Once you have logged in, you will be prompted to select your county from a drop down list, then click the "Open" button. There is one person for each county that is designated as the "web editor" for that county. If you are that person, you will be allowed to log in and make changes. If you are denied access and you are the person who should have access to make changes to your county's website, contact John Hartley, the ACES webmaster, to have the permissions for your county's website changed.

• Announcements: To add announcements to your county homepage, just enter the text of your announcements in the area provided. If anyone has previously added announcements to your county's homepage they will appear in this text area. You can choose to edit them or delete them as needed by simply clicking your cursor in the text area and using your keyboard.
• Local Links: There is a list of standard links that appear on every generated county homepage. These include links to ACES Timely Information, the county's calendar, maps of that county, US Census data about the county, the State of Alabama website and a link to the ACES "Other Links" page which contains useful links to University sites, Extension sites, Government sites, Corporate sites, etc. In addition to these standard links, you can add links of your own to whatever sites and pages you want. You may want to link to your local chamber of commerce or maybe your county has a website. The best thing for you to link to are the additional pages that you build for your website. You are the only one with the content to build pages about what is going on locally on your county and community or about any projects that your office may be working on. We are depending on you to add this kind of information to your county's Extension site.

  To add links to your county's homepage enter the URL (web address such as http://www.aces.edu) of the page or file that you wish to link to. If this is a file you have uploaded to your county directory, the URL would be http://www.aces.edu/County/filename.htm. Substitute in the name of your county and the name of your file. In the blank provided below the URL, enter the text that you want to appear on your page as the link. If someone has already added links to your page you will see them displayed in the County Website Configuration Program. You can edit or delete these entries by clicking your cursor in the text fields and using your keyboard.

• Contact: The contact username is the username of the person who will receive email messages from the public that are sent from the email form on your county's website or from the "Questions?" form that is linked from almost all ACES web pages. When someone fills out the "Questions?" form, they are required to select which county they live in and their question is sent to the contact person in their local county office. In some cases the contact person for a county office may be the County Coordinator for that office. However, it does not have to be. In many cases County Coordinators have delegated the responsibility of receiving mail from the public to the lead secretary in their office who can then forward the mail to the person in their office best suited to answer the person's questions.

  Although there must be someone designated as the default recipient of email for your county, you have the option of adding multiple recipients for the email form on your county's website. The idea behind this is to provide a list of topics on your email form. Depending on which topic the person filling out the form chooses, the email message will be sent to the appropriate person in your office to answer questions on that topic. It is possible to set multiple topics to be sent to the same person if neccessary.

  To activate this feature, select "multiple recipients". You will then need to add people to the list of multiple recipients. To do this, enter the username of the person and the corresponding text that you want to appear in the list on the form. Remember that the username is the first part of the person's email address, everything before the "@" sign. Do not enter a complete email address. You will enter the text in the "subject" blank. The text you enter needs to be extremely brief in order to fit in the list. One to three words such as "Lawn and Garden" or "Pest Control". After entering this information, you will click on the "Add" button to add this to the list. To change the order in which the different subjects appear on the form, click once on the subject line that you wish to move and use the "Up" and "Down" buttons to move the line as necessarry. To delete a subject, select it by clicking once on it and then click the "Delete" button.

• Editor: The "editor" in this case is the person who can log into the County Website Configuration Program and make changes to your county's homepage. In order for you to be able to use the County Website Configuration Program, your username must be entered here. If you choose to delegate this responsibility to a different staff member, enter their username in this form field. However, you should be aware that if you hit the save button with anything other than your username in this form field, you will no longer be able to log into the County Website Configuration Program. If this occurs by accident and you need to have the "editor" set back to your username, contact John Hartley.
• About County: This information about your county was originally prepared by the ACES Communications Department prior to the State Conference in Birmingham a couple of years ago. This is where you can update and make changes to this information. Simply make your changes directly to the text in the form field as needed.
• Submit Changes: Once you have made all of the changes that you wish to make, look over them thoroughly to make sure that they are correct and then click on the "Save Changes" button. You should see a message that says your changes have been successfully saved to the configuration file. You can then click on the "View Changes" link to see your county's homepage. If you spot a problem or want to make additional changes, click the back button in your browser and then click the "Return to the Configuration Screen" link and repeat the process.
• Upload County Image: This is where to upload your county staff photo should you need to update it. Please see the detailed instructions on preparing your county staff photo. Remember that your image MUST be sized to 200 pixels by 135 pixels prior to being uploaded to the server.
• Add or Edit Additional Pages:
  • To create a new page click on the "Add New Page" button.
  • To edit an existing page, select the file name from the window by clicking on it once, then click the "Edit Existing Page" button.
  • To delete an existing page, select the file name from the window by clicking on it once, then click the "Delete Existing Page" button.
  FYI - The URL (web address) of these pages is: http://www.aces.edu/YourCounty/pages/filename.tmpl
• Upload / Delete Additional Files: This area is for uploading additional files such as images, PDFs, MP3s, etc. to be used on your pages. Be sure never to upload any images that are more than 450px wide. Whatever you do, do not delete the images that have your county name in the name of the image. These are your past and present county staff photos. Before uploading files such as Word documents, Powerpoint files, etc. they must be converted to PDF format.
  
  
  • How To Convert Office Files to PDF & Put Them Online with the County Website Configuration Program
  
  It is imperative that the filenames not contain any spaces or special characters such as `~!@#$%^&*()+=\{|}][;'":<>,?/. The URL to reference files you upload will be:
  http://www.aces.edu/YourCounty/files/YourFileName.pdf
  After uploading your file(s), don't forget to add a link to them from your page(s). You can also upload files here and then send the URL (web address) to people in email, rather than sending large email attachments. This is especially important if you are sending the file to multiple people or an email list.

If you have any problems, questions or concerns regarding the County Website Configuration Program, email John Hartley. Only John Hartley, Richard Feuerriegel and your county's designated editor(s) have access to log into the County Website Configuration Program and view or edit the information for your county's homepage.