Web Editors
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Webmaster Conducts Website Hands-on Training at the Mayor’s Office
By Emmanuelle
Pozorrubio, May 21, 2008. Selected employees from the Mayors staff and from other departments can now upload (publish) documents on the Pozorrubio Online Portal and Pozorrubio Online Blog , two of four websites meant to provide services to Pozorrubians and the LGU. They can also participate in the Forums and discussion provided by the two websites. They can now upload photos in the Pozorrubio Online Portal by embedding them in MS Word or MS Powerpoint and reducing the file sizes of the photos using the same 2 software. Photo editing was also taught using MS Office Picture Manager.
These are just some of the web activities learned by the municipal employees in a hands-on training organized by Ms. Jing Villamil, Consultant to the Mayor and concurrently PIO/PRO, who also serves as the LGU’s representative on web matters, and Ms Daisy Deguil, Chief Administrative Officer.
Training was provided on May 20, 2008 by Gin S. Quesada, one of the webmasters of Quesada eTechnologies. who designed the Pozorrubio Online Portal (www.pozorrubio.net.ph ), Pozorrubio Online Blog (http://pozorrubian.wordpress.com ), KaPOZoK Online (www.pinoyworx.com/kapozok ) and concurrently the official municipal webmaster for Pozorrubio’s official LGU website (www.pozorrubio.gov.ph ), as service to Pozorrubians and the town’s LGU.
In addition to the training, Quesada also briefly explained to some of the participants, required information to update the third website, which is the official LGU website of Pozorrubio (www.pozorrubio.gov.ph ), and which is undergoing redesign. Ms. Jing Villamil, and Ms. Daisy S. Dequil, were requested to coordinate with other department heads the updating efforts. This updating effort is supposed to have been part of a presentation scheduled 2 days ago, but presentation was cancelled due to instability of electricity in town resulting from the typhoon Cosme. The two were presented a National Computer Center document, ‘Citizen-Centric Website Development Guide for LGU‘ that will serve as their guide in the collection of information.
Those who participated in the hands-on training included Ms. Daisy S. Dequil, Chief AO, Ms. Sheila N. Domondon, Administrative Assistant, Ms. Winvy T. del Campo, License Officer, Ms.Cherrelene C. Serran, Administrative Aide, Mr. Fernando C. Gabuat, Administrative Assistant, Ms. Marivel A. Fiedacan, Administrative Assistant, and Ms. Jing Villamil, Consultant to the Mayor and PIO/PRO.
The topics for the hands-on training consisted of the following:
I. General subject/page layout and hyperlinks in the homepages and navigating thro’ the four websites:
a. Pozorrubio Online Portal (Figure 2)
b. Pozorrubio Online Blog (Figure 4)
c. My Pozorrubio, (Pozorrubio LGU website), (Figure 3)
d. KaPOZoK Online (Figure 5)
II. How to publish (or upload) documents/ comments in the different sections of Pozorrubio Online Portal and Pozorrubio Online Blog:
a. How to upload any MS Office and PDF documents (Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Adobe PDF) or drawings, (Autocad, Visio), images (jpg, gif files) ‘Local News’, ‘LGU News’, ‘From the Local Government’ and other similar sections.
b. Uploading announcements in the ‘Events’ Section.
III. How to use ‘Discussion Forum’ section
a. Creating a new topic for discussion
b. Replying to a discussion topic
IV. Creating links in the ‘Links’ Section.
V. Creating new document folder
a. Creating ‘LGU Projects for Bidding‘ document folder.
VI. Creating accounts for users (usernames and passwords).
VII. Image file size reduction using MS Office Picture Manager
a. Explanation of pixels and inches, and various standard sizes of images
b. By compression
c. By image file resizing
VIII. Image file editing using MS Office Picture Manager
IX. Trainee hand-on practice
X. Brief explanation of publishing in the Pozorrubio Online Blog, (http://pozorrubian.wordpress.com ), Figure 4;
XI. Explanation of the general content of the LGU website, ‘My Pozorrubio’, www.pozorrubio.gov.ph (Figure 3).
a. Showing blank pages of the site and the need for updating was explanation;
b. Hardcopies of the blank pages under construction were given to Ms. Jing Villamil and were shown to Daisy Deguiel, too;
c. Distribution of the National Computer Center’s document, ‘Citizen-Centric Website Development Guide for LGUs’ as guide in collecting documents to Ms Villamil and Ms Deguil.
XII. Access and explanation of the KaPOZoK Online, (www.pinoyworx.com/kapozok see Figure 5). the web version of the KaPOZoK, the print newspaper of Pozorrubio. Both KaPOZoK are parts of the LGU website.
Trainor/Webmaster encouraged the trainees to keep on practicing. And if they forget, they can easily call for the assistance of Ms. Amy Libao, a key employee of Quesda e-Technologies, who was also at the tutorial session assisting the trainor.
An important lesson taught by the trainor was the reduction of file sizes of photos and images particularly meant for sending in the Internet. It was observed that photos especially those taken from cameras are sent as is to addressees in the Web without reducing the file sizes.
As a result, it would take sometimes hours to send them to the Web and, correspondingly, recipients take same duration to download the images. Trainor demonstrated the use of the MS Office Picture Manager to reduce the photo file sizes from 3 to 5 MB (megabytes) to less than 300KB (kilobytes) or even less for some web purposes without losing much of the information. Image/ photo file reduction prior to sending them in the Web serve to minimize use of PC and network resources and concurrently employee time and effort.
Why was the training conducted?
The Pozorrubio Online Portal (see Figrure 2) was designed using a recent technology of content management system from Microsoft, named MS Sharepoint Services. It is one of several new approaches to Web 2.0, a new philosophy in web design meant to make websites highly interactive. Users of Web 2 websites can determine themselves the content of the website instead of just relying on the webmasters to publish read-only content. Quesada e-Technologies designed Pozorrubio Online Portal for Pozorrubians who are expected to provide the content themselves. In the local community, municipal employees are the main content providers and hence should receive priority user training. Other Pozorrubians were taught how to publish on the Pozorrubio Online, particularly members of sports organization. Quesada the trainor, who is also the webmaster and designer of the Portal tried to extend invitation for training to members of the schools, parish, and businesses. But have constricted time to squeeze all desires in a short vacation. However, Ms Amy Libao, one of Quesada eTechnologies key resident employees is made available to interested users for user training.
The Pozorrubio Online Blog (see Figure 4) is another website using a recently popular interactive technology. Quesada designed this, too, for Pozorrubians. He would like to see that fellow resident Pozorrubians would be taught on this to keep most of them at par with the rest of the world.
The official LGU website, ‘My Pozorubio’ (see Figure 3), technology belongs to the first generation of web technologies, and content is based from the first Guide issued by the National Computer Centers for LGUs. The National Computer Center is the government’s implementing arm for the the computerization of LGU processes.
The ‘My Pozorrubio’, however, will be redesigned to use another interactive content management system called Joomla, as soon as major information from the LGU are collected within a month. User and administrative training will be taught on this, after the completion of the web design.
KaPOZoK Online (see Figure 4) is part of ‘My Pozorrubio’. It is the online version of the original print newspaper, KaPOZoK serving as the official newsletter of Pozorrubio LGU. It uses a combination of static pages, blog, and MS Sharepoint technologies. JV
