CyberArtisans Newsletter Vol 5, Number 8

Welcome to the August issue of the CyberArtisans monthly newsletter! Yes, we skipped the July issue. Our apologies, but it came down to a choice of producing a newsletter or tending to a kid in the hospital. We chose the latter.

Our goal is to present information that will be useful to you as a website owner and as a user of the web. If these newsletters are useful, please forward this to a friend. To unsubscribe, follow the directions at the bottom of this email.

This Month's Topics
Websites for Organizations
Security Note for Windows Users

Websites for Organizations

Traditionally, professional organizations have not been well-served on the web. Their needs are often ambitious: they need pages to service all sorts of functions for their members. Usually these functions required database transactions. Until recently, these have been expensive services to implement, and professional organizations are rarely flush with money. If they were lucky they found a member capable of doing it. If not, they often suffered with an inadequate website.

We are happy to tell you that those times are past. Database functions have been getting cheaper to implement as more code is written and offered to web developers for low prices or even free. Here are some neat examples that can now be done with a member database for a very reasonable price:

1. New member join pages. From these pages a new member can enter all relevant information and pay his/her fees online using an inexpensive and secure PayPal transaction. Your secretary/treasurer gets an email with the new member's information, and the new member's information is added to the database. The membership fee goes into your PayPal account instantly. You can transfer funds from your PayPal account to your organization's primary bank account at any time.

2. Current members renewal. On this page, the member can review the data you have in the database about him/her, update that information as necessary, select the type of membership if that's an option in your organization, and then pay the appropriate fees through a secure PayPal transaction.

3. Membership information update. Your members can update their information (address, phone, email, etc.) online. It's fast and easy and nobody in the organization has to be involved. If you want, email can be sent to someone in the organization noting the change.

4. Administrative pages. These pages can only be accessed via a username and password. If you wish, several different username/password combinations can be used. Once into the administrative pages, qualified members of your organization can update member information, including usernames and passwords. This allows you to make changes to the member database, get a list of members whose membership is about to expire, and to lock out anyone if that ever becomes necessary.

5. Events pages. If you are running a special event, we can set up pages to announce the event, accept payments for the event, and produce a list that your people can use to check visitors in at the door.

6. Find a member. If your members would like referrals from the organization, you can put in a function that lists all the members within a specified distance from any area code. Especially useful for practitioners of many kinds.

And remember that listing members and their websites is an easy way for an organization to provide additional benefits to members. It gets referrals directly and it helps the members' position in the search engines.

If you are a member of an organization that needs these services, or you know of one, refer them to us. We can help!

Security Note for Windows Users

There recently have been some big security holes revealed in Windows. Microsoft has issued patches but it's important that make sure your computer is patched. Check Microsoft Update (go to microsoft.com, click on Microsoft Update, and follow the instructions) to be sure you have the latest updates.

Unfortunately, updates are no longer just an issue of security for your computer. Some of the holes revealed recently open your computer to people who want to use banks of unprotected computers as weapons against other computers. Your computer could be part of a Denial of Service attack on a government, corporate, or private system with no indication to you. Keep your protection current, both for your own sake and for the sake of the rest of us on the Internet.

Thanks for joining us this month. See you next month.

Want to see back issues of this newsletter? Go to http://www.cyberartisans.com/newsletter and select an issue.

Jonathan Spencer
CyberArtisans Web Developers

http://www.cyberartisans.com/
617-987-0514