Tag Archives: websites

Kingdom Website Redesign Planned

10 Sunday Dec 2017

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Greetings Unto the Good People of the East!

arms EastI write to you today as the new Deputy Kingdom Webminister for Design. As you know the webministry is in the process of significant upgrades to our systems. This will include our EastKingdom.org site. I’d like to talk to you about plans and opportunities for participation. 

Technology evolves rapidly. One goal will be to migrate the site onto a new platform which is in line with current best practices and usability. That will be managed by the Webministry. Where we would like to invite members of the populace to contribute is the “look and feel” of the new site. Come the New Year I will be seeking submissions for a new visual design for www.eastkingdom.org. I tell you now NOT to overburden anyone at this busy time of year, but to plant a seed that may germinate in your minds.

badge WebministerFurther details for those who may be interested in participating:

  • I will draft the guidelines and finalize requirements with the Webministry staff during December/early January.
  • By mid-January provide the requirements and scope of the project/ high-level information architecture along with any rules. Take public questions from then until submissions open.
  • By Birka, begin accepting design submissions and accept them through the end of February.
    • During the visual design submission timeframe I will be working with select webministers and content owners on eastkingdom.org (NOT yet all of the sub-sites) to plan the content organization and text. Surveys will be shared to gather populace needs and opinions as well as looking at metrics in the various logs our servers keep.
  • During March, we will pare down the designs to those that best meet the requirements and then gather our panel of judges to discuss their feedback and make a selection. The panel will be comprised of Their Majesties, Their Highnesses, our Kingdom MoAS, and myself. We will notify all parties of the selection.
  • In April, begin working with the winning team on implementing the design on a development site.
  • Debut the new site at the 50th Celebrations in June.

If you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to write to me at web-design@eastkingdom.org. I will do my best to answer questions – or develop answers – as we move this process along.

Yours in service to Kingdom and Crown,

Baroness Christina Jenevra de Carvalhal

Deputy Webminister, Design
East Kingdom

SCA Artisans List Website Launched

19 Friday May 2017

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Tamaris painting. Image via Wikipedia commons, from an uncited French manuscript of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Des Cleres et Nobles Femmes, 1403.

Greetings all from the Kingdom A&S Minister, Master Philip White.

One of my goals in this office is to connect people with teachers and make learning more accessible. I’d like to see people working with other artisans more easily and to become better partners while developing a stronger community.

Another one of my goals is to not reinvent the wheel. If we have people already working on projects then let’s see if the East Kingdom can benefit form them too.

Master Lorenzo, from Meridies, has been working on an SCA Artisans List.
Click on the link and give it a look!

SCA Artisans Website

Full disclosure! Please note!
* The Mobile Interface is read-only.
* This is a work in process!
* There will be edits and improvements.
* We know it is not perfect.
* The list has been pre-loaded based off of the Order of Precedence published online.

I’ve tried it myself! I set up my registration and logged in. I’ve updated my information and finished setting up my account.

It is really easy to use.

The more people who participate the better the tool can become. There is a name search function but also by group or State or interest.

We could also even use this for local groups to register artisans, or set up judging, or classes, or something other things. There are options!

Remember… Have fun! Teach! Learn!

Your Servant to Command,

~p.w.

Call for Content – EK Rapier Website

14 Thursday Apr 2016

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Unto the Rapier Combatants of the Kingdom of the East do I, Master Frasier MacLeod, send greetings,

We have recently changed Webministers for the EK Rapier website. I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to Mistress Analeda Falconbridge for stepping in at a difficult time and keeping the site afloat and viable until a permanent Webminister could be found.

Our new Webminister, Lord Brian of Stonemarche, has asked me to put out the call for CONTENT! If there is an article, an essay, a class, a presentation, or anything along those lines you think would make the Rapier website better and more useful, let us know! Feel free to send it along to Brian and myself, with a copy of the SCA Creative Work Copyright Assignment/Grant of Use Form found here: Link to Release so we can use your work legally and with your permission.

The EK Rapier website is for all of YOU, and without you we can’t make it better. Help us turn the site into something other kingdoms will look at and go “Wow, I wish my website was cool like the East’s is”.

In Service,

Master Frasier MacLeod, KRM, East

Rapier Website Woes

18 Sunday Jan 2015

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badge marshal rapierFrom the Kingdom Rapier Marshal:

Greetings all,

As many of you are well aware, the East Kingdom Rapier Website is experiencing difficulties right now.  The link to the current rules is down.  I want to let everyone know that we are working on it as we speak.  I have been in touch with Lord Lorenz, the Kingdom Webmaster and we currently have a Webmaster at Large working on the issues and hope to have them resolved soon.  I very much appreciate all your patience.  I’ll be in touch with updates as they come along.

In Service,
Don Frasier MacLeod, KRM, East

About the EK Server Difficulties

24 Wednesday Sep 2014

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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 )

badge WebministerGreetings 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

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badge WebministerLady 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

Changes to SCA Inc. Website

14 Saturday Dec 2013

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SCA Inc. websiteIn early December, the SCA.org website got a new look.

The motivation behind the “facelift” was the recent debut of the SCA Newcomers’ Portal.  “We wanted to add a very noticeable link to the Portal, so that visitors and new members could easily find their way there,” said Mistress Jessa d’Avondale, Webmaster of SCA.org *. “This led to streamlining the front page, which previously had 4 different sections and menus, and left plenty of room in the center for a large slideshow of photos.”

The new SCA.org front page features photographs of SCA participants from the SCA Digital Scribes Program, along with five buttons with prominent links for new members (the Newcomers’ Portal, On-line Membership, and Kingdom Lookup), and for existing members (the SCA Marketplace, and the Kingdom eNewsletter website).

A lighter-colored background on all pages provides more contrast for the text, and the website’s menus have been consolidated into one main menu at the top of the screen, to make it easier for visitors to navigate their way around the site.

Please send feedback and suggestions to Mistress Jessa *

* Mistress Jessa is responsible for the contents of the SCA.org website. Please note this is a separate office from the Society Webminister, Baroness Alesone, who is in charge of electronic publications, oversees the kingdom websites, and makes policy about local group websites.

Message from the Tyger Clerk of the Signet

02 Thursday May 2013

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Greetings, everyone.

As mentioned in the recent copy of the Pikestaff, the Policies for the Tyger Clerk of the Signet and our webpage have recently undergone some changes.

The old website will soon begin redirecting to the new one. This page may still undergo some aesthetic tweaks here and there over the years, however, due credit goes to Isabel Chamberlain for switching us over from the old format (Joomla) to the new format in WordPress.

Updated policies may be found on the new website also. These policies are available in a downloadable PDF on the site, and all scribes are asked to please read these new policies over and adhere to them. Please feel free to direct any inquiries or suggestions about the new policies to the Tyger Clerk of the Signet; these policies are not “written in stone”, but a living document, which I expect will change according to our needs for a while to come.

Yours in Service,
Kayleigh

WordPress Accounts

14 Sunday Apr 2013

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Webminister badgeGreetings!

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.