New AKA web site

[Barry Cooper <bjc3 at cornell_edu>]

Fellow killie enthusiasts,

This is to advise you that I am about to change the DNS for aka.org to 
point to the new server. I have put in literally hundreds of hours 
doing a complete rewrite of the site. I hope you will not be 
disappointed. If you are, well ....................

I should warn you that there may be some disruption to service during 
the next day or so. DNS changes take about 1-2 days to propagate 
through the system. I plan to install a redirect on the old site that 
should take you to the new one. However, if you have some problems 
connecting, that will be the reason.

There may also be disruptions to killietalk, as it uses the aka.org 
domain in its address. Again, please be patient.

For those of you that are lusting after online registration for the 
convention, an online registration process is present on the new site. 
As was discussed in recent weeks, I have used PayPal to provide a 
temporary solution while I work on an independent store using the 
software provided on the server. For technical reasons it was not 
possible to do so until the DNS was changed. My informal poll on 
killietalk indicated overwhelming acceptance of PayPal. For the one or 
two who were uncomfortable with it, I apologize, but this is the way it 
is.

I have also pointed out in recent days that the new site is optimized 
to use browsers of recent vintage. I have tested with MSIE 5.5 on 
Windows, Netscape 7 on Windows, MSIE 5.2 on Mac OS X, and the new Mac 
browser Safari. The latter is very elegant but is in beta and has some 
problems with some javascript on the site. The only other problem I 
have seen is that one particular page, showing information from KMI IV, 
does not render properly on Netscape 7, although it is still usable to 
some degree. It's fine on MSIE and on Safari. I am working on fixing 
that.

I am not sure how WebTV users will fare on this site. I have no way to 
test that. I know that there are a couple of people out there that use 
WebTV, which apparently does not support some very widespread and 
standard techniques used on web sites. For those people, again I 
apologize. I cannot promise that I will ever get the chance to develop 
a WebTV specific version of the site. This has been a labor of love, 
but the love is starting to fade!

Some things are still to be done. I have mentioned the independent 
shopping cart. I have also not been able to develop dynamic aspects of 
the site, using databases, for similar technical reasons. This means 
that the Notho database is yet to be done, as is the online roster. In 
fact, the whole members only section is yet to be done. I was beginning 
to feel some heat from Cornell about getting the server out of my old 
office. As there is someone new in that office, I think they have been 
patient and gracious. Still, the time had come. A project like this is 
never really complete, but this one has a few major things still to do. 
Hopefully what is there will whet your appetite and you will keep 
coming back for more.

In addition, I have been talking with BOT members about new things that 
we can offer the membership via the web site. I think you can look 
forward to seeing some interesting developments.

Finally, I look forward to your input. Helpful comments and suggestions 
will be welcome. There are likely to be a few broken links or pages due 
to the fact that I have been developing the site under a special 
development domain name. If I miss converting any URLs, they could 
break. I'm sure you'll let me know. I am also looking for volunteers to 
help with a few things. In particular, you will see that I have 
radically redesigned the gallery, and have included brief captions to 
give some information about the fish. This is incomplete. You will see 
it on some of the Aphyosemion pages, some of the Fundulopanchax, and 
some of the Nothos. I intend to complete the latter myself, but if any 
of you feel particularly comfortable with certain species, by all means 
contact me with offers to write up the short captions.

I should take this opportunity to thank a few people who have helped me 
in the project. Susan Stacey helped by lending her design talents to 
generating some of the graphics used on the site. Edd Kray has looked 
at the site as it developed and has made useful suggestions, as well as 
providing some of the captions for fish. Tony Terceira has helped by 
reviewing the site and picking up typos, etc. He has also provided 
images, old and new, and you can look forward to seeing more of his 
work appear on the site over the coming weeks.

Regards,

Barry

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