Some classmates may want to know how this website is constructed, what services it uses, and the steps we have taken to protect your information. This article is for you.
Built on WordPress and served securely
Official WordPress logotype
WordPress is used by 43.2 percent of all websites on the internet. It is an exceptionally popular and powerful content management system.
WordPress is a secure platform, and becomes more so when one adds additional layers of security. We have added several layers of additional protection.
MRHS1974.us is served over a Secure Sockets Layer-encrypted connection, just like your favorite online shopping services.
The building blocks
There is a lot more behind the scenes than just our choice of WordPress as the content management system. It takes a bunch of different building blocks to make the website work.
Domain name: Namecheap.com
Namecheap has been around since 2000 and currently serves nearly 20 million domain names. As their name implies, they seek to provide quality domain name service at very attractive prices.
To have a website, you almost have to have a domain name. Technically, you could just use the internet protocol address (like 127.0.0.1) to reach a website, but domain names provide a friendlier way to remember an address. A domain provider matches your easy-to-remember address (like mrhs1974.us) to the numerical site address.
You can’t have a domain name without a contact email. I am using my personal email as the contact information for the mrhs1974.us domain. The negative aspect of this is I get a lot of spam in my inbox, but that is also because I use this same address for other domain names.
Host: Hostinger.com
We chose Hostinger as the host for the MRHS 1974 class reunion website. Hostinger has been around since 2004. The low cost of their service, combined with a long history of serving websites (including WordPress sites), makes this choice a good value proposition. Their hosting plan includes SSL encryption, something many other low-cost providers lack.
Tom Salzer and Catherine Brady both have administrative logins to the website.
Backups: Hostinger and UpdraftPlus
Hostinger automatically backs up the website weekly and we also use UpdraftPlus to copy the entire website weekly to a Google Drive folder.
Data table: Baserow.io
The master table of classmate information is maintained at Baserow.io. Currently, two people (Tom Salzer and Steve Carlson) have logins to this data. It’s important to have more than one person able to access the account. Redundancy helps avoid the single point of failure problem.
The master table includes email addresses, phone numbers, Facebook URLs, and home addresses. When we post the most current data set to the MRHS1974.us website, we do not export those data. This means that none of this information is included in the table on the class website.
Exported data is in the form of a comma-separated values list. We filter out the columns with private information before generating the CSV file. That file is then downloaded and imported into the WordPress website.
Newsletter: MailerLite
We are using MailerLite for the class newsletter. Subscribers opt into receiving the newsletter via a form on the website. That form sends subscriber information directly to MailerLite. The list of subscribers lives at MailerLite, not on the website.
Newsletters are written directly in the MailerLite interface. Once an issue is ready to be published, it is connected to the subscriber list and sent by MailerLite.
Tom Salzer has administrative access. We need to find another person willing to be the second administrator on the MailerLite account.
Email: Titan email and GMail
For the website, we have an email account addressed as admin@mrhs1974.us. This email address is provided by Hostinger via a service they call Titan email. Currently, mail sent to that address goes to three places: the admin@mrhs1974.us inbox, to Tom Salzer, and to the class email account on GMail. This is done so that we can act on emails quickly but also have a backup copy on the class email account.
The class email account on GMail is mt.rainier74@gmail.com. This was set up by Kerry Brown. A few other people have access to that account, including Tom Salzer.
Legal
In today’s world, we have to be clear about what information we collect and how we will handle it. Our website policies are available on the following pages:
Questions?
Got questions? Contact us at mt.rainier74@gmail.com.
This can be very confusing stuff. Hopefully, I’ve broken it down enough that it is easier to understand.