Recently, the hosting provider began to offer free “SSL” certificates for sites hosted on their servers. Without going into too much detail, this means that the website address starts with https:\\ instead of http:\\. Some browsers don’t even show that part if the address, but instead might show a lock icon, or say something like “not secure”.

You shouldn’t need to do anything different. Bookmarks/Favorites should still work. Though the only sensitive information a user might be entering is a login, it will be more secure now, as the info will be encrypted. It will have other benefits for the site, as some issues have come up due to the lack of a SSL certificate. Like the sharing icons right below here

Goal reached in 2 hours! Thanks. No further donations needed until 2025.

The post below is just for posterity:

Hi Folks,

It’s been three years and time to renew the hosting for the Wayne Alumni website, now in its 25th year. This website includes the main alumni website, Wayne Central Soccer HIstory, and Wayne Central Basketball History websites. It is $9.99 / month for 36 months, for which I am billed $359.64 and paid upfront (to get the discount). I’m looking to offset some of the cost.

Yes, it can be had cheaper initially, which we did the first three years, but it would require moving the website, which is a huge amount of effort.

I also cover the cost of the domain name separately.

Much work has been done in the last year to restore past content and add new. The Wayne Basketball History site was completely reworked and redesigned.

So I am looking to raise $250 from alumni to help support the website. Smaller donations are preferred.

Thanks to all who have supported this site for the last six years. They are named on the About page on the website.

-Brian Donovan ’74

For those who are interested –

Over the last few weeks, effort has been put into creating and restoring the Alumni Directory. Initially, the archived version from 2016 was made available. Then a new user registration system was added. Finally, the two were merged together after some considerable effort.

One significant change was to go to a standard First Name, (Maiden Name), Last Name format for Alumnae who have taken their spouses last name. The directory is sorted by last name now.

Another was to remove the ability to contact classmates via this site. It was never used much, and there are always privacy concerns. This is one (of many) reasons the directory was not continued after 2016. But there were many people who asked why it wasn’t and could we get it back.

Since the directory has been around for 25 years, there are obviously out-of-date listings. There is some clean-up that can be done, like removing duplicates, etc., but people may want to update their listing. The main issue with merging the old and new directories is the logins, user name, email, and passwords. The new system being used now takes user names. User names were generated automatically during the merge, and likely no one will like them. Luckily, the system also allows logins by email address. There is uncertainty about passwords. In the old directory, probably 50% of the listings were before there was any login system. So those users had no password. Again, those users have had an automatically generated password in the new system to satisfy the requirements of merging.

What does all this mean? If you still have access to the email you originally used prior to 2016 on this site and the password, theoretically you should be able to login. If you just have the email (and you still use it), but don’t remember your password, you should be able to click on the Forgot Password link on the login screen. Theoretically, because it has not been tested.

Or you could just re-register. There will be regular scans looking for duplicates, and older listings will be deleted.

Users who never had a login will have to register here (see main menu). If you don’t care, nothing needs to be done.

There will be an FAQ put together to make some of this info easily available if users want edit or replace their listings.

Apologies to all who tried to contact me via the Contact menu. Though at one time I would get an email with the information, apparently it stopped working at some point. The good news is, all was not lost, I have found where a copy of all attempts to contact me are stored. So I am working on addressing all that I can. Unfortunately, anything that was time sensitive is now irrelevant, like reunions.

Anything else, I will address ASAP. I have already added some In Memory requests and I will continue until I am caught up.

Using this off the shelf system has many advantages, but many disadvantages as well. Now that I know that the email notification isn’t working, I will just need to manually check or find other alternatives.

So the Contact and Submit Reunion menu items are working such that they can still be used, I’ll just need to adjust on my end. The Submit Photos does not seem to working, so I will disable for now.

The goal was reached in less than 24 hours. I’m happy we have 4 new sponsors and we are all set for 3 more years.

Thanks to Greg Kline, Kathy Hecht Langdon, Karen Southworth, and Mark and Caryn (Campbell) Devlin.

3 years ago I intended to discontinue the website, but had a number of requests to keep it going, so I found a new hosting service that offered a good deal for a 3 year plan, and had a short GoFundMe campaign to help with costs.

The 3 years is up soon, and though the new customer deal is no longer available, at a little under $8 / month, it’s not bad. Definitely not worth changing hosting service, as the one we use is one of the highest rated, and it is a major PITA to change. I will continue to cover the domain name registration cost myself, which is something under $20/year.

Since I self-funded the website for many years I am attempting to raise some money to allow the website to be available for 3 more years. Some of the details are in the link, but just trying to raise $250. The money goes to me personally, as I pay the bill. I will stop the campaign as soon as the goal is met.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/waynealumniwebsite

Thanks to the sponsors for the last 3 years:

• David Wilson Sr.
• Carla Tarana Boerman
• Gary Foos
• Cheryl Bamford Conte
• Diana Mattuzzi
• Kathy Doyle Hearn

Thanks for the support.

Some progress on the website.  Completed the In Memory section, added a boatload of photos into galleries.  Still some more to do, but it is a good thing my internet is not limited by data caps.  One can now comment on posts, pages, etc, using Facebook or Twitter accounts, or provide a name and email.  The question will be – will we be able to fend off the onslaught of spam – I have added some tools to help, but we’ll see.