March 16, 2010
Answer: In an environment where organizational leadership changes regularly, several members of the AEJMC Council of Divisions expressed a desire at the beginning of the twenty-first century to have a permanent home for their Web sites. The AEJMC headquarters agreed to handle bookkeeping arrangements and the AEJMC Network launched with four members who agreed to share the cost of commercial server space. The network rapidly grew to more than a half dozen members, and in the spring of 2006 moved to a new server to accommodate even more and bigger demands. At the beginning of 2010, more than a dozen divisions and interest groups shared space in a "server condo."
Answer: No. Over the years we have installed content management systems, blogging software, e-mail discussion lists and other utilities for our divisions. Each member organization is entitled to a limited number of "aejmc.net" e-mail addresses as well. The server also supports server-side scripting and SQL databases. These options, and some others are closely monitored because of security issues. Custom scripting or application administration is charged to the division on a case-by-case basis.
Answer: AEJMC headquarters pays the bill annually for the server and for administrative support. The bill is then apportioned equally across all divisions and interest groups who are members of the network. Each group is assessed at the national level. At this writing, it works out to something less than $5 per month per group.
Answer: You do. Each member organization is provided a personal FTP access account to your area on the server. You are free to create more folders and as many files as you can get within your allotted space. You are allotted 100 MB of storage space – which is a great deal of room unless you plan to be serving a library of video files. For people who desire the ease of a Web interface for all your content, we provide a content management syste (see next section).
Answer: Yes, and No. You have options ranging from design-it-yourself to content management software. At the self-design end, any Web-authoring software will do. This ranges from the free Composer portion of the SeaMonkey Internet application suite to more expensive high-end programs such as Dreamweaver. Many of these programs have built-in "publishing" utilities that move your files from your computer to the server for you. As an alternative method, you can create files with one program and then upload them with an FTP client. Our primary plea is that you keep all your software up-to-date. In 2005-06, we had some security breaches enabled by the use of FrontPage, which is no longer supported by Microsoft.
At the content management system (CMS) end of things, we can set up your space with WordPress, which has won prestigious prizes for both its CMS and blogging features. Whatever you choose, we have a few rules we expect everyone to follow so we can keep peace in the family and hackers, spammers and hijackers at bay.
Answer: Send e-mail to the AEJMC headquarters stating your wishes or go ahead and contact Gramps. Both places get involved eventually.
Answer: A constantly evolving library of help files is available in the "Members only" section of this Web site. Beyond those files, Gramps is available for routine help now and then, as long as y'all don't abuse his good nature.
As more AEJMC divisions and interest groups join the Network, more questions will certainly arise. Once a couple people start asking the same general questions those questions will get added to this list. If you have other questions not answered here, please do not hesitate to ask Gramps. Who knows? Somebody else may be wondering the same thing.