The BACA extranet is a secure area accessable to BACA Members only via user name and password. Depending on the user's rights, the menu will display certain items that are available to the user.  Note, as time goes by, more items will be added to expand the extranet's capabilities.

Members can look up information about other members within their own chapter as well as any chapter in the nation. They can edit their own member information and view messages posted by their chapter and National. Note that only Web Administrators can post messages.

So, how does this all work? The primary website has been written in Microsoft's latest .Net technology. This technology takes advantage of ASP.Net to convert the code to HTML so that it's viewable in your browser. ADO.Net is used to access the content of the website from a SQL Server database. Sounds complicated but all of that is hidden from you and you don't have to worry about it. Simply put, your chapter creates it's own website. That information is stored in a database. When a user comes to your webpage, the information is extracted from the database and displayed on the user's screen. Hence the terms "data driven" and "dynamic" can be applied to the National Website. The Advanced Editing Tools supplied here shield you from the technical aspect and allow you to concentrate on developing the content of your website.

The BACA extranet not only gives BACA Web Administrators access to the areas for creation of their chapter's website, it also supplies all the tools necessary to accomplish the task with little or no experience in web development. Here you'll find everything from the Advanced Editor to create your pages to an Image Gallery to manage the images on your website.

While in the editor, should you have any questions about the editor, please click on the Help button on the far right side of the Advanced Editor Toolbar.

You'll find advanced help on everything from HTML to Images.  You'll also find many hints to expand your knowledge as well as links to tutorials to advance your skills.

Most of the menu areas have a standard look and feel. Many of the menu areas relate to pages on your website.  For instance, the Kids Area menu item is where you develop your Kids Area web page.  Each web page is divided into sections.  The sections are separated by a chain.  Each time you click the Add button, you're adding a new section to your web page.  Clicking the Add button will display the Advanced Editor where you'll create your web page sections.  When you have one or more sections on your page, you'll see them listed.  You can click on a section to edit it.

Hint:  Be sure to Save your changes often, approximately every 10 minutes.  Things can happen that could make your session end prematurely.  If you haven't saved your data, it will be lost.  If you save often, you'll prevent lost time and effort plus save yourself a lot of frustration.  Also, download the Spell Check tool from the Downloads area and install it.  You can set the options to ignor HTML tags.  This will give your pages a professional appearance by cutting down on spelling errors.

Some menu areas are for simple data entry and do not relate to a web page.  In cases such as Positions, you'll have a simple text box to fill in. In the Chapter area you'll be presented with some editable items while other items are created by National and are read only.  The Members area is where you'll maintain your member list and grant access to theextranet.

Once you start a list of sections, you may want to change the order in which they appear. This is simply done by entering the display order number in the Display Order text box. Note that if you don't enter an order, your sections will be displayed alphabetically by Title. You'll need to set the order of all sections in order to take full advantage of the ordering capability.

To delete a section, place a check mark in the Delete check box then click Save. The section will be permanently deleted and no longer appear in your list.

OK, so now you're ready to start developing your chapter's website. Before we begin, let's take a look at the anatomy of a web page. Your web page is made up of a header, a navigator bar, a menu bar, a footer, and the body or content.

All but the content area are templates generated by code behind the website. Some areas such as the collage on the header are dynamic and, when viewed on the internet, will change to a different collage of pictures depending on the chapter if the chapter has submitted pictures to the National Webmaster for that purpose.

Some of the content area is controlled soley by National such as the About BACA and FAQs pages. The chapter's home page is also static except the patch will change to the chapter's patch. These patches are made up when a new chapter is added. Please contact the BACA National Webmaster if the patch is incorrect. New chapters may have a temporary default patch until a permanent patch is completed. All other page content is controlled by each chapter's Web Administrator.

Let's look at the content of a typical web page that you as your Chapter's Web Administrator will be developing. For instance, the News page will consist of various news events, pictures, etc. that your chapter wishes to publish. To make your page render in a user friendly fashion, consider each news event as a "section" on your web page. Your section will have a title and it will have a body with the news under it. Your page will be made up of a number of these sections. That's it, that's all there is to it. For each event, click Add. Enter the title of your news section, click in the editor and add your news, pictures, formatting, etc. When you're done, click the Save button. To enter your next news section, click the Add button and continue the process until you've developed an entire web page full of news articles (sections).

Besides the the web pages you'll also want to create your chapter's member directory.

There are two preliminary steps you should complete before creating your members directory. You'll need to go to the Chapter area and enter the information about your chapter.

Then you'll want to add your chapter's positions in the Positions area so you can assign your members who hold positions in your chapter, those positions i.e. President, Vice President, Child Liaison, etc.  Do not alter or delete the default positions already there.  Simply add new positions as required.

