content management system” (cms), that is freely distributed on the internet.  Since I built that “theme,” a new technology has been developed for WordPress that consists of a WordPress “framework” that allows a website designer or user to access many useful features of WordPress without the need to modify the underlying WordPress code.  One of the two major suppliers of this new technology is StudioPress who has developed a “framework” for WordPress that they call “Genesis” which is actually a “theme” for WordPress that allows designers and users to modify various “child themes” for use on different websites.

My point in explaining the above “goobbedygook” is to inform you that I have purchased this “new technology” and have used it to redesign this website.  While that redesign is minimal in appearance, it is substantial in operation and it is obviously noticeable to our membership.  That redesign took me about of a week to tweak it to look as it does now and the other modifications took about another week.

Member Forum
The most important modification to the website will be the inclusion of a new “Member Forum” for our pension membership that will be accessed by clicking the “Member Forum” button at the end of the menu.  This will be achieved by the use of what is known as a WordPress “plugin” called Simple:Press.  The importance of this new Forum is that it will provide us with a place where any comments or statements we make will NOT be indexed by the major search engines and will NOT be visible to anyone who is NOT a member of our pension fund.  While the main website will still be open to the public, this new Forum part will operate kind of like the LRFOP website in that you will have to “login” to be able to access that portion of the website.  That is necessary to keep out anyone who is NOT a member of our pension fund.

As I am sure you can guess, such a Forum will permit our membership to converse with one another in virtual privacy without fear that anyone else will see what they may say on the internet.  Thus, you can say pretty much whatever you wish to one another in that private Forum but you may NOT repost anything written in our private forum into any other place on this public website or into any other public or private website to maintain the confidentiality of our private Forum.  For example, if you have a “FaceBook” page, do NOT “copy and paste” or reproduce in any manner anything contained in our private forum onto that FaceBook page.

After clicking the “Member Forum” button in the main menu, you will “login” to the Forum by clicking the little “Login” button on the top, right side of the “Forum” screen, and enter your username and password you set up when you registered for this website and click the small “login” button (it looks blank) or hit the “enter” key on your keyboard.  If you have never registered for this website but have been receiving my emails AND you are a member of our pension fund, you can simply login using your first and last name and a simple “universal” password that I will supply via email to all our membership in the next few days and then, click the little “login” button or hit the “enter” key on your keyboard.  Of course, it is extremely important that NO one other than our membership be given that “universal” password to prevent any unauthorized access to our Forum.  If you registered with this website but can’t remember the username or password you registered with or you experience other problems logging into the Forum, just call me to sort out that problem.

The FIRST thing anyone will do after logging into the Forum for the first time using the “universal password” or your real password is to change that password by entering it twice in the lines provided and clicking  the “Update Profile” button to change the password to one you can easily remember.  If you have a password from when you registered with this website, just re-enter it and it will remain.  After changing the password, you will see a notice that your profile has been changed.  You can then click on the search button to go to the main Forum screen.

Once that is done, you can go to the Forum and read any listed “Topic” of discussion by simply clicking on the forum you wish to view and then click on any link in the “Topics” column.  That topic will then open and you will be able to read whatever anyone said about it and add your own reply by clicking the small “New Post” button near the top of the Forum or, you can open an entirely new topic for discussion by clicking the “New Topic” button.  To get things started, I have entered a “Topic” for discussion of my own in both Forums to show you how the system works.  After reading those short posts, you can enter any new topic of discussion you may wish and see how your fellow pension members may respond.  Of course, you will have to perform a simple math problem before you can finish a new post or topic.  Always be sure to “Logout” of the Forum when you have finished posting or reading it.

Setting up this Forum has been a new and demanding task for me that isn’t over yet and I hope you will understand that it may have a few “glitches” until I see how it works with more posts.  Because this Forum is “private,” I hope our membership will feel more comfortable posting their comments on this Forum than they may have felt posting them onto this public website.  Oh yes, another thing you can do on the Forum is to send other retired officers a “pm” or private message that will go directly to their “inbox” on this Forum without it being seen by our other pension members.

Other Changes
Besides the design changes and the inclusion of the Member Forum, I have also modified the main menu structure a little bit to find information a little easier.  Also, the front page will now display and excerpt of my two latest “My Observations” articles as well as other articles and excerpts below those to allow you to find these articles a little easier.  I also implemented a new “Upcoming Events” calendar that is pretty neat but the Google map does not show up in the small view when using Internet Explorer for some reason.  It works fine in Firefox which is a better browser anyway but most still use Internet Explorer.  Finally, I added a long and boring congressional hearing on pensions Video at the top of the right side panel.  That is were I expect to place the Videos of our pension meetings once I start producing them or, perhaps, I’ll just enter it on a page.  If any of you have any suggestions for any other improvements, I’d love to hear about them.

I hope you like these improvements to the website because this is all I can afford to give my retired friends from the LRPD for Christmas.

Merry Christmas!!!