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Finding Things on Our Website: We planned our website to be easy to use and navigate around, but in case you are looking for something and can't find it - or just don't know where to start - here are some pointers: You can browse the site content categories by looking at the Site Table Of Contents click on a listed page to view. Of if you are looking for something specific use our Search Page click on pages in the auto generated search results page to view. Note these two tools only catalog & search the public pages - if you are searching for contact information, newsletters, committee minutes you will only find the top level public pages for those areas referenced here. If you login to the secure pages you can see the TOC & directory listings. FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions: Q. How do I get a username/password for the secure password protected areas of the site? A. You must be a member of the Troop! Members can find the details in every Troop Newsletter,
if you don't yet get the emailed newsletters Q. How do I become a member of the Troop? A. If you'd like to join the Troop contact the Scoutmaster and plan to attend a Troop meeting to get a better idea of what we do and who we are - and to get a membership application. To join the Troop you must be aged
between 11 and 17 Q. How much does it cost to join the Troop? A. Boy Scout membership costs approximately $37 for the annual registration, there are monthly dues of $1.50 per month ($18/year) and the Scout will need a uniform. Monthly activities will also have associated fees for transport, entry fees and food etc. Q. What kind of activities does the Troop do? A. We meet most weeks for regular Troop meetings these focus on advancement and other scouting skills, special presentations, training and planning for Monthly events. Occasionally we also have game nights just for fun. At least monthly we have an outdoor activity either camping, backpacking, hiking or another physical activity like skiing, climbing, canoeing, orienteering, horse riding etc. We always have a week long summer camp program and usually at least one other 3+ day trip at Fall or Spring Break. We also participate in local activities like Scout-O-Rama and Merit Badge Advancement days as well as Troop fundraising and community service projects. Q. On my browser the website text and/or menus are too big or too small what can I do about that? A. We have to accommodate many different browser types & versions and different screen resolutions. In order that the website is easily viewable on typical monitor resolutions we have chosen a somewhat larger than standard text sizes, but kept the images & menus to manageable widths. If these are too big or small for you you may scale the page to fit better with the "Zoom" (or similar) command usually under the "View" menu selection or you may change the default text sizes. On many systems you can zoom directly by holding down the 'Ctrl' key and moving your mouse's scroll wheel (if you have one) up or down. In this case text & photo's should scale and all text should also reformat to remain on the screen. You may want to set your monitor to 1024 x 768 or higher resolution, (if it can support it) for the best natural fit. Once you zoom - changing pages in that browser view should maintain the same Zoom size which should work well for all pages hosted on our website. Documents you open may need to be zoomed separately. Q. Some documents linked on the site won't download or are unreadable - why is this? A. Many documents are in Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (.pdf) - you will need to download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader Software to enable viewing of these documents via your web browser. A few other document are in Microsoft's: Word or Excel formats (so you can download and edit them). You will need to purchase these applications - or you may be able to access these documents via a school or library computer that has these tools loaded. Some other programs available as shareware or freeware may be able to open these formats - but you may have to save the documents to your computer first. Q. Why do you color code the hyperlinks? A. We want to be very clear what material is hosted directly on this site or is linked to on other sites. We also want to be clear whether external sites are official Scouting sites or third party Scouting related content sites. Hyperlinks in the normal text color are internal links within this site. Web pages on this site will always have the consistent banner with the Troop278 header & world Scout emblem as on this page. Documents hosted on this site should all have a Troop278 - Ahwatukee header. Q. Why do you require completion of the web data permission form? A. We have a established a detailed web policy that
restricts the use of personal information and photos to certain approved and
limited uses only. Before any of your information is placed on the site we
require your permission. These measures are designed to safeguard the privacy &
