Circular from the webmaster
Home page
The home page of the web site is supposed to contain information about competitions, events and newsletters. For the events I try to keep it up to date by removing items that have already occurred. Being based in Pretoria I naturally have more information about events in Pretoria but I would very much like to have items occurring in other centres. If we get enough information for the different centres we might very well make a separate page for each centre but for the time being that is not warranted. So far I have received very little information about anything happening in the centres outside Pretoria and Johannesburg. For now I will keep the event information together but sorted in reverse date sequence.
Please send me information about events that you think may be of interest to music teachers. This could include performances, concerts, competitions, eisteddfodau or any meeting or lecture of interest.
We would very much like to have information about meetings you had. Although we do not publish minutes on the web site, we really would appreciate reports about meetings.
Meetings
Any meetings of members of the society are advertised on this page.
Previous meetings with links to photographs if any, are available
Find a teacher / Vind 'n onderwyser
From the menu item "Members" > " Find a teacher" or "Vind 'n onderwyser" you are able to list data from the database.
The first screen is a filter specifying what data you want:
If you do not enter anything on this screen, you get all the records, which could take a long time and use up unnecessary facilities of your Internet connection.
However, for example, if you specify the letters 'tein' for the town and choose violin for instrument, you will get all the records containing the characters "tein" in the town name and violin for instrument. All the fields except the dropdown boxes are 'partial fields'. For example if you specify 'van' in the surname field, you will not only get all the 'van der Merwes' and 'van der Walts' but also names like 'Ivanovic' and 'Evans'.
Adverts
We place adverts of interest for free at the discretion of the webmaster. You could send me information concerning sheet music, books you want to sell, instrument repair and tuning, publications of interest and small private advertisements provided it is not commercial and applicable to music teachers. For the advert it is most important to know when it must be removed again. We do not want to keep irrelevant information for ever.
Jobs
If you know of any position being advertised applicable or of interest to a music teacher, please let me know so that we can advertise it under "Adverts". Here as well it is most important to know up to what date the advertisement should appear. For example it could be an advertisement for members of an orchestra which could be of interest to your pupils.
Officials
If you choose the menu item "About Us" and then "Officials" under that, you will see a list of the current officials and centre committees. In this list you can click on any name and provided we have the E-mail address of that person, a pop-up window will open in which you can enter your own E-mail address and contact number and a message to the official concerned. The message will be E-mailed to the person concerned without you ever seeing the E-mail address. This is done specifically to protect against E-mail addresses being misused for spam. This facility has been misused in the past by people wanting to advertise some event and then sending E-mail indiscriminately to everyone on the list, regardless whether it would be of interest to that person. For that reason we are planning to limit the amount of characters that can be sent by this facility.
When you send us names for the list, do keep in mind that we also require E-mail addresses and contact numbers of the people concerned if we do not have them already. How do you know if we have them already? Go to "Members" > "Find a teacher" and make sure the E-mail box is ticked. Then list the members and see if there are E-mail addresses.
Address list
The database was originally set up using information from the printed directory list. This list did not include E-mail addresses, so it has been a long struggle to get them and we are still adding to the data. Apart from the information you see under "Members" > "Find a teacher", we also keep full postal or street addresses. This information can be updated by the centre secretaries or any other person in the centre designated to do that.
To be able to do that, you will need to get a password from me for your particular centre. There is a separate password for every centre, for independent members and also one for the institutional centres as a whole. If you have the password, you can go to the maintenance site www.sasmt-savmo.org.za/maint where you log in for the centre concerned. You will then be able to see the full information for every member and you can update it or enter new members.
There is also a facility by which you can download a complete file of the centre concerned, containing all the data. This file can be read in into Excel to be used as an ordinary spreadsheet. I have written an Excel macro to facilitate this. I also have instructions on how to go about downloading the file. Both the instructions and the Excel macro file are available for download using the download button in the last column on the home page. Once you have the spreadsheet you can of course use it in a Word processor mail-merge to print address labels or individually addressed letters or a list of E-mail addresses etc. I even have an example of an MS Word form letter that will give you a listing of names, addresses, telephone numbers and E-mail addresses in MS Word format using this spreadsheet in a mail merge. You can have it any time if you are supposed to have access to the data. Just let me know.
Should you require all the E-mail addresses of your centre, go to 'Lede' and 'E-poslys' under that on the maintenance page. You will need to be logged on for your centre using the password sent to you. You will obtain a complete list of the applicable E-mail addresses that can be copied and pasted into the address field of your E-mail program.
Applications
Under menu item "Members" > "Applications" there are various methods for applying for membership. There is a printable application form which you can print, then fill in and send it through to the web master either as a scanned document through E-mail or through the post. Additionally there is a fully electronic version which you fill in on the screen and submit. It will be sent in the form of an E-mail to the Executive Officer and myself and is automatically placed in the database. Therefore if you submit this form more than once, there will be duplicates in the database. Proof of qualifications and other required documentation must still be sent afterwards either through the post or E-mail as scanned documents.
News, Newsletters, Articles and Links
In the right-hand column of the home page under 'Links' there are a number of buttons that take you to other pages.
Under 'news' we publish news items that may of interest to music teachers.
'newsletters' will take you to the various circulars and newsletters that have been published - normally not more than a year old.
'articles' take you the section on the web site containing articles that you submit.They will appear on separate pages in portable document format (pdf) similar to the current newsletters and circulars. I await your input in this regard.
Links to other websites of interest to music teachers appear in the last column on the landing page below the link to Facebook. We will publish a link to another website provided that it is of interest to music teachers and that the website concerned also publishes a link back to our site. It is normally not in the interest of a web site to make available numerous links that sends the reader away from itself.
Downloads
The 'download button in the right-hand column of the home page provides a facility for downloading various files to your computer. There are instructions on how to maintain the data for a particular centre, how to get the data into a spreadsheet (including the Excel macro used for that purpose) and some logos for use in official correspondence or E-mail. This list will be augmented as needed or on your request.
There is also an MS Word form document that can be used to generate a directory list with mail-merge using the spreadsheet mentioned above.
When downloading data from a website to their own computer the greatest problem users often have is to find the downloaded file afterwards. You are supposed to know in which directory on your computer the file ends up. There are some instructions in this regard at the top of the download page.