This page aims to let you know what changes have been made in recent times to this website.

OUR NEW WEBMASTER Our new Webmaster is Bill McKee who took over early in 2005 knowing very little about web page design. His current state of knowledge could be said to be "a little" rather than "very little". Despite this, he has been progressively updating the website and making the changes that are detailed below. It is hard for an old dog to learn new tricks so Bill has concentrated on the information content rather than the appearance of the pages; his attitude being that substance is more important than style. He also regards his role as being more akin to that of a maintenance man rather than that of a builder or architect. Photographs of Bill are generally dreadful, but here is one should you be interested (after viewing this photograph, click Back on your browser to return to this page. You will be glad that you did). An altogether more appealing photograph is available here . You may email the webmaster by clicking here.

 

RECENT CHANGES TO OUR WEBSITE Since the start of 2005, the main changes made to this website have been: The address and telephone number of our office in Parramatta have been added to the Contact Information page. The Seminars page has been updated to March 2008. The Support Groups page has been updated. Because of privacy concerns, the telephone numbers of the conveners have been deleted and all enquiries referred to Neil von Schill. The information about support groups in other states has been updated. A Life Members page has been created containing the citations accompanying the recent awarding of life membership to Mary Westbrook and Nola Buck together with photographs of Nola and Mary being presented with their certificates by Neil von Schill. The Polio Particles articles by Mary Westbrook up to mid-2007 been added to the Polio Particles page. The more recent articles are in pdf format rather than in html. A link to this page has been added to the main page. Previously, the only route to the Polio Particles page was via the Newsletters page. The newsletters for 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and part of 2007 have been added to the Newsletters page. For technical reasons, these are now in pdf format rather than in html. The new Constitution adopted in November 2006 has been added to the Constitution page. The Merchandise and Contact Information pages have been modified to require that all payments be in Australian Dollars only. The Donations page has been modified to request that donations be in Australian Dollars. Donation forms in pdf format for both local and overseas donors have been added. The Management Committee page has been updated following the election of the 2007/2008 committee at the 2007 AGM. Links to both the Overseas Links and Australian Links pages have been added to the front page. Both these pages have been updated to delete those sites which are no longer operative and update the links to those which have changed their addresses. At the start of 2005, approximately one third of the links on our site were not working. All were subsequently fixed or deleted and some new ones added. However, things change quite rapidly on the web and regular checks are needed. Nevertheless, our website currently has far fewer inoperative links than most other Polio websites. There is still some scope for further rationalisation of our links pages. An Upcoming Events page has been created to publicise Seminars, General Meetings and the like. This currently has information about our Seminar programme. The A Short History page has been updated to reflect, inter alia, the changes made to our Constitution. A Privacy Statement page was added in January 2006. Several minor corrections and updates to various parts of the website have been made as required. In addition to the above, a policy decision has been made to add to the bottom of each page the date at which it was updated or created. This is now being implemented on an ongoing basis as pages are added or updated.

 

THE FUTURE Our plan is to revamp the Network's website to a more modern form which will be easier to maintain. We are investigating the possibility of obtaining some technical assistance with this project. In the meantime, our plans for the current website are: To continually update the content where needed. To create a separate page for our office with contact details as well as photographs and short biographies of the people there. To activate our new forum. The old forum had to be taken down since it had been subjected to an attack by hackers and a new more secure one chosen. This has now been done by Gillian Thomas but some more work on it is needed by Gillian and Bill before it can be opened up. Please be patient with us over this matter and remember that we are all unpaid volunteers, not full-time employees. To modernise our website. Gillian has been doing a great deal of work on this. In fact, the new forum will be part of a completely redesigned website which will have a modern look and be easier to maintain and update. As a taste of what is to come, you may care to look at a preliminary version of the Links Page that will appear on the new website.

 

Page updated on 13 March 2008