Custom web addresses
Your website’s address will be in the aiche.org/community/sites/[name-of-entity] format (e.g. http://www.aiche.org/community/sites/local-sections/st-louis or http://www.aiche.org/community/sites/divisions-forums/environmental-division). Short urls like http://www.aiche.org/st-louis can be created for marketing purposes. At this time, we are unable to support arbitrary domain names (e.g. http://www.MyPreferredName.org) in general.
Mailboxes and aliases
At this time AIChE is unable to provide generic mailboxes corresponding to your website’s address. Until such capability is available, if necessary, we can issue one email aliases (forwarding addresses) in the name@aiche.org format (not @yoursite.aiche.org). These email addresses will just forward emails to mailboxes designated by you and do not have features such as SPAM filtering, etc. Alternatively, you can use 3rd party email services or your own email addresses.
Broadcast e-mails
We recommend using http://mailchimp.com/pricing/
Highly structured system
Note that:
- The system is highly structured: there are standard “positions” for the logo, banner, navigation menu, etc. Similarly, the homepage has panes for ‘Announcements’, ‘Events’, and other types of content.
- The system aims to automate routine web work: e.g. “announcements” will automatically disappear after specified expiry-dates, “events” will automatically move from ‘upcoming’ to ‘recent’, etc.
- The system automatically includes related content from the main website: awards (from the AIChE awards database), lists of members and leaders (from the AIChE member database), and related videos (where applicable). This has the advantage of avoiding discrepancies between the main AIChE website and entity sites.
No custom programing
- Your designated entity web maintainer will not have access to low-level programming capabilities. The design system provides a growing number of click-&-configure features to meet common needs without any programming. The system aims to empower volunteers to publish content without requiring knowledge of HTML, CSS, scripting, database configuration, etc.
- Your designated entity webmaster will not have the ability to install custom software. While hosting is included in the solution, the offering is not a “hosting”-solution. If the need for a new software solution arises, we will work with you and other web maintainers to see if it is a shared requirement; if warranted and cost effective, we will extend the framework to meet the need for the benefit of all.
- The general principle and hope is that most websites will leverage the (many) features of the system, and preference will be given to adding new capabilities that can be used broadly (by all sites) rather than specially for one site.
Self-service
The offering does not include data entry services. Your designated entity webmaster(s) and other volunteers are expected to populate and maintain content. If you have an existing site, it cannot be automatically copied as-is to new environment; any existing content will have to be manually copied over by your designated web maintai er. Additionally, since we do not control your old site, redirecting the old/existing domain names to the new site’s address is your responsibility.
No built-in payment system
- The offering does not include a payment service. You will have to select a simple-payment service (e.g. Paypal, Google Checkout, Amazon Payments, etc.) and establish an account with them in your organization’s name.
- At the time of writing this document, the framework has been tested with PayPal’s “Website Payment Standard” service and Authorize.NET (used by STS Local Section). Please check with AIChE websupport before committing to use other services.
- Please check with AIChE Finance department to confirm the propriety of setting up your own accounts for receiving payments.