So you want folks to ride the Information Superhighway right into your TLA unit or committee. It can be done and this quick cheat sheet will tell you how to do it. There are official guidelines and you should read those, too.

First of all, we hope that you do set up a web page. It is easy and fun and your members will love it. It is a great way to tell the rest of the world what your unit or committee does. The hard part is setting up (and we make that as easy as we can); after it's set up, it only takes a little work occasionally to keep it current.

Here's how it works:

1. Design your pages. To decide what to put in, look at what other units and committees have done and discuss with other members of your group what you want to put in. Most pages include the group's bylaws, current officers and their WORK contact information (do not put their home information), and information on unit or committee projects including conference programs.

2. Let us know about it. Send an e-mail to Mary Ann Emerson at TLA saying that you have designed the page and where the pages can be viewed. If they are not available on a server for viewing, send the HTML files either as attachments with the message or on disk through the mail.

3. Publications Committee review. You will also need to inform the publications committee chair that a new page is ready for review. A subgroup of that committee will review the page and offer suggestions and changes to the page. Those comments will be forwarded back to you so the changes can be made.

4. Launching your page. Once the changes are made, the page will be linked to the TLA Organization page. If the pages are not already on the server, you will send the pages to Mary Ann Emerson either by e-mail or on a 3 ½" IBM compatible floppy.

5. Publicity. We will note in the TLACast newsletter that your page has been launched and you can announce the information to your members.

6. Updating your page. You will be expected to keep your page up to date. Usually this can be done on a quarterly basis or if the status changes. To update your page, download the current page directly from the Web, make necessary changes, and send the updated file to Mary Ann Emerson to load on the TLA server. Contrary to public opinion, there is no charge to load a TLA unit or committee page on the TLA server. The only time a unit or committee is assessed a charge is when the page requires extremely frequent updates or special programming is necessary to make the page work (neither of these situations have yet occurred).

So go forth and make hypertext. We'll look forward to getting your page!

Last Modified: 20 August 2008
Suggestions and corrections for these pages? Please send email to maryanne@txla.org

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