This page provides some tips about this site and how to use some of the features of this site. In particular there are features of this site that let you add media or information to the site for which the tips here may be very useful.

The following topics are available below:

1. Why did the site switch to a different web site hosting service?

2. Site security model

3. Ensuring your classmate profile information is correct

4. Website features that allow you to update media and information on our Class Website

Why did the site switch to a different web site hosting service?

Our original, homestead.com, service was requiring us to migrate our class site to a new version of their site builder tooling which was going to be a lot of work and was taking away some function, Guest Book support for example, that we were dependent on. This prompted a look for other alternatives where we found that a new, myevent.com, service was a much better match for a class site and, with a 3 year subscription at $100/yr, would save us around $30/yr.

So, our ehs65.com class site has been migrated over the myevent.com hosting service where our classmates can help keep the site updated by maintaining their own profile, uploading images, adding memorials for classmates that pass, adding tributes to the memorials, posting information to the Guest Book various other options that were not available under the original site. Also, the design of the new site automatically provides for rendering it for easy viewing on mobile devices.

As a related item with this switch, Pat Little asked me, Bob Beetcher, to take on the primary role of migrating and maintaining our class site to/on the new service. She'll continue as class treasurer to manage the class financial account and be available as a backup for supporting communications relating to maintnenance of the site. But she wasn't comfortable taking on the challenge of learning the new myevent.com technology for hosting a site. We're all deeply indebted to Pat for her many years of supporting the original site and at this point she certainly deserves some relief from those efforts. I'm happy to help her to do that. 

Site security model

There are 3 choices for the security requirements we might impose for folks to access our class site:

1. Unrestricted: Anyone can access the site.

2. Shared password protection:  Requires a password to access. This is one general password that is shared among all who require access to the site. This method is not considered very secure as the password is shared.

3. User login required: People who require access must register on the site to obtain their login credentials. Each individual must have a valid username and password to log in and obtain access. This method is much more secure that the general password method. 

For now, and as with our original site, we have an Unrestricted security model in place. We didn't seem to incur problems using that on the original site and so it seemed reasonable to start out using that for our new site as well. If any concerns arise, we can adopt one of the other choices to restrict access to the site.

Ensuring your classmate profile information is correct

The Classmates page provides a list of classmate profiles which contains entries for most of our classmates. The main profile information that's used by the site is your home address, email address and Comment. Home address is used to show city level location for you under the "Where are they now?" map on the Classmates page. Email address allows folks to use the "Send you a Message" option on your profile to send you and email and  allows the site administrator to send out group email announcements. The Comment information is exposed to folks when they view your classmate profile.  While there are other items one can add, they're not used by the site nor are they exposed for others to see and therefore aren't important to update. The classmate profiles have been seeded with information ported over from our old class website, some of which may be old and incorrect. Therefore, it would be great if you could help verify your profile contains correct information for you, particularly for your email and mailing addresses.

Note that your profile will only display your name and personal comment (whatever biographical or other information you might choose to enter about yourself). Any other informtion, like your email and mailing address, is not visible.

Because you can't easily review your profile data, without without setting up email/password login credentials to the site, the easiest way to ensure your information is correct might be to simply use the site Contact page to send your current information to the site administrator. Although it's a little involved, you can verify and update your profile information yourself. If you're game to try, read on below for tips on how to do that.

If there isn't a classmates (profile) entry listed for you,you can register yourself with our class web site to create a profile. You do that on the Classmates page, at the start of the "Classmate Profiles" section, by clicking on the "Register" option. Then on the resulting prompt, specify your name, choice of email address and password, and click the "Register" option to login to the site. You'll then be presented with a full Profile Form where you can enter your address, etc. information as you wish to complete the form. Clicking "Save" will then register your profile with the site.

If there is a classmates (profile) entry listed for you, a quick way to verify your profile email address is correct, is to, on the display of your profile, click the "Send a message" link to send an email to your configured email address. If your profile doen't offer a "Send a Message" option or it does and you don't receive the message, you can use the site Contact page to send your current information to the site administrator.

When you have verified your email address is correct, you can review and correct any errors in your profile yourself, Doing that yourself does require though that you can login to the site with your email address and a password of your choosing. If you haven't yet established email/password credentials for logging into the site, the easiest option to do that is to use the "Forgot Password" option to configure a new password for use in logging into the site to access your profile information. That process goes like this:

1. On the Classmates page, at the start of the "Classmate Profiles" section, click the "Forgot Password" option.

2. On the resulting prompt, specify your email address and again click the "Forgot Password" option. That should respond with a message saying an email has been sent to you which will allow you to request a password reset.

3. Locate that email in your inbox under your email processor and click the link within it which should then trigger presenting you with a "Reset Your Password" prompt under your web browser. That prompt allows you to specify a new password to use for logon to our class website.

4. Enter a password of your choice into the prompts for it.  A simple password, for example "ehs65forme", should be fine for this and allow you to more easily remember it for future use. And, even if you do forget the password you set at some point in the future, you can just go through the "Forgot Password" process again to set a new one. Click "Submit" to register the new password to be used for your logon credentials.

5. On the resulting Password Reset confirmation, click "Login", enter your email/password credentials in the resulting prompt and click "Login." You should be presented with a "Your Profile" page where you can access your full profile form by clicking on the "Manage" option. 

6. Under your Profile Form, you can review and update all of the information configured for your profile.  When your changes are complete, click "Save" to update the profile.

7. At this point, your profile should be up to date. If needed in the future, you can use your credentials to login to the class site and make additional updates to your profile.

Website features that allow you to update media and information on our Class Website

The following are features of our class website that allow you to contribute updates:

1. The Guest Book page allows you to post messages to the guest book.

2. Many of the photo albums on our website offer an option for you to upload photos to the album.

3. The Memorials Page allows you to add memorials and tributes to memorials on the that page.

4. The Classmates page allows you to create a profile for yourself if it is missing or to make corrections to your profile. See the "Ensuring your classmate profile information is correct" tip above for more information on that.

Of course, if you're not comfortable making contributions yourself, see the Contact page for help contacting the administrator about any contributions you'd like help with.