Requirements for USPS Web Sites Housed on the ITCom System


All USPS web sites located on the ITCom system must conform to the following additional policies, in addition to the Requirements for All USPS Web Sites:
  1. Contacts A Squadron, District, or Committee web site can be housed on the ITCom system. A webmaster must be designated. This webmaster must review these requirements and follow the procedure described in Change of Webmaster (see below).

    If you have general questions regarding USPS IT matters, contact the USPS Help Desk which is monitored seven days a week. The Help Desk will either respond directly to you, or forward your inquiry to another ITCom member to assist you in the timeliest manner possible.
  2. Appropriate Use

    A directory, user name, and password will be assigned to you. Your login name and password will be yours. Do not give it out to any other member or person. Inappropriate use (hacking or playing around) of the system will result in the revoking of your login and the removal of privileges for both you and the organizational level you represent.
  3. E-mail Accounts

    You will not be provided any e-mail accounts or privileges on the ITCom system or in the USPS.org domain. That is, you will not have "johndoe@usps.org".

    Therefore, any "mailto:" links in your squadron or district web pages must refer to your own personal e-mail accounts. Note that there are several "advertising sponsored" e-mail services available if the webmaster does not have a personal e-mail account.
  4. ITCom System

    The USPS web server is named www.usps.org.

    Squadrons and districts are allocated 100 Meg total space for web sites. Disk quotas will be strictly enforced.

    There are no regularly scheduled backups performed on the ITCom system. You are responsible for maintaining an accurate copy of your site on your own computer. Neither USPS nor ITCom will be held responsible for data loss in case of a disk crash or any other such event.
  5. URL Naming

    Your URL (Uniform Resource Locator) will be decided when you get an account; usually something related to your squadron name or district number, or national committee name.
    • National departments and committees: http://www.usps.org/national/something
    • All squadrons and districts: http://www.usps.org/localusps/something
  6. Support

    ITCom can only provide limited amount of technical support. Consider joining the group USPS-Webmasters at SailAngle.com, and you can then address issues to the webmaster group. Many of the issues you’re facing have been experienced by others as they set up and maintained the websites. This is a great source of practical "Hands On" experienced people who will share their ideas and solutions with you.

    Documentation is available on the Internet, and there are a plethora of books on the subject of HTML, CGI, and web servers. They can be found at your local library, book store, and "tutorial" web sites. We have provided some HTML pointers throughout the ITCom web site. HTML editors can be as simple as a text editor (WordPad/notepad in Windows and vi/emacs in UNIX) to expensive programs such as Page Mill (Adobe), Fusion (NetObjects), and FrontPage (Microsoft). ITCom can not recommend any particular HTML editor.
  7. Transfering Files

    The USPS ftp server is named www.USPS.org. Some configuration settings and sample screen dumps are available to help you configure your FTP client.

    When you load a new set of pages, remember to either purge your browsers cache (under "view options" or "edit preferences" in your browser) or hold the CTRL key while clicking on the refresh button or key. Otherwise, you may not see your new files. Additionally, sometimes the web server on ITCom is slow to update the new pages that you just uploaded. Be patient - it sometimes takes 15 minutes
  8. Web Server The USPS web server is a PC-based system running the Linux operating system.

    UNIX, and Linux, is case sensitive. This means a file (or directory) named "index.html" is different from "Index.html" or "INDEX.HTML". In UNIX these are three valid files (or directories), and can be in the same folder, unlike Windows and MAC's, where you would get some type of error.

    The web server USPS uses is Apache. For more information about this web server, check out the manual available on the Apache web site.

    Use one of the following file names as your "home page", making sure that it is spelled with lower-case letters:
    • index.html or index.htm
    • main.html or main.htm
    Neither "FrontPage Extensions" nor "Active Server Pages" are supported by the USPS web server. Microsoft offers "KISSfp", an "Add-on" for FrontPage that provides a way of publishing FrontPage-created web sites to web servers that do not support the extensions. Note that "home.html" and "default.html" are not supported as the "home page".

    Please note that there are many USPS websites that are built and maintained using FrontPage, within the parameters mentioned above.
  9. CGI and SSI

    Due to the security risks, all CGI (Common Gateway Interface) scripts - using Perl, PHP, or otherwise - have been disabled on the web server. The use of JavaScript (and Java), commonly referred to as "client side scripts", as they are executed by the client (web browser), are at the discretion of the web site designer.

    To use SSI (Server Side Includes) you must use the extension ".shtml" to have the web server parse the pages when they are sent to the requesting user. You may use a server-parsed file as your "home page" as well, just use "index.shtml" or "main.shtml".
  10. Change of Webmaster

    On occasion there will be necessitated a change of webmaster, where a Squadron or District desires to either maintain or rebuild an existing website, but with a different webmaster. This is the procedure:
    1. The replacement webmaster shall review the requirements outlined in Requirements for All USPS Web Sites.
    2. The current Commander, or the webmaster designate, will update the squadron/district maintenance record regarding the new ITCom name, email, address and telephone number using the tool provided.
    3. The new webmaster will need to be a member of the USPS-Webmasters group on SailAngle.com.
    4. The new webmaster will email the Server Administrator advising that he has complied with the above items and wish to be listed as the new webmaster for the subject website.
    5. The server administrator, if satisfied that the above items have been completed, will advise the applicant that he is now the webmaster of record (owner of the website) for that squadron/district. The server administrator will provide a User ID and Password. This User ID and Password is not transferable. The new webmaster will be advised of the URL for the website if new, otherwise the URL will remain unchanged.
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