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Member Website Instructions

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AHSNH is offering member societies a website for the cost of set-up. This page describes this offer in detail.

Description

Any member society may request a website be established for them residing under the AHSNH domain name. For example, if your society is called Smalltown Historical Society, the address of the website would be something like:
www.historicalsocietiesnh.org/smalltown
In other words, the name would not be a "regular" address like www.smalltown.org, but a name following the AHSNH domain name. In technical terms, this website is a subdirectory under the AHSNH directory.

Such a website can have up to 4 free pages (more can be added for a fee). See below for specifics.

Benefits

There are many benefits with this offer:
  • Free webspace - Your society does not have to contract with a web-hosting company to host your site. This usually costs at least $10/month. With AHSNH there is no recurring fee, monthly, annually, or otherwise, for your website (see Disclaimer below).

  • Initial Design - You do not have to know anything about web design, or hire someone to do it for you. Just submit your info to AHSNH and your website will be created for you. This is what the initial $40 setup fee is for.

  • Free Updates - Within certain limits, you can request changes to your website and they will be made free of charge (see below for specifics).

  • Enhancements - You can request enhancements to your website. For a fee, you can have the AHSNH developer do these for you, or you can hire someone and have the modifications submitted to AHSNH for upload to your site (see below for specifics).

Sample pages

Click here to see a sample site layout. Each page contains a description of the type of info that will be contained on the page.

Website Content

Pages
A society will always have 2 pages - the Home page, and an AboutUs page. In the sample above, the pages themselves describe the usual contents.

As part of the free plan, a society can have an additional 2 pages, optionally. In the example shown above, they are named Calendar of Events and Store, but the society can chose any name it likes for either optional page.

The layout and format of webpages shall be determined by AHSNH developers. Therefore, there is not much point in submitting elaborately designed layouts when giving the info for your pages to AHSNH. Although certain simple formats will be followed where possible (e.g. bullets, bold text), all other formatting will be ignored (fonts, font colors, indent schemes,etc).

Images
A society may have up to 2 images on its website. The society will supply the images (in electronic format as jpg or gif files) to AHSNH and specify which page(s) to place the images on. The size and positioning of an image on a page will be determined by AHSNH developers. For any more elaborate design, a fee will be charged.

PDF documents
A society may also have PDF documents associated with its site (with links to them on their pages). Any number is allowed, but the combined size of all PDF documents should not exceed 1MB. The society will supply the documents and also the wording used to link to each.

Website Updates

A society can request that the information on a page be modified, free of charge. For simple changes (e.g. change the price of an item on a store page), a simple email requesting the change is sufficient. See below for specifics.

For more elaborate changes (e.g. changing many prices on a store page; adding multiple items to a store page, etc), AHSNH requests that the society supply complete replacement text for the entire page.

Applying for a Website and Submitting Your Info

This is a 2-step process:

  1. Request a website and pay for it.

    To do so, click here to view the Website Request Form. Print the form, and mail it with your payment to the address on the form.

  2. Submit the website information (and any images and PDFs)

    This info must be submitted electronically, as an attachment to an email and/or text contained in the body of an email itself.

    Click here for a form to enter your info on. You can Copy and Paste this form into a text program (e.g. Notepad) or a wordprocessor (e.g. Word), or save the form to your harddrive by using your browser Menu (File/Save As).

    Edit the form, adding your info to it. Then attach it to an email or copy and paste it into an email itself.

    Send the email with a subject line of New Website to:

    weboffer@historicalsocietiesnh.org

    As soon as your payment has been received, your website will be designed and installed online. You will receive an email informing you when the site is ready.

Updating a Website

Fill out the same form used to request a new site.

Edit the form, and describe the modifications. Then attach it to an email or copy and paste it into an email itself.

Send the email with a subject line of Update Website to:

weboffer@historicalsocietiesnh.org

There is no charge for this (see Disclaimer below).

Enhancing a Website

You can have your website enhanced, by the ASNH developer, for a fee ($20/hr).

Send an email briefly describing the enhancements you would like, with a subject line of Enhance Website to:

weboffer@historicalsocietiesnh.org

You may also hire someone else to enhance or redesign your website, and just use AHSNH as the webspace where it resides. The website would be packaged as a zip archive file and sent to the AHSNH developer, who would install it on the server, free of charge.

Generally speaking, for such a free installation, a website must be able to be unzipped on a Windows system, and then must be installable on a Unix server with a simple upload. Special upload/installation requirements (such as with Microsoft Frontpage) would require paying AHSNH a fee.

Your developer should call Rich Hureau at 603-929-7072 to discuss particulars.

Disclaimer

This is a new idea for AHSNH. It is based on the fact that our web hosting service provides an enormous amount of storage for our monthly fee. We see this as an opportunity to help our member societies have a presence on the Internet, while costing AHSNH little or nothing. However, if we find that this is not the case, AHSNH reserves the right to modify the terms of this plan. This is not likely, but we need to see how the plan works over time to know whether it is viable.

A sample of some considerations (all unlikely) that could affect the plan are:

  • AHSNH's web hosting service starts charging more for the storage, or lowers the amount in the basic plan.

  • Member society websites get so many Internet visits ("hits") that the hosting service charges AHSNH an extra fee.

  • Member societies request so many updates that it cannot be done for free.

We do not anticipate any problems (otherwise, we wouldn't be making the offer), but we do want member societies to understand that this is a work in progress.