[USPS-Webmasters] A new webmasters tool is available

[Dan Bartell]

Announcing a new tool for use by squadron, district and national committee 
webmasters.  For more details follow the "Documentation for Contact Mailer" 
at www.usps.org/national/tools

I apologize if you received multiple copies of this message

Address any questions to Dan Bartell dtb@usps.org

Contact Mailer



This tool was originally used to send email to National ITC Contacts and to 
Head Quarters Customer Support Contacts.  It has been modified to send 
email to any squadron, district or national committee contact designated on 
the USPS server's websites/squadron data base.  The tool was originally set 
up for three reasons and it's modifications make these benefits available 
to all webmasters.



The first was to solve the problem of not wanting to have to change the 
mailto address on a large number of  pages when either the ITC or HQ 
contact's email address was changed.  At one point we were changing the 
mailto on upwards of 50 pages and that proved to be extremely time 
consuming.  Putting the email addresses in one place greatly simplified the 
process by allowing one simple update when the contacts change.



The second was to standardize the type of message being received.  You 
would like to know a couple of things when you receive a message.  For 
instance, name and a reply address.  You would be amazed at how often these 
two items are left out.  By presenting the sender with a form which has 
simple validation built in the message receiver at least has a fighting chance.



The final reason was to avoid having the contacts email address available 
to anyone looking at the pages.  Given the amount of spoofing and such 
which is happening and the amount of email address mining going on, I 
certainly don't want my email address all over the place (not that it isn't 
already!).


_______________________________________________
P/C Dan Bartell, SN
Somerset Sail & Power Squadron - D4 (NJ)
Member USPS Information Technology Committee