Important Messages from the Webmaster
- Major database cleanup
At
the end of October 2017, the teachers, the students, and the login
(security) databases were extensively, painstakingly culled of excess
records. The cleanup involved:
- Removing multiple-teacher accounts.
There were 115 teachers who had more than one Teacher ID for the same
branch or festival. Care was taken to preserve the most recently used
Teacher ID and its students. The other(s) were deleted along with their
associated students. All these teachers were sent an email to inform
them of the assignment of their permanent IDs.
- Removing students who had "aged out".
In addition to the removal of student records from deleted teacher
accounts, many more student records were removed because either the
birthdate given indicated they were too old for their instrument, or
the birthdate was nonsense (e.g., the years 1098, 1950, 0000, etc.).
979 student records were removed in all.
- Removing logins in the security database. All unused logins (Teacher IDs), mostly from deleted Teacher accounts, were removed.
This
work was made necessary primarily because some teachers do not take the
time to maintain their student lists, nor follow correct procedures in
the event they forget their Teacher IDs. If you are a teacher reading
this, take the time now to make sure all your previously entered
students are not too old to participate, and are still in your
studio. If they're not going to participate again, the program makes it
easy to remove their records from the system. And if you forget your
Teacher ID, don't make another one! Swallow your pride and call your
branch or festival Bach chairperson. He or she will be able to tell
your what your Teacher ID is.
- Instituted site usage fee and credit card payment
I
have been your webmaster for over 10 years. Although I am not a
teacher, I am a musician and I value helping more young people become
interested in classical music. To that end, I have accepted only a very
small annual honorarium in exchange for my services to SCJBF -- a
fraction of what a professional programmer would charge. But I will be
stepping down next year, and SCJBF will be faced with hiring such a
programmer to perform database-specific maintenance and enhancements.
These costs will be in addition to the annual costs associated with
software upgrades and hosting services of a virtual dedicated server.
This money must come from somewhere, so we are asking those teachers
who see their students benefit from our performance opportunities,
master classes, and more to make a small contribution.
Every
effort has been made to make the credit card payment process as secure
and simple as possible. You might notice in your browser's URL box, the
address now starts with https://. The "s" invokes SSL or Secure Socket
Layer. This makes the communication between your computer and ours
fully encrypted, so personal information is protected. SCJBF does not
store your credit card number at all, so there's nothing for potential
hackers to find here. Please read the page describing the fee carefully.
- Your own teacher profile
This
would be a good time to check your own teacher profile for accuracy,
especially if you have moved , changed phone numbers, or changed email
address. If you have changed your email address, you should notify the
webmaster so he can update the login database. This will ensure that
you will be able to automatically retrieve your password if you forger
or misplace it. Always provide your name, teacher ID, old email address
and new email address when notifying the webmaster.
- Please report any site issues
Since
the credit card processing is new this year, it's possible that some
part of the new programming may act up. If the site gives you an
error message or other unexpected issue, please use the Contact Us page
to let me know.
Thank you for your cooperation.
