The Chamber's Dreamweaver HTML website built and maintained by Terry and Ann Miller ( denalidomehome.com ) for so many years is soon to be retired. The Millers tirelessly chased after new memberships and maintained the current ones for many, many years and faithfully kept the Chamber's website up-to-date and running.

But with time and technology being what they are, they never stand still. The days of non-database driven websites are quickly coming to an end as the Internet world moves faster and faster - and expects more and more from itself every day. Today's world of technology in which we live is a world where everything requires the specialist - even in Alaska. Just as you could not become a dog musher or B & B operator by accident, neither could you accidently learn the complexities of Information Technology.

I've written this article for the Greater Healy/Denali Chamber of Commerce membership to help them understand what has changed and why the change is necessary.

Many years ago when I first started dbReporter.com, I learned a hard lesson: having the presentation and content "hard-coded" in every html page quickly becomes a huge nightmare to maintain. This is the main reason why the "CMS" (Content Management System) has become so widely used; from Wordpress for blogging, to Drupal for community sites (like denaliwebs.com), the CMS give the webmaster the ability to separate data (website content - i.e. stories and articles) from its presentation (coloring and formatting).

I used to get up early every morning and "scrape" the NOAA weather forecast from its pages and update my weather calendar. This whole process could take 15 to 30 minutes, and at best was quite a pain. By automating the process through the use of a database and a web language like PHP or ColdFusion, up-to-the-minute forecasts are available to every visitor in a fraction of a second. Unfortunately, the process of putting together such a page is seldom as easy as gluing PVC pipe and fittings together to make a functional water system that works. There are things you have to know and understand to accomplish this task that require much study and experimentation - in other words, you have to specialize.

What's to come

There are a few things we (the Chamber's Board of Directors and me) would like eventually have. This short list is:

1. Members should be able to have control of all their contact and business information without any assistance.
2. Membership purchasing should be available on-line.

The above two items are the big ones, and they will take a bit of time. Security is the name of the game here, so nothing can be done willy-nilly. The near-term features would be:

1. An FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) which should take some of the burden from whomever is operating the Chamber building in the summer.
2. An e-mail newsletter system that is run from the website. Everything that is created and sent out will be kept in the database. They can even be sent automatically at a scheduled time and date.
3. An easy-to-use downloading system for Chamber and member documents (brochures, or whatever).
4. An up-to-date membership listing for Board members and the public in Adobe Reader format (PDF).

In addition to the above, we will be including member-supplied pictures in the member listings. They won't be large (200px width X 100 to 200px height), but they can also be used as rotating banner ads in the right sidebar of the website. (I'll need Board approval for that one:)

But the big item, from a webmaster's point of view, is that now board members can have access to the website's CMS for posting news, creating newsletters, etc., so these types of activities do not have to fall on the shoulders of just one person.

These last four items will slowly take shape in the next month or two. The first two items are long-term goals that will be dealt with during the 2007-2008 off-season. It's my sincere hope that we may all benefit from the new website and prosper in the coming years ahead.