For New Webministers

Congratulations on becoming the East Kingdom’s newest webminister! 

Assuming this is the first time you’ve held this office, there will be a bunch of steps required to get up to speed. The process can be a bit bewildering, but it’ll make sense eventually — just keep working through the steps and ask the webministry for help when you get stuck and you’ll get through it.

➤ The standard way to contact the webministry is to send an email to help@helpdesk.eastkingdom.org — that reaches the kingdom webminister, all deputies, and a small squad of people they’ve designated to assist them in answering routine questions and support inquiries.

Getting your EK account

  1. Are you a current paid member of the SCA? All officers must be paid members, so your group should have already checked this before you were elected or appointed, but if this was accidentally overlooked, you’ll need to either address it immediately or resign the office. Go find your membership card because you’ll need it for some of the below steps.
  2. If you don’t already have an East Kingdom email address, you can register for one using the self-service account portal. This will create an email address for you of the form your-member-number@members.eastkingdom.org. Those email accounts are powered by Gmail, and reading and sending email will work like a regular Gmail account, but some of the steps for managing them are handled through the kingdom, so things like password resets work a bit differently. There are some useful guidelines for EK email usage on this site.

Taking on the Webminister role

  1. Make sure the webministry has been notified of your appointment. This is normally done by your seneschal or kingdom officer. If you’re not sure that it was done, you can contact the webministry and ask them to check. 
  2. Fill out the EK Webministry warranting form. That’ll put you on the list as an official webminister. 
  3. Ask the previous webminister (or the Kingdom webministry) to transfer the webminister@groupname.eastkindom.org office role to your account in Fusion Directory, which is the tool the kingdom uses to manage accounts and permissions. (The process they’ll use to accomplish this is described in the “Changing Office Holders in FusionDirectory” documentation, but you don’t have to understand all of the details — yet.)
  4. Ask the previous webminister (or the Kingdom webministry) to transfer the archive of past email to and from webminister@groupname.eastkindom.org to your account. This process is described in the “Email Handoff” documentation.
  5. If your group’s web site uses WordPress, check to make sure you can log in to the admin interface. Use your member number as your username, and use your EK members email password.  (This should work as soon as webminister@groupname.eastkindom.org is transferred to you.)
    • If your group’s web site doesn’t use WordPress, and instead requires you to log in via SSH/SFTP to transfer files back and forth, you’ll need the “Webmin” password. The previous webminister may be able to give this to you, or you can ask the Kingdom webministry to reset it and send it to you. Once you receive this password you should sign in and change it to a new password that only you know. Keep this password in a safe place and do not share it with anyone.

Keeping In Contact

  1. Read through the EK Webministry Policies — then bookmark that page to come back and reread them in a month when some of the details will make more sense.
  2. Mark your calendar to remind you of the due dates for quarterly webministry reports: January 15th, April 15th, July 15th, October 15th. The online report form only requires a couple of minutes to fill out.
  3. Join the EK-WM Slack workspace. This is an instant-messaging chat application that the webministry team uses to keep in touch. You can use this to ask quick questions, participate in conversations, and keep up-to-date with what the webministry is doing.
    • Any official request for Kingdom webministry assistance should still be backed up with an email to the helpdesk. This ensures it doesn’t get lost in the cracks.
  4. Your official webministry email address should already be subscribed to WM-Staff, the EK Webminstry Staff mailing list — however if your office is new, because your group did not previously have a webminister, you should subscribe. You can see a list of previous messages in the online archive, or subscribe by sending an email from your East Kingdom account to wmstaff+subscribe@webminister.eastkingdom.org.