Position Available: Society Webminister

28 Sunday May 2017

Posted by East Kingdom Gazette in Announcements

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The Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) is seeking candidates for the position of Society Webminister.
badge Webminister This position reports to the SCA Board of Directors.
The Society Webminister is a supervisory position, and is not involved in maintenance of the Corporate website (www.sca.org).
The Society Webminister is responsible for the following duties:

1. Ongoing development and revision of the Society Webminister’s policies and procedures, as detailed in the Society Webminister Handbook.
Said work will not only include making sure that solutions are provided for current issues, but will also include observing trends, being aware of potential issues and streamlining the Webministry as a whole to provide better service to the SCA and potential members thereof.

2. Warranting of kingdom-level Webministers, where necessary.

3. Supervision of all kingdom-level websites, including proper use of domain names, monitoring content, regular reporting from Kingdom Webministers, and enforcement of the Society Webministry policies and procedures.

4. Working with Kingdom Webministers to ensure they develop and
enforce clear guidelines for local SCA group websites based on the standards found in the Society Webminister’s Handbook.

5. Acting as a subject matter expert and resource regarding issues related to electronic publications and websites at the kingdom and local levels, including, but not limited to: copyright issues, privacy issues, and technology-related issues.

6. Quarterly reporting to the Board of Directors for the SCA, Inc.

Required for this position are: dependable email access; dependable phone access; moderate to expert proficiency in web-related technologies(e.g. HTML, Java, PSP, ASP, web hosting issues, etc.); moderate Microsoft Word proficiency; and the ability to clearly communicate via email, phone, and in written reports.

Prior experience as a Webminister in the SCA is required; prior experience as a kingdom webminister is highly desired.

Those interested in the Position of Society Webminister should submit their SCA and modern era resumes to both resumes@sca.org and it@sca.org. The deadline for applications is July 1, 2017.

Comments are strongly encouraged and can be sent to:
SCA Inc.
Box 360789
Milpitas, CA 95036

You may also email comments@lists.sca.org.

This announcement is an official informational release by the Society for Creative Anachronism , Inc. Permission is granted to reproduce this announcement in its entirety in newsletters, websites and electronic mailing lists.

A Request from the Keeper of the East Kingdom Event Calendar

11 Sunday Oct 2015

Posted by East Kingdom Gazette in Announcements, Events

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east kingdom events, event calendar, webminister

A message from Joel of Vestfell, East Kingdom Calendar Deputy Webminister:

PLEASE, if your event is not showing up on the Calendar online, PLEASE DO NOT WAIT until the last week before your event is scheduled to occur to bring this up. There are a variety of reasons why your event may not be showing up, none of which will be fixed by waiting.

First, check with your local Seneschal to see if they have not approved the posting for a reason. Take a look at this East Kingdom Gazette article for why and how they are part of the process.

Second, send an email to eventform-help (at) eastkingdom.org and ask us to get involved.

Since we instituted the Seneschal approval process back in February 2015, *every single time* an event has not appeared online, it has been related to that process.

Some of you have noticed that occasionally an event will not show up online and WILL show up in the Pikestaff. We have devised a fix for that and moving forward events that are not correctly approved will no longer appear in the Pikestaff. This not only risks your turnout for your event, but it risks loss of “official” status of your event, and therefore risks coverage under SCA Insurance, invalidates any court business, etc. PLEASE bring problems to our attention within a week of POSTING your event, rather than within a week of the event itself.

Q&A: East Kingdom Webminister

20 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by East Kingdom Gazette in Interviews

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webminister

This is one of a series of Q&A articles with East Kingdom Officers. The Gazette thanks Lord Lorenz Greylever, East Kingdom Webminister, for answering our questions.

