Open letter to the DEIG Community:

On 12/10/2021, I received this termination letter from the website committee. So as of 12/10/2021, the Downeast Intergroup has no website. Bill L said I was free to run this website on my own.

The termination letter mentioned two issues:

1. Changes they have requested have not been made. In the November minutes, they showed they have no idea of what has been done and what has not been done.

2. They want the website in an easy to maintain WordPress.

Explaination to 1.:
I tried to explain to Willy K why somethings on the website are the way they are., but he will not listen! Also Bill L knows why somethings are the way they are. Also Bill L knows of the work in process for the website. He has seen my code and I have explained that the code for the website is on GitHub and if anyone would like to work with me I am more than willing to work with them.

Willy has offered to find help for me but nothing has happened. Nor will Willy or Peter B will respond to any of my emails.

Communication is strained because Willy will not listen. He is not willing to write down or draw out the changes he wants made. When changes are made, there is no acknowledgment for what changed, just more issues are exposed.

From the September minutes: Website : (Bill S. - report given by Peter B.) The website committee met on August 23rd, and will meet again September 30th to review some requests made to the webmaster regarding changes to the DEIG website. It appears that some changes may already been made. Which shows they do not have a clear list of what they asked for and what has been done.

Explaination to 2.
WordPress is not easy to learn or use. I tried to work with WordPress on the Area 28 website. Ask Renee T how easy it is to learn WordPress. (In reality WordPress will take a few hours a day for a few weeks to learn)

Brief history
This website is basic HTML and css. Please note how fast it appears on the screen when compared to the CSO website and the Downeast Intergroup website. Even with WordPress, knowledge of HTML and css will be very useful.

Bill L tells me Willy K started the website and quit. Now Willy wants to rewrite the website in WordPress. Bill L has offered to help me with the website. I gave him a computer with two monitors and pointed him to the resources to get started. Bill L has not made any progress.

Now they want to learn WordPress to build a website. From what I can tell they have not started with building the site and from their track record, I believe it will not happen. Would it not be easier to clone my code and let me merge the changes? That why git and GitHub exists.

Back in 2014 Steve P got me started with the website, since no one was maintaining it. Today I learned that Steve had a heart attack early in December and passed.

Since the website ( Webmaster history for DEIG website) was started many changes have been made to the meeting list. Mellie and Aslinn encouraged and helped me to get the meeting list out of the HTML format into SQL Server database. Now to print the meeting list, all that needs to be done is to export the list into a text file and email it to the printers.

Before this was done Mellie, would get on the phone with the printer and go line by line making changes.

Bill L took over the meeting list from Mellie. In the coffee shop, Mellie showed Bill L the steps to send the list to the printers which she did right then. Now Bill L is willing to throw this away to do it in WordPress.

When covid hit, physical meetings became online meetings . New tables were created and a page was put up for online meetings. Willy request that a column be added for the URL for the online meetings. That was added but he has not acknowledge the addition.

Bill L requested a way to print the physical meetings by district, so I added districts to the tables and put the function on the page to print the physical meetings by district.

Another big change to the website before covid was exporting the meeting list into a Json file through an API so that the meetings in the DEIG area will show up on the meeting app.

Being the webmaster has become a brutal position. People will complain long before showing any appreciation. After joining the tiaa website, I found out that I am not alone.

This morning, I remembered the positive feedback that Matt D has given me about people finding meetings because of the website. David T (newsletter editor) mentioned that the attendance at his meetings were up because of the website. The hotline has been able to find meetings for people who have called in for help.

Now because of three people new to the website committee refusing to work with the webmaster all this has gone poof.