Welcome back. After more than a month of technical problems, PSTValumni.com is finally 99% back and running as normal. I've just completed moving the entire website to a new (more expensive*) host server which should hopefully eliminate the reoccurring technical issues. The only remaining issue that I know of is missing avatar graphics in the forum, but I'm looking into that too.

I've been unable to update the alumni database for more than a month, but now I can once again. If you've been trying to update your directory information please try again.

Labels: website

My apologies. PTSValumni.com was down for three days last week, and as it turns out, that was the easy part.

The site is obviously back up and running again but there's a lot that's still totally screwed up (putting it nicely). The PSTV Alumni Directory and the PSTV Alumni Forums were both database-driven and have been lost. Whether that means they've been lost forever or just a few more days remains to be seen. The databases that were restored from daily backups made by my hosting company (the ones who couldn't get the site back online for three days) appear to be corrupt and therefore don't work. There's a chance they can be salvaged but I'm not holding my breath. Since my host was making daily backups, I rarely made manual backups of the databases myself. My last backups were made three months ago in December. On the bright side, something is better than nothing.

The Alumni Directory
This database of over 350 names is completely missing on the server, but I have my 3-month-old backup. I can restore it and then re-update the last 3 months of missing alumni updates from my old emails. That'll be loads of fun. ;-)

Also, if you try to update your directory information you'll see that it doesn't work at all either. I haven't looked into the reason why yet but fixing that (which has nothing to do with databases) is also on my to-do list. If you need to update your info (which isn't even there right now), please come back in a week or two and try again.

The Forums
There is a recent database backup but it's not working and I have absolutely no idea why. Fixing/Restoring the forums is definitely another high priority but the forums are a lot more complicated than the Alumni Directory and hence harder to do. I'll try what I can.

The Bottom Line
Sorry once again for all the problems. I don't know how long it will take but bear with me and I'll try to fix as much as I can.

Labels: website

Dear "any website visitors who subscribe to the PSTV Alumni News blog's RSS or Atom Feeds, including anybody who may have added the blog feeds as a widget to your iGoogle or MyYahoo homepage",

Sorry for the trouble, but can you please unsubscribe from those old blog feeds and replace it with a new blog feed?
1) Unsubscribe (remove) the old blog feed
2) Click on one of these links subscribe to (add) the new PSTV Alumni News Blog feed
RSS/Atom Blog Feed




For many reasons not worth mentioning I've decided it would be better to utilize FeedBurner instead of the old RSS and Atom Feeds. We've actually been using FeedBurner on the homepage for years, but never as the primary source feed. Thanks for the help.

Of course, anybody else who didn't previously subscribe to the PSTV Alumni News Blog feed before is encouraged to click one of the links above too to add it to your newsreader or homepage. Subscribing to the feed means you don't have to keep checking PSTValumni.com to manually see if anything new is happening.

Labels: website

As you can already see, the PSTV Alumni website has a new look. Gone are the multitude of different styles that users can choose from, replaced by a single simplified design. Those styles included Yokum Hall (red), Lake Champlain (blue), Adirondack Mountains (green), Avid Keyboard (yellow), and a Minimalist Web 2.0 design (white). While choosing your own website theme was a cool trick, it wasn't really very useful. Plus it also caused a few minor glitches with cookie conflicts. So I focused on making just one good design that works well.

The most obvious new design feature is the new header image of Amity Plaza at SUNY Plattsburgh. I altered the image with some PhotoShop effects and overlays, but I want to thank SUNY Plattsburgh student, Erik Graham, for providing the original panoramic shot, and for sharing his work through a Creative Commons license.

The other notable new design feature is a horizontal navigation menu with expandable submenus. This layout opens up more page width for actual content. Plus it's able to hide lesser-used menu items to reduce clutter.

Also worth noting, I finally got around to updating the PSTV History page to reflect that PSTV has had Faculty Co-Advisors since 2003 (a fact that I was unaware of until this year). There are still many other additional website changes on my to-do list, but most of those are not high-priorities.

P.S. Some of you may have noticed that I copied myself. The horizontal navigation menu is the same script that I also use on my own personal website.

Update 6/13/07: I'm now noticing some problems that show up only in Internet Explorer browsers. There shouldn't be a gray space between the header graphic and the navigation menu. There's also an issue with the forum not being centered in IE too. I'll try to fix those bugs when I get a chance.

Labels: website