Please describe your job responsibilities.
I am the Lead “Defender” for the East Kingdom’s Æther Realms. In other words, if it has something to do with the security, usability, accessibility and supportability of the Official on-line/Internet presence of the East Kingdom, it falls to myself and my team to make certain that it is ready for the populace of the Kingdom and its varying regions to use.
– This includes but is not limited to:
.. Every Local branch, Kingdom Office and Royal Guild website that exists for the Eastern Realms
.. Email forwards and Email lists for each Local branch, etc
.. Email lists for the Polling Orders
Educating the East Kingdom populace about what the Office of the Webminister is and how it helps the Kingdom, but more importantly, what the Office is not.
– Reducing the confusion surrounding several aspects of the services available to the Kingdom, including but not limited to:
.. The East Kingdom Calendar of Events (working with the Chronicler and Pikestaff Editor). The Webministry only makes certain that the Calendar is up and functioning properly. We do not police for content or completion of the entries for inclusion in the Pikestaff. The Local branch Seneschal and the Kingdom Chronicler do these tasks.
.. The East Kingdom Order of Precedence (working with the Office of the Brigantia Herald). The Webministry only makes certain that the website for the op is active and accessible. All content is supplied and updated by the Shepherd’s Crook Herald, or by a designated Webminister assistant when needed.
o Training Local branch, Kingdom Office and Royal Guild Webministers in best practices for website design and use. You do not have to be a modern webmaster to be a Webminster for the East, however knowing some basics will go a long way in supporting the website the Webminister has.
o Overseeing the 150+ websites and making certain that all are in compliance with Modern, Society and Kingdom acceptable use policies.
o Overseeing the 1700+ email addresses that are used throughout the Kingdom for proper use by the designated Officer.
o There’s certainly more, but you’ll never get this to print if I don’t stop somewhere. Continue reading →

About the EK Server Difficulties

24 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by East Kingdom Gazette in Official Notices

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webminister, websites

This just in from Baron Mael Eoin mac Echuid, EK System Administrator. He encourages anyone who detects any problems he might not already know about to contact him directly. ( E-mail Baron Mael Eoin )

Greetings to the populace of the Kingdom,

As everyone is aware, there are issues with our old sever at this time, causing much frustration with regards to the Kingdom site in general and the EK Calendar in particular.

While we’re trying to get the hosting company to help in any way, I have copied all of the events during one of the interludes where the database was briefly working and manually recreated the Event list as it was.

Yes, this does include the issue of “the data is a month old”. We’re, again, trying to get the hosting company to tell us why that is since we had nothing to do with that. We’d also like them to restore our data, but communication with them is spotty and they’ve not been proactive about informing us of any issues or actions that have (obviously) taken place. Any updates or changes to listed events can be sent to me and I will manually update the listing as soon as I can.

It has been quite a frustrating few months, we know, and this appears to be the bitter cherry atop a whole cake of layers of frustration. Explanations won’t help much… At the end of the day, it’s affecting the dissemination of information, updates on events, the ability to get addresses and directions…

We want to mitigate further issues and get things back to as smooth as they should be. The successes of the past few months of migration are significantly diminished by the huge, recurring issues. Most or all local groups have been moved successfully and are working as expected, but that doesn’t help us all when we’re trying to get to Coronation or check on when 12th Night is, or what’s going on with K&Q Rapier.

Again, we apologize. We’re switching our focus from trying to fix the broken old server (to get the last of the Kingdom off of it) to recreating the site and information in whatever usable manner we can manage on the new server and try and cut everything over ASAP to cut those ties with the old. Customer service with the old hosting company was one of the main reasons Alesone and I started looking into this project 2 years ago. It’s just unfortunate that what was an annoyance for years (for us) has turned into a major annoyance for all, now.

That we’re not in a better position to lean on the new server, I personally apologize. We didn’t know all of the custom services and code that was holding everything up, as there was no documentation. While Lorenz and I have been figuring it out (and documenting) as we went along, it was slow going, especially with RL and other SCA obligations being what they are.

In the end, we know that as tired and frustrated he and I may be, everyone else is likely moreso, and not without reason. We do thank you for the support and any understanding that has been shown and we fully understand and share the frustrations.

If there are specific things that we can help with, know that we may be even busier than normal in trying to sort this situation out, but that we would like to know what we can do to bridge any gaps, update any listings or the like.

Mael Eoin mac Echuid
EK Sysadmin

Web Team Working on Migration Issues

16 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by East Kingdom Gazette in Official Notices

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email discussion lists, webminister, websites

badge Webminister Lady Raffaella Mascolo, EK Webminister, and her team are working to resolve the issues that remain from the server migration over the weekend. She assures the Gazette that solutions will be achieved as soon as possible, and asks everyone affected to please have patience.

Most changes were implemented gradually and with minimal impact over the last month or so, but many people have been affected by the more visible purging last Friday of all the e-mail discussion lists hosted on the EK servers. Note that there were many special interest lists and officer staff lists affected, not just the award Order discussion lists, and some lists’ administrators and subscribers did not realize that they would be affected by the final move last Friday.

