American Journalist Dave Barry said “The internet is the most important single development in the history of human communication since the invention of call waiting.” The internet has changed how we communicate with each other and share information, but we don’t realize how much we rely upon the internet and websites until we don’t have them at our fingertips. You may have noticed we have had a break in our Dogwood Notes this month due to website updates. As many of you know beginning the week of Oct. 21 our websites went dark for scheduled maintenance. We host over 130 different websites through our master domain of TNDAR.org, and we have been in need of migrating our websites over to a new server that would allow us to have more storage space and allow for much needed software updates. We actually ran out of space on the old server the week of the National Board of Management and for those that may have seen the Dogwood Note on the October National Board of Management meeting, may have noticed the original post had no photos due to the lack of storage.
We are blessed in Tennessee to have an incredible VIS team led by State Chair Joan Clark. Early on, before the administration even began, Vice Chair Beth Hill (public sites and chapters) began the process of determining how we could proceed with the site migration while maintaining site accessibility for as long as possible. In order to do this we had to create a brand new team to help her and Vice Chair Aimee Saunders (members site) switch the 130+ individual pages.
Hours of planning went into the migration of our webpages to the new server. Before going dark every webpage had to be backed up in case they were lost in the migration process, and every single website had to be checked for compatibility and data loss once the switch occurred. Every site also needed a temporary maintenance page as well that could appear when a site was searched during the switch so that prospective members and daughters would know why they could not access the actual websites. With both HTML and WordPress sites being supported by our domain it meant there was not cookie cutter template process that could be used for all the pages either. Needless to say, hours upon hours of work went into the state site migration process so that it went quickly and efficiently.
I want to publicly thank each member of the team that made this possible. First and foremost, thanks to Beth Hill who organized each team member’s duties, and outlined the full process and all the steps that would be needed to succeed. Ultimately she ran down the problem issue with her meticulous notes that outlined every step of the process for all 130+ websites that was preventing 2 of the word press sites from going live after the migration. Other members that were instrumental in the migration process were Amanda Ingram, Mona Smith, Jeanne Preston, Stephanie Bohrman, Liz Logan, Aimee Saunders, Robin Gregg, and Valerie Hendrix. Each of these women have given hours of their time since July to be sure that we were able to continue to use the internet and our websites to share our DAR message with both members and the public.
Our world has become much smaller with the internet, and it allows us to learn so much every day including more about our own National Society. I hope you will take time to subscribe to the blog of our own President General. This tool has become an important way to learn about our National Society as well as chapters worldwide. In the blog yesterday our own Emory Road Chapter daughters were highlighted for their use of the DAR Million Members template news release. They used the template to submit information about two of their members and this press release garnered a response from a former Tamassee student that read the write-up. I encourage you to read it here if you have not already seen it. In the coming weeks I will share more stories and photos from the schools tour along with several other events that have occurred this fall via our own blog Dogwood Notes.
And now for a bit of housekeeping and some pending deadlines. If you are a Chapter Outstanding Junior and wish to be considered for the state contest, applications must be postmarked by today, Oct. 31, 2019. The deadline for submitting recipes for the new cookbook will Nov. 1, 2019, and those need to be sent to your district vice chair. We hope to have this ready for purchase by state conference, and I am excited to see the stories that go along with your family dishes. Finally, if you are planning to attend Continental Congress in June 2020 and would like to serve on a Congress Committee please email me by Monday, November 25, 2019 at rcswimberley@gmail.com with Congress Committee Request in the subject line, and I will be sure you added to the list to receive an invitation.
In Service,
Cecile