Once you've completed those two steps, you're now ready to create your members directory. Creating a members directory not only gives your members access to the extranet so they can see your messages, it allows members to contact other members both in your chapter and in other chapters. All you'll need are their full name, a user name, and a password. You enter the information in the Members area for each member. Once you've done that, the members can then access the extranet via their user name and password. Don't worry about the other data fields, each member will have the ability to edit their own data. See the Members area below for more information on specific fields in the Members area.

Once you've created your initial web pages and members directory, you're all done. Of course you'll want to maintain these areas over time and doing so is very easy with the tools here which you'll soon be very familiar with. An important note, each chapter is limited on the space that's available on the server so be sure to keep your web pages up to date and delete any old or unused sections and pictures.

The following sections will give some specific information about each area.

The calendar area is where you'll want to list your important events that you want the general public to know about. Similar to the other areas, here you'll enter the title for the event such as "Child Ride" then enter the starting time. The starting time will display next to the Title on your web page.

Then enter a description for the event such as "We'll be meeting in the WalMart parking lot on Main Street." You can add any other information that would help describe the event and it's location in the content area.

When you're done, just click Save then Add to enter another event. When a user goes to your chapter's website and clicks the Calendar button on the menu, he'll see a calendar with the current month. He can click on any of the days in the month to see what's happening in your chapter on that day. The user can also change months to view upcoming events so be sure to stay ahead of the game and list events as soon as you're made aware of them. Also, keep the area clean by deleting past events so you don't run out of space in the database.

If you want to create reoccurring events, you can change the number of days, weeks, and/or months your event will repeat itself.  You can even have an event repeat itself on the specified week number by placing a checkmark in the "Use Month Week Number" checkbox.  For instance, if you want to repeat an event over a 3 day weekend, enter the information for the first day then change the Repeat for Days value to 2.  That will record your event on the first day and repeat it for the next two.  Let's say you want an event to reoccurre the first two weekends of each month for six months.  You can start with the first Saturday and enter the event information.  Then set the days to repeat 1 time (for Sunday), the weeks to repeat 1 time (after the start week each month) , the months to repeat 5 times (after the first month) and check the "Use Month Week Number" checkbox.  Another example would be to set the monthly date for your child rides.  Let's say your child ride occurs on the second Saturday of each month.  Start by creating an event on the second Saturday of the month.  Leave the check mark in "Use Month Week Number", set the number of months to repeat to 5, then click Save.  Your calendar will reflect a child ride on the second Saturday of each of the next 6 months.   You can enter any combination of days, weeks or months.  Just keep in mind that the values are for the number of times AFTER the first occurance.  If you make a mistake, you'll have to delete all of the occurrences!  Note also that setting the recurrence values when updating an event has no effect.  Only new events can repeat.

One thing to keep in mind is that perhaps there is something happening after the ride that you only want members to know about such as a BBQ at one of your member's home. That's when you'll want to post a message in the Messages area so that only your members will know about it. There you can even post directions to the members house so everyone will find it without having to worry about the general public seeing the information.

The Chapter area is where you'll want to maintain information about your chapter such as your chapter's address, phone number, hotline number and other information. Your chapter appears on this page when it's entered by National and not all areas are editable. If there is a problem with the non-editable areas, please contact the BACA National Webmaster.

The Contacts area is for maintaining information so the general public can contact various members of your chapter. This is also an excellent area to publish your hotline and other information for people who may need your help so they can contact you.  Note:  The Contacts area is the only area currently required by all chapters to be complete and up to date.

The In Memory area is a solemn area where you can pay tribute to members of your chapter who have passed on. Each person's name should be the title with a rememberance below.

Here's an area where kids are number one. You should enter information for your kids to read to educate them and perhaps links to some fun kids sights they can visit.

The Links area is for links to your sponsor's and others that you wish to help as a result of their efforts to support BACA. It's also for links to local child abuse help organizations so you might want to group the links under different sections. Perhaps a Help Organization section and a Sponsor section.

IMPORTANT! All links will be monitored by BACA International Security. Any inappropriate links will be removed immediately.

The members area is rather large so let's break it up into smaller chuncks. There are four sections to the members page.

The first and most obvious is the information about the member. This will consist of his name, address, etc. The member may not wish to have his information published but it's a great help to other members who may want to contact him. At the least, try to get the member's name and email address for contact purposes.

