SLDNewsletter May Return to the Use of the Password Page; There are Costs Involved with Most of the Alternatives

From its inception in 2010, the SLDNewsletter (SLN) has been able to operate with a minimal of cost. Both the main blog and the password page have cost us nothing to hold or maintain. One of our voluntary expenses is that of reader statistics. This system has been able to help us to evaluate reader's changing patterns. Recently, statistics helped us determine that, for whatever reason, residents totally refrained from getting on the password page for most of the months of June and September and for the total months of July and August. In all previous years, these months have been among the busiest.

Blogger, a division of Google Inc., has three or four alternatives to the current community password page. After studying each of them, we made the discovery that they are designed to gain customers for Google, an already very large corporation. SLN thought it would be reducing work for readers by changing from the password page, but as it turns out, we believe it to be initially more work for the reader to adopt one of the Blogger systems. Not only that, but we then discovered that the security feature was not going to meet our needs anyway. Their idea of security is to only allow ALL Google members and emails (@gmail.com) IN and to keep out ALL persons with other types of emails which is absolutely not what we need.

We could begin to pay for a web layout program with the type of security we are seeking for the Silver Lake Institute residents and their unique needs, but we are now thinking that the password page was the best for us, at least at this point in time. The decision will be soon and we will publish the announcement shortly after the final preparations are complete. Watch for it and plan to request the new password.