Welcome to our new look.   We have also added a blog to our website.  Please post your comments and opinions (subject to filtering by the Webmaster).

For those of you  who are interested in how I built this new website, read on: 

This website uses Drupal, an open-source software package distributed under the GNU General Public License that allows creation and management of websites.  The previous incarnations of this website used FrontPage as the editing program.  One of the best parts of Drupal is its ability to change the look of the site easily, by selecting a theme.  For example, the previous version of this website used the Andreas02 theme created by Andreas Viklund, which looked like this:

Also, I considered using something more colorful, such as Colorpaper:

However, commonsense prevailed, and I decided to use Magazeen, which is creates a clean magazine-like interface:

Note that I can change the background and header colors that can easily give the website a "new" look at any time.

Another neat feature is the ability to manage menu and "block" content and the position on each webpage.

The most interesting thing about Drupal is that web pages are not stored as typical "html" files.  Rather, the web pages you are viewing are "created" from an SQL database and PHP code, that literally builds the website as it is viewed a page at a time.

Future plans for the website include an electronic replacement of Lua Line, where we will ask for and obtain web page content from each committee, similar to how the Lua Line was previously created.  However, instead of requiring a publishing deadline, each committee can choose (at its leisure) when it wants to publish or update its "Lua Line" webpage.  Obviously, there will be at least one page per committee.  You will note that some committees have a "page", such as the Government Affairs Committee; that page is not a "Lua Line" page, but it could just as well be one.

Finally, you will note, as you go through the "new" website, that I have tried to integrate all of the old website contents (from prior to 2004) and join it with our last website version.  It was observed that the older website had a lot of content that might have been useful to HWEA members and visitors.  Since I have not had time to update and of the website information, noting that it has not been touched for a couple of years, I encourage all of you to email me (webmaster@hwea.org) with updated information for the website.

I was thinking of putting back our old "purple" logo, but it is in 6 or 7 pieces, and I have to figure how to paste it together.

Thanks for reading (and listening).  I hope that this revitalization will get us all involved with the website.

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