This is an e-mail to all the CASI Members who are NOT on the e-mail list called 'CASILIST.' At some time in the past you had submitted an application to CASI. Although you are not on the e-mail list, I am sending you this announcement of a major change to CASI. This will normally only happen once per year. If you aren't on the CASILIST and would like to be, send an email to casi{at}weatherwatchers.org with a valid e-mail address and we will add you. 1.) If you were not aware, the Carolina Area Storm Investigators changed its name to the Central Atlantic Storm Investigators in August 1997 when HeadQuarters moved to State College PA. 2.) CASI continues to grow everyday and now has over 200 Members. 3.) The STORMFORM is now online on the CASI Website at http://www.weatherwatchers.org/stormform/ and allows you to post reports of severe weather for inclusion on the CASI website's database of recent weather events. 4.) A new Members section and Member Home Pages have been created. These contain your profile and are editable to give more information to the public or the other CASI Members. The information below pertains to this major change to the CASI Website. TO: ALL MEMBERS of the Central Atlantic Storm Investigators (CASI) TO: CASILIST Recipients TO: NON-CASILIST Recipients TO: CASI-ADMIN Recipients (This is a CASI-ADMIN announcement. They are used to alert you of major changes to CASI or the CASI Web Site.) ANNOUNCEMENT: All CASI Members now have "Member Pages" on the CASI site. These are Web Pages listing contact and other information for every CASI Member along with weather from the nearest NWS station and a link to a map of your city. PLEASE read below important information BEFORE you visit the URL, which is listed at the bottom of this posting. HISTORY: These pages were created to fill a void that I felt had been created inside this organization. With over 160 Members to date, how were Members to be aware of each other's presence in the "real world"? I noticed that there were Members close to each other or even Members in the same city who weren't aware of each other's existence. And I didn't even know where in a state some Members were without consulting a (paper) map. The main aim of CASI is always to bring weather enthusiasts and storm investigators together, and to do that I felt that we had to have something more than just a Member List. At the same time I wanted to respect the privacy of Members who may not want their contact information accessible by the entire WWW. Thus came the CASI Member Pages. They took a LONG time to do and I had to do a lot of scripting to try to make the process more automatic. I know that some of you may be curious as to how I did a lot of it, and I'm planning next week to write up a summary of the various processes that were involved. When I will do this I will post to the CASILIST. I originally had planned to have these available in Winter 1998 but due to several setbacks here it is spring. But it's been worth it and I think you will all enjoy them. I think it adds a new dimension to CASI. EXPLANATION: The pages come in two flavours - the PUBLIC Member Page and the PRIVATE Member Page. The PUBLIC Member Page is accessible to the entire Internet on the CASI Web Site www.weatherwatchers.org and contains by default the same information that was present on the old Member List page - the Member's Name, City, and (if available) link to the Member's webpage. The PRIVATE Member Page can contain the same info or additional info and is accessible ONLY to CASI Members with the following (all lowercase without the quotes) USERNAME "casi" and PASSWORD "cloudy". Now I need YOUR help to make this thing work. WHAT YOU CAN DO: If you so desire, you can edit your Member Pages by clicking on the EDIT button at the bottom of your page. This brings up a form that you can fill in and submit to CASI HQ to have your page changed (in the future the form will change the Member Pages live but I haven't built that in yet). The Edit Form is actually your PRIVATE Member Page with checkboxes to determine if you want any or all of the information to also appear on your PUBLIC page. THE IDEA: What I envision these pages doing is allowing for more personal and local interaction between CASI Members, which is something that I have been unable to bring to the group since we are now so spread apart. An example might be : You were on vacation and couldn't keep weather records. Consulting the new CASI Member Pages you find a Member across town. If they have elected to add their email address to the Member Pages you could drop them an email to ask them about weather conditions while you were gone. HOW TO ACCESS THEM: The CASI Member List page, which I admit I hadn't updated in a long time, has been replaced with a brand new Members section. The Members section gives access to maps of the World, US, and some States, with Members' locations plotted on them. (Yes, the maps are large, but I'm a stickler for good looking maps and also don't want to lose any of the geographical features that will be helpful in using the Member's weather data). "Mousing over" the locations of Members on the Map shows their Name and City in your browser's status bar, and clicking on the location transports you to their PUBLIC Member Page. If the Member has chosen to give additional information on their PRIVATE page, the fields will be a different color (Netscape-compatible 3.x and above) and will say "Members Only". Clicking on these fields or clicking on "Switch to Private Page" at the bottom of the page will transport you to the Member's PRIVATE page (don't forget the Username and Password above). The Username and Password won't change very often and you'll be notified if they do. PLEASE don't give these out to non-Members over the Web as that would destroy the functionality of the new Members section of our Website. If someone else on the Web needs the PRIVATE information you should welcome them to join CASI. ALSO: The new Members section of the Website also has something that I think is neat - if, instead of Member Maps, you want a complete list of Members, you can get a page with each Member's Name, City, and Current Temperature (courtesy of the Weather Underground). Weather Underground is also utilized ON the Member Pages in the form of the current weather conditions at the nearest NWS station to the Member. Weather Undergroud picks these out based on Zipcode and they usually do a pretty good job. However if you feel a different city would be more appropriate for your location we can change it. Also on the Member pages are maps to the Member's location. Please notice that currently the maps appear to have picked out a location but are actually by default zooming in all the way to the center of your city. These maps are accessed from a remote server and that's the only way I could get that to work. When you click on the map you will be transported to MapBlast's website and you'll notice that the page says "City/Zip Match" indicating that it has not targeted a specific address. You can fix that by adding your Address in EDIT mode. For an example of a map that HAS been targeted you can see my Member page. WHAT TO DO: The first thing that I would like you to do is go to your page and make sure that it looks OK. Much of this has been done using automatic scripts, and although I have done extensive testing there is always a possibility of an error. If there is anything wrong with your page, or you have any questions, first access the HELP page by clicking on Help at the bottom of your page, and if the answer isn't there, please email me. If you want to see an EXAMPLE of a Member Page with all the Fields filled in, please click on HELP at the bottom of any Member page. Feel free to surf around the Members section. I think you'll enjoy it. This is CASI at a new level of interactivity. To access the new Members section point your web browser to: http://www.weatherwatchers.org/members/ -- ============================================================== Jesse Ferrell - Meteorologist/Web Dev. - j{at}weatherwatchers.org Central Atlantic Storm Investigators - www.weatherwatchers.org "And here a twister comes... here comes the twister." --Talking Heads || ICQ No. 136862 ||