‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
‘To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing wax –
Of cabbages — and kings –
And why the sea is boiling hot –
And whether pigs have wings.’

–Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

It has been so rewarding to run the Website in a Box program. It’ s fun to see 15 Utah libraries grow their own websites.  We’ve learned along the way, and the stats for the various sites are fabulous. They are getting thousands of visitors a month, and also have their library catalogs online where a person can place a hold, or renew a book online. Residents can access Pioneer: Utah’s Online Library at every site.  There are some cool, unique sites, so look through them and see their progress.

Thanks, Shelly Drumm, for all of your help on this project. It’s been fun.
Colleen Eggett

This has been a super value to our library as we did not have a website until this project. We would not have had the money to hire a professional or even have our technician spend the time on creating one for us. This is something that we have control over and can update on our schedule- not have to wait for someone else or have to meet a deadline that doesn’t fit. We have had many comments from patrons on the value of our site. It is a great step in keeping up with the times. We are so grateful for the ability to do the work on our website ourselves and for the great service it is to the community.
Juliene Parrish
Richmond Public Library

Instructor: Shelly Drumm, BCR
Audience: Public librarians who have websites through this project
Location: Utah State Library, Computer Lab, 201

We will review the basics of setting up your pages, adding posts, adding links, news feeds, your online library catalog, and anything else you want. The last part of the session will be for help with your individual site. Come prepared to learn and do! This is a working session. Bring all those who work on your website.

Don’t own a public library website in Utah yet? Contact Colleen Eggett ceggett@utah.gov
See details about the project

I received notice today that one of us whos name shall remain nameless just got scammed by Domain Registry of America. They are sending out notices to websites that need to be renewed soon asking for $30, three times the price we’re paying.

DON”T GET SCAMMED! There are over 100,000 posts on google about this scam. See: http://trinaallen.wordpress.com/2008/04/11/domain-registry-of-america-scam/
http://www.consumerfraudreporting.org/domainnamescams.htm
Federal Trade Commission: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2003/12/domainreg.shtm

What you should do:

A. Throw away the letter if you received it
B. Request your $ back if you already paid

C. If you want to move away from us you can transfer your website to your city’s hosting service for free and pay bluehost or another vendor the $10 a year for the domain registration.  You can transfer your account at any time without charge if you are going to your city’s site.  There’s never a good reason to get scammed.

Also, if there is an upgrade to something you are using on your site (a widget, a template), it will tell you and you can just click on the upgrade and do that yourself. It’s really easy.

We will have an online workshop on using WordPress 2.7 in Jan. Watch for it on our Workshops page.

• Share some successes and rants and what’s going on with your site.
  
• What’s new in WP 2.6
  Changes in Menu
  Theme activation
  Media Manager
  Sidebar manager
• One Click Installer plugin updated
• Google Analytics

Colleen and I are hoping we can get through this stuff in the morning, leaving us all afternoon for hands on time with your sites. As always, bring questions, image files, anything you might want to add to your site!

Also – Please make sure you have a Google account set up before we start. If you’re using any Google products (gmail, blogger, picasa, google docs, iGoogle, etc) then you already have an account – and we can definitely use that!

See you next week!

(And please excuse the gratuitous BCR plug – i don’t have a lot of images on my hard drive!)

-shelly