Any Lion who wishes to post information to this site may do so. I pledge to consistently work hard to keep the information current and up to date. Now that my year as District Governor is over, this website should return to its status as the best darned website in Lionism!
That being said, when you email me with information, I usually try to get it right on your Club's page. This is made much easier if you can send me file attachments with your emails so that all I have to do is download the attachment right onto the site.
Submitting Text
I use the following software for word processing, Microsoft Word (ver 7 or higher); Word Perfect (ver 9 or higher); and I still use regular old Microsoft Wordpad and Notepad which everyone has with their Windows 95 or 98. If you attach a file in any of these formats (.doc, .txt etc) to your emails, then I can readily get them on the site, by cut and paste.
I use Microsoft Publisher 97 for my desktop publishing software, although Microsoft is now up to Publisher 2000, the old one still works fine for me. If you have the newer software, you may have to save the file as the older .pub format, I am not sure about that, so if you would like, send me one with the newer software and I will tell you how it works!
As far as images go, the ".jpg" format is always preferred because they are compressed and small. On the web I try to keep my images down to about 30kb in file size which, for most color photos, are about 400 x 500 pixels in size (3 x 4 inches). At 144 pixels per inch resolution this provides a nice size and quality photo for the web. Because your screen has been set to a resolution of 800w x 600h pixels you can see how size is important.
Submitting Images by Scanning Them
With this information you can scan photos accordingly, and if you are not sure, just scan them at 100% scale (not enlarged or shrunk) and at 300dpi (dots per inch) resolution and try to save the file in .jpg format which will compress it down to a good size. The smaller the size of the image file, the faster it will download to me and to everyone who clicks on it while on the web.
Submitting Images Using a Digital Camera
If you do have a digital camera, most of the new ones are very high resolution, and quite frankly unnecessarily so. Think of what I just said in the above paragraph. What good is it having a high resolution digital camera which saves your files in large 1024 x 768 pixel format (which by the way is larger than most people's screens are set to!) if you end up with a file too large to send, and too large to display on your screen?
It is however the perfect size to print on paper, so if that is your intention, keep those 1024 x 768 format files for printing, but get comfortable with your image editing software that came with the camera (Adobe Photodeluxe, Ulead Photo Impact, Image Folio etc..). This software will allow you to shrink the size of the entire image to 600 x 400 pixel size, about 30kb in file size and a .jpg formate which is perfect for your computer and the web.
By the way, if you can still find a camera which only has about 850kb
resolution it will be very inexpensive and perfect for taken web/computer based
pictures. More is not always better for this task. I use an old
Submitting Actual Photos
If you have neither a scanner or a digital camera, all is not lost. A Poloroid camera is great for a club, and you get the image immediately, and you can mail it to me right away! Just send me your photos with your club name and a short caption description along with a self-addressed, stamped envelope and I will scan them for you and return them. If I don't get the sef-addressed, stamped envelope, you won't get them back!
Forwarding Your Photos and Info to the MD-20 State Magazine
Our District Reporter, Jo Herfort , is constantly looking for photos and information to send to the MD20 New York State and Bermuda Magazine. I told him that any information which I get, will be given to him as soon as I am done. If you wish this information to not be placed in the State Magazine (although I don't know why!) just let me know when you submit it and I will respectfully keep it just to the web.
If you have any further questions, feel free to email the Web Master. Thanks for your participation in this exciting addition to our district.