Why We Have What We Have

People often ask why we don't have something on a particular subject on our web site. Sometimes they get almost indignant because a favorite subject seems to be left out or not covered at all. The answer is simple. We aren't done!

Some people look at the web site as if it were a book, completed, finite, and not possible to add to. That of course is not the case and we are constantly adding to the web site content. Even though it does not cost you anything to view our web site, it does cost us something to produce the web site. The money to invest in our web site is limited, therefore we don't have everything there is to say or show on our web site. The web site is made up of two parts, our content (text and images) and the intellectual technology that makes the web site work, which is provided by the web site developer.

We invested $2,000 for the initial 20 page web site, which included another 20 pages of supporting pages that were added free of charge. In addition to development costs, there are ongoing costs associated with having a web site, such as the annual domain name registration and an annual web services package, which includes hosting, link checking, and other associated hosting maintenance, in order to keep the web site available to the public. Our annual ongoing maintenance costs are approximately $200, which is a bargain when some organizations pay that much each month. We do not have a maintenance package to pay for additional web development costs, therefore additional content added would need to be paid for. It isn't a free-for-all; time and space are limited. We take what we can get, when we can get it.

To add pages to a web site incurs an additional cost, which is approximately $200 per page but can range from $10 to $800, depending on complexity, number of similar pages added at one time, and other variables. Our web site currently has over 750 pages publicly available (and including non-public pages over 860 pages), which puts the value of our web site at approximately $150,000. Wow, how did we get that much money to spend on our web site for additional pages? We didn't! Lucky for us, our web developer has joined our organization literally becoming a member. As a member, our web developer has donated the costs of adding pages to our web site over time. It isn't a free-for-all; time and space are limited. We take what we can get, when we can get it.

What we get also has some ranking of importance. Very often, things that are happening in the very near future such as events or meetings, need to be added to the web before other historical content. Just maintaining what we have as far as events and meetings takes up a lot of time, often leaving very little time for other items we have an interest in publishing. Keep in mind that all web site maintenance is on a volunteer basis. We are thankful for what we get when we can get it. As you can see, so far we aren't on the losing end. With some compliments and praise, we hope it will continue.

To adequately cover every topic that everyone thinks should be on the web site would require over 1,000 and could very easily get to be 5,000 pages of web content. You can see that could take some time. The reason we have the pages on our web site that we do have is based on what we had available and that we have had the time to prepare for publication on the web site thus far; like I say, we aren't done yet. Most likely if there is a subject that you feel we should have on the web site but we don't, then it is likely we didn't have enough information on the subject, don't have any information on the subject, or it is one of the many, many pages already planned for the web site but not online yet.

You can help by submitting information suitable for the web. You must give permission for us to publish the information. The information may be used as is, or used as resource to add to or complement another page or pages. If you plan to submit a photograph, we need to know who took the photograph in order to give proper copyright credit. If the photograph has recognizable people or recognizable personal objects, and the photograph is not of a newsworthy event, then we also need a model release from the individuals or owners of the personal item(s) in the photograph. We have forms online to help with this process.