It's an investment in your future friendship with your classmates. You are paying for the construction (design and creation of graphics and menus, and the
assembly and programming) of the site. Once the website is built and paid for, your class owns and controls it. These sites are designed and built by Eric Peterson (http://EricPetersonGalleries.com), originally an impressionistic painter, who views his websites as works of art,
just more functional. The one time cost of building a website is about the equivalent of having every member of your class subscribe
to a site like Classmates.com for a month or two. Except, since you now own your own website, there aren't any subscription fees.
Any member of your class can contact any other member (provided they've filled out their information on the website), whenever they
want. They can, at anytime, share information, pictures, and stories with the rest of the class.
It might also be noted that with the Link Directory, your class could recoup costs of the website by requiring a monthly or yearly
donation to the class to have their business link in the directory. How your class decides to handle the Link Directory is up to
your classmates.
Who controls the security?
Your administrator controls all security settings. So, pick an administrator(s) that you feel very comfortable with and trust completely.
Is MyClassSite.net going to sell or share our information?
Once you purchase a website, all information and control of that information is in the hands of your class and its administrator. The Address
Book, Blog, Chatroom, and Link Directory information are all kept secure in password protected databases on the server. You can control the amount of access to the
Address Book and Blogs. What your class decides to do with the information obtained in the databases is totally up to your class. MyClassSite.net
turns all control over to your class.
What other costs are involved with a MyClassSite.net website?
The only other costs are a yearly domain renewal (currently about $5 to $15 a year depending on who you register your domain with), and the cost of hosting the site $3 to $15 a month(currently $2.99 a month
through HelixWeb). Simply put, the domain is your website address (like "MyClassSite.net"), which you renew your ownership of on a yearly
basis. The domain is then configured to point to the host, which is a large remote computer, known as a server. The monthly hosting
fee is like renting a space on that remote computer.
Can I transfer the hosting to another host?
You can do whatever you want (it's your site). This would be like moving (only your address would stay the same). It would entail moving all the files
and information from one server to another. These sites are configured to work on HelixWeb, so if you plan on switching hosts, you might
want to have your class computer guru help out a bit. Or you can contact us, and we could try and help with the move.
What can an administrator be expected to take care of?
Your administrators will be notified by email whenever someone registers for the Address Book. Users of the address book can only edit their own
information (they can't edit other classmates). They would have to contact the administrator if they become aware of changes in another
classmates status.
They will also be notified of new registrations for the Blogs. The administrator would set permissions for the new user's access. And,
the administrators would also be notified via email of new posts.
In order to post photos on the Photographs page, classmates would need to email the photo and description to the administrator. The
administrator would post the photos.
Link submissions in the Link Directory also go through the administrator for approval. The administrators would receive an email letting
them know that there is a new link submission awaiting approval.