allowed uses of adult's and Scout's personal information. A. Scout Troop 278 pays for the website from the Troop's annual budget. The Troop website costs approximately $75 annually split about half to the professional web-hosting service (for the web server & email re-directors) and half to the URL registration (for the domain name "www.Troop278.net"). All the website maintenance and content creation and the email list maintenance is by volunteer effort. Q. I don't understand how the navigation on the site works - what are all the buttons for? A. The design goals for the Troop Website are primarily for simple to maintain, easy to navigate, consistent looking, fast downloading pages. The structure of all the pages is similar with shared (but dynamic) page boarders Top: World Scout emblem & Troop header, page title block, top level site navigation Buttons Left Side: Navigation buttons for sub-pages to this page and link buttons Center: The actual unique page contents Bottom: Troop copyright footer and page hit counter Example of Troop278 website homepage view:
All site pages look similar - see the color coded notes around the diagram above for what these areas, buttons etc are for. Buttons when clicked will take you to other linked pages, to external links or to documents. All external links with buttons are replicated as hyperlinks and color coded for their type on the main body of the page. The buttons across the top are always the same so you can easily navigate to any top level pages from anywhere on the web site. The buttons to the left show you the navigation options immediately below this page. When you are on the home page these are the same as the top row buttons. You can click on the top left World Scout Emblem or the Home button and this will take you back to the Troop 278 home page at any time. You may also use browser back & forward commands as normal at any time. If you click on the copyright footer you can send an email to the Troop 278 webmaster from any page. Q. How do I print things from the website? A. Since the background on the Troop pages is light in color you should be able to print pages legibly on any printer (color or B&W). You will probably find you need to print in landscape orientation (or on browsers that support it scale the printing to fit 1 page width in portrait orientation). You may find it easier and more efficient to select (click/drag) what you want to print and use 'print selection' in your print dialog box. Sometimes color helps in clarity but we try to make it non-critical to basic legibility. Note that externally linked pages may have different printing requirements. Internally hosted documents can be printed from within the applications they are associated with e.g. from within Acrobat Reader or MS Word or MS Excel. If you open an Acrobat document in a web browser window (typical) note there are 2 print dialogs one for the web page frame and one for the Acrobat document itself (use the acrobat one to print what you see on the screen). Q. Why do I keep getting successive login windows pop-up on the secure pages? A. When you first go to a secure (password protected) page you will be asked to login. Use the private Troop username & password and - unless you are on a public system (library/school etc) - check the remember my password box so you won't need to re-enter every time. As long as you keep the browser session open you should not have to reenter the password for every page or document. Every time you start a fresh browser session you will be asked for the username & password again - but if you have previously 'remembered' the information you will only have to click 'OK'. Q. How 'secure' are the secure pages: A. The secure pages are password protected at a file access level on the webserver used to host the Troop website, so are immune from many of the common browser security holes. Since we share a single username & password access for the whole Troop this itself creates some security vulnerability for which we all need to take responsibility - do not share the login information outside your family and known members of the Troop. If others want to gain access to the site have them request it formally. We do not run special security modes (SSL encryption etc) on our server like financial institutions do since to do so would at least double our hosting expenses. Given the data we are protecting and the login requirements we already have this still provides a good level of security from any casual access, email address harvesting and typical malicious attacks. Will will regularly change Troop usernames & passwords probably every six months at the Troop elections process - and possibly more often if there is any reason for concern. Even with the username & password all the Troop website areas are read only and to load files onto our servers requires special privileges, different logins and special software. Only the Troop Webmaster has access to load files into these areas. Q. Who do I contact if I find something in error on a website page? A. For internal pages (ones that look like this & the example above) and for Troop documents with a Troop278 header contact the Troop Webmaster. For external linked pages look for contact information on those pages and submit to them... if a link to an external page is broken or seems incorrect/ inappropriate please inform the Troop Webmaster. Q. My question isn't listed here... can I still get an answer? A. Yes submit your question - if we think it's a general enough questions we may add it (and the answer) to this page - if not we will at least try to answer your question by email. Note - the World Scout Emblem is used with
the formal permission of the World Scout Bureau |
Copyright 2006-2008 Troop 278, Ahwatukee, AZ -
D. Forster - Webmaster
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