A wonderful WAABI Wednesday to all! 

I hope that you have taken the time to check out the newly revised website.
After two years with another provider, our access to the site and its performance were not up to par. We investigated another provider, which gave us more storage, more mailboxes, more ease of use, more options (more on that later), and best of all, better service and reliability.

The site is still being updated and brought up to date, so feel free to make comments and let me know if you see any errors or mistakes. I try to spell check and proof read, but sometimes still miss things. Anything else that you would like to see, or if there is trouble viewing the site, please let me know at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

The options that we have on this new website are many. Adding new stories, news, pictures and links is now easier than ever for me as and administrator. However, there are some things that this site provides that we need to take advantage of in order to be more productive.

First and foremost is the ability for us to have individual user accounts that have different levels of access to the site. For example, at the current time myself and Jill are able to login to the site (user login form on the left-hand side) and enter a news story. That is then stored until I login as the administrator and approve it.

What does that mean for you and your chapter? It means that we can designate one or two people, per chapter, with the ability to submit their own news stories, pictures, documents, calendar events and newsletters.

How can we do this? Chapter Presidents, please send me a list of people from your chapter who will take on this responsibility. I will then create user accounts for those individuals, and email them the directions to follow.

I realize that there will be a learning curve, and that help will be needed. However, if we are to truly make use of this opportunity to get the word out about our activities, this is how to do it.

As an example, I just posted the newsletter that Jeanie sent out. While we still want the newsletters, wouldn't it be nice to know about the events ahead of time, and then see the stories a few days after they happen, or even the same day!
Other items that you should check out on the site include:

• RSS feeds - if you are into this, you know you can subscribe to the WAABI feed via an email client or feed reader. This allows new updates to be shown to you without having to go to the site
• Events calendar - this can be used for all Chapters, as well as the National organization. The events can link to short summaries or full stories.
• Who's online will show all currently logged in users, if you are logged in.
• Archive - this allows us to save older stories and events, and still have access to them
• Industry News - this addition to the site allows us to get news stories via Yahoo news and post quick summaries and links to the story related to the "alcohol industry". This is done automatically every time you connect, so keeping it up to date is not an issue.

One other item to mention is the use of an email address for WAABI members. This is even easier than with our previous provider. Any WAABI member that wishes to have an email address for use for WAABI purposes should contact me with the requested address to use. I have one for This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , as well as webmaster.org (for website inquiries, etc.) The email accounts can be accessed via web browsers, Outlook, Outlook Express, or other similar software. What is even better is once you login, you can make your own password changes, email forwarders (for example, anything sent to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it I have sent to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , so I only have to open one mailbox). You can have the email forwarded to any other address you would like. You can block spam, particular pesky senders, etc. The system even tells you how to setup Outlook Express and other mail programs.
WAABI mailboxes are limited to 100mb in size, but can be increased, if the need arises.

I hope this is enough information to get you started on the way to making more use out of our site.

Hope to see you all in Miami! (if we're lucky I will able to get part of the conference registration available online soon)

Jimmy Pack
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Webmaster

P.S. I added this on Tuesday night as a logged in user. Then as the administrator I told the system to start publishing it on 01/30/08!