The subscribers of every list “at eastkingdom dot org” were purged, and only the list titles and administrators were set up on the new server. Members of the lists were instructed to re-subscribe beginning today (see Mailing List Migration), but the transfer has been complicated by the many people who attempted to re-subscribe between Friday and Sunday.

If you tried today to re-subscribe to any lists, your request is probably pending approval by the administrators of each list; you should receive an automated message when your request is approved. If your request was made before today, it may or may not be pending. To this writer’s knowledge, NO approval messages have gone out, except for lists that can be joined without administrator approval. If you have not yet received an approval message, please wait a day or so before worrying, re-trying or inquiring.

The best way to re-subscribe to the Order discussion and polling distribution lists is through the Polling Lists page.

For other lists (such as “exchequers” or “ekchatelaines”, etc.) send an e-mail from your account to: listname-join@lists.eastkingdom.org
substituting listname with the actual name of the list you wish to join; the message body and subject line can be left empty, or just put “subscribe”.

Some special interest groups may be taking this opportunity to set up new e-mail lists hosted elsewhere. If a list you were on has another way of communicating with its members (such as a FaceBook page or Google Group), check there for instructions.

Update, 6:30pm June 16, 2014:

Greetings,
The moderators for the lists / polling orders have been informed that the
lists are active again. PLEASE give them time to approve all requests to
join back to discussion lists and polling order lists.
YIS,
Raffaella Mascolo
EK Web Minister

East Kingdom Mailing List Migration Begins Today

13 Friday Jun 2014

Posted by East Kingdom Gazette in Official Notices

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eastkingdom.org, email discussion lists, mailing lists, pollings, server migration, webminister

This morning, anyone who is subscribed to a mailing list through the eastkingdom.org domain (including the discussion lists for all the Kingdom orders) recieved an email notifying them they have been unsubscribed from the list.

This ‘purge’ of the mailing lists is one small part of a long-planned part of the of the migration of the web servers which host the eastkingdom.org domain.

The email discussion lists (which include both the order lists and officer-specific lists such as the Seneschal’s list and the Exchequer’s list) will be available again on Monday, June 16th. However, the list and web administrators are taking an opt-in approach to the process of re-subscribing, which means that people who wish to continue to subscribe to these lists must manually resubscribe starting on Monday. It is very important that you do not re-subscribe before Monday, June 16th.

To resubscribe, or to see a list of email lists affected, click here. Again, please do not re-subscribe before Monday, June 16th.

Eastkingdom.org mailing lists to be purged.

19 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by East Kingdom Gazette in Official Notices

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webminister

Posted on behalf of the EK Webminister (direct questions to
webmaster@eastkingdom.org)

As part of the migration to a new server, all mailing lists hosted at eastkingdom.org (minus the admins) will be purged starting on April 21, 2014. Subscribers will be able to re-subscribe to the lists on April 24th, 2014.

This action will not affect the second pollings of Prince Brennan & Princess Caoilfhionn

WordPress Accounts

14 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by East Kingdom Gazette in Official Notices

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webminister, websites

Greetings!

If you are the webminister for an eastkingdom.org hosted site (local group, guild, etc.) that uses WordPress, please read the following:

http://blog.hostgator.com/2013/04/11/global-wordpress-brute-force-flood/

There are attacks being leveled at WordPress-powered sites and any site that has a weak password will be especially vulnerable. If you can take the time to change your site’s password(s), please do so.

Seneschals, please be sure your webministers have read and understand the implications of this notice.

If there are any questions or concerns that your site may have been compromised or otherwise affected, please let us know. We’ll do what we can.

In Service,
Mael Eoin mac Echuid
EK System Administrator, EK Webminister’s Office

Note from Gazette: this article was distributed by the EKSA two days ago so the problem may have been resolved by now.

East Kingdom Gazette

~ Covering the Eastern Realm of the SCA

Tag Archives: webminister

Position Available: Society Webminister

A Request from the Keeper of the East Kingdom Event Calendar

Q&A: East Kingdom Webminister

About the EK Server Difficulties

Web Team Working on Migration Issues

East Kingdom Mailing List Migration Begins Today

Eastkingdom.org mailing lists to be purged.

WordPress Accounts