Making Your LEW Web Site Public

1. Your Board should decide who it wants to be responsible for the content of your Web site, and what approval process must be used before publishing new material or changing or deleting existing material.
2. Review the Memorandum of Understanding (last updated Mar. 2016) with your Board, to be sure they understand what services we are providing.
3. Complete your first site (turn all dots green next to the pages you want to be public).

4. Follow your League's procedures for final approval of content. They may look at your pages using your Internal URL.

5. If you don't already have a web site domain name, choose what name you want for your web site.

After you are ready to "go live" (i.e., have your new League Easy Web site be made accessible to the public),:

1. If you own a domain name being used to access your current League web site, see "Go Live - Use Own Domain Name" below for more instructions.

2. Send an email to support@lwvnet.org, giving your League name and state, and saying that your site is ready to publish. Also tell us what web site name you want to use. To

3. If you have just bought your own domain name, we will help you set it up.

4. We will then activate your web site and send you an email message describing your status.

5. At this time, the LWV California State Office will send you an invoice for $100 (one time setup charge) plus $200 (for the first year's annual fee). (Check with your state League to see if they offer local Leagues a LEW subsidy, as some do.) We ask that you also return to us the signed Memorandum of Understanding. Please send both your payment and the signed MOU to LWV California - LEW Project, 1107 Ninth Street, Suite 300, Sacramento, CA 95814. Or you may agree to the MOU and pay online.

If you already have an active web site with your own private domain name and you now want to use League Easy Web, here's how to have a smooth turnover.

1. If you are currently using email addresses like president@lwvyourleague.org, be sure to define them as forwarding addresses in LEW. If you have any subdomains defined with your current domain name, please contact support@lwvnet.org to discuss.
2. When you send an email message to support@lwvnet.org saying that your web site is ready for its debut, be sure to mention you want to use your domain name and that it is being used now for your current site.
3. We will run some commands that will get your site ready to work on our computers as lwvyourleague.org. It is important that this step be done before the next one if you want a smooth transition.
4. Then you or someone must log in to the web site where you purchased your domain name and change the domain name server names to: ns.lwvnet.org and ns2.lwvnet.org

   As the change takes effect on the servers across the country, people accessing http://lwvyourleague.org will go to your new LEW site. All email send to president@lwvyourleague.org (e.g.) will be handled by our servers forwarding to the email addresses you specify.

5. Send another email to support@lwvnet.org saying you've changed the domain name servers.
6. Support will send an email to you saying that your new site is live. This email will test your email forwarding definitions. It will also start the billing process.
7. You can then cancel (or let lapse) your existing webhosting service. Be sure to keep the domain name registration service, but you won't need anything else from them. You are responsible for continuing to pay them for the right to use your domain name.

How soon do we need to inform you that we want to cancel our LEW account?

The Memo of Understanding that you signed says you should inform us 60 days in advance that you want to terminate your account.

After the new site is ready to go live, how do I finally close my LEW account?

There are two things you want to happen:

• All accesses to your current active LEW site should get "moved" to your new site.
• You should verify the official closing date of your account to stop the billing process.

What are my options for moving accesses to my new site?

This depends on whether you have your own private domain name or are using a subdomain of lwvnet.org.

• If you have your own domain name like lwvleaguename.org, follow the instructions given to you by your new web hosting service. Need help to find your domain name registration account?

  You may be asked to change the domain name servers (DNS) from ns.lwvnet.org and ns2.lwvnet.org to the new servers. Or you may be asked to forward all accesses to a new web site address. If you are migrating to MyLO, see a description of how your domain name is used.

  Note: If you forward accesses, you may lose your site ranking accorded by search engines like Google. Ask your new webhost about changing the nameservers in your domain name registration to theirs and asking them to do a 301 redirect from any page to your new home page. If you have the expertise, more advanced options to specifically redirect pages may be possible.

• If you are using a subdomain, like leaguename.st.lwvnet.org, then send an email to support@lwvnet.org and ask us to permanently redirect accesses to your new web site address.

How do I stop my billing process?

Even though you sent a notification 60 days in advance, please send an email to billing@lwvnet.org and ask any questions you may have about billing including the actual date you intend to cancel your account.

After we close our account, can we still see our old pages and files?

Yes. See your last released site pages at lwvnet.org/st/shortname where st is the two character name of your state and shortname is your League's LEW shortname.

See your files at lwvnet.org/st/shortname/files and your League's images at lwvnet.org/st/shortname/images2

If you don't know your League's shortname, please send an email to support@lwvnet.org including the full name of your League and state.