The next, less obvious section is the member's statistical area. This area can only be seen by the chapter's Web Administrator and consists of the members supporter start date, patch date, and termination date. One very important thing here is the Active check box. As long as there is a check mark in that box, the member will show up on your members list. Should you remove the check mark so the member is Inactive, the member will permanently disappear from your memebers list. However, the member's information will remain in the database for statistical purposes. In the future, Web Administrators will be able to generate reports for their chapter and National will be able to generate reports for each chapter. Therefore it's important to maintain this statistical information. Remember, only the Web Administrator has access to the statistical information.  If you have to turn a member's access off temporarily, do so my denying him or her extranet rights instead of deactivating them.

One of the most important aspects of the Members area is granting members access privileges.  Supporters should not be granted access as the extranet is for patched members only!  Members in good standing should be assigned Members rights.  Chapter Board members should be granted BACA Executive rights.  The Chapter Merchandiser should be granted Merchandiser rights.  Finally, the Web Administrator is granted Web Administrator rights.  In cases where a member holds multiple positions and needs additional access rights, the Web Administrator can assign them additional rights by placing check marks in the appropriate access rights check boxes.

A Web Administrator can assign Web Administrator rights to other members to help him or her as well.  However, keep in mind that the Web Administrator on record for the chapter is responsible for their entire website regardless of who makes changes.  Therefore, it's highly recommended that the Web Administrator assign Web Administrator privileges to others only when absolutely necessary.

In addition to the Members area access privileges, the Web Administrator can assign access rights to the BACA Briefcase software.  It's important to limit the access rights as much as possible and assign them on a need-to-know basis.  Some of the content within the program is considered confidential, especially the Child Liaison area.  Only one member appointed as the chapter's Child Liaison should have this access level.

If any member leaves the chapter or is placed on disciplinary suspension, be sure to deny all access rights immediately!  Do so by removing all the access rights checkmarks.  By denying access to the Members area, the member will no longer be able to login.  Denying access to the BACA Briefcase will render the program useless.  Note that all data in the BACA Briefcase program in encrypted.  The only way to access it is thru the program.  If the user can't login to the program, the user can't access the data either.

An item worth mentioning is the member's password.  The password must meet BACA Website Security guidelines.  To help facilitate this, the Web Administrator should download the BACA Website Security document from the Downloads area.  The Web Administrator can then print out this document, give it to the members of the chapter to fill out and return.  That will simplify the Web Administrator's task of adding members.

The third area is the members list. As you add members, this list will grow. You can click on a member to see that member's information and edit it if desired. Once you go beyond ten members, you'll notice a number indicating the page number you're on in the lower right corner of the list. Clicking on a number will take you to that page so you can access all members.

Last but certainly not least is the National Directory. Here is a drop down list of all the chapters. If you want to find the contact information for a member in a different chapter, just select the chapter from the drop down list and you'll be taken to that chapter's member list. Find the member in the list, click on him, and you'll have a read only view of his contact information.

The National Directory is also how you change directories to view the messages posted by other chapters. Simply select the chapter and, once you're in the chapter's area, click on Messages to see a list of all the messages posted by that chapter. Click on a message to read it.

An important note here, once you leave your chapter's area, you loose your Web Administrator rights and have the same rights as an ordinary member. All information on other chapter's sites will be read only. As soon as you go back to your own chapter's area either by clicking the Members button on the menu or selecting your chapter from the National drop down list, your rights will be restored.

When a member enters the extranet and clicks on the Members button, he is taken to his own information. Here he can edit his information. This helps reduce the Web Administrator's work load by allowing the member to maintain his own information. For instance, if a member changes his email address, he can go in and change it on his member page without having to contact the Web Administrator.

As a final note, a couple of the areas are read only and controlled by the National Webmaster such as the chapter name, state, etc. Please contact the National Webmaster to make changes to these areas. Also, if a member of your chapter is a National Board member, contact the National Webmaster so he can assign that member his national position.

The Messages area is where you can post messages to other members of your chapter. Though the primary target is your chapter's members, other members from other chapters visiting your site can also read your messages.

Let's say a member from out of town is visiting and would like to see what your chapter is doing while he's there. He can visit both your calendar area and your message area. He can then use your member directory to contact other members while he's visiting.

Use the Messages area to post anything you'd want your members to see but not the general public.

We've already talked a bit about news in the Getting Started area but let's review quickly. Here is where you'll post news affecting your chapter for everyone to read such as a court victory or perhaps you'll want to publish your entire newsletter here. It's up to you.

Here you'll want to list your chapter's positions. This is so they'll show up in the drop down combo box on the member's page. Assigning positions does not affect the extranet rights your member will have. It only serves to indicate to others who your chapter's officers are.

The Testimonials area is where you'll want to enter letters and other accolades about your chapter. Any kind of law enforcement endorcements alway go well here. This is the place to pat your chapter on the back for a job well done.