The Masonry team supports at least two web servers funded by the SCA in Australia and New Zealand, and managed on their behalf by the Masonry team of the Kingdom of Lochac. The principal server is graciously hosted by Aero-Care Pty. Ltd, which makes some of its available bandwidth in Australia available to Kingdom for free. The New Zealand server is hosted by Don William de Cameron with his employer, Telstra NZ.
In both cases, although the server may be largely or wholly dedicated for SCA purposes, the bandwidth and physical hosting-space that it is located in (such as Aero-care's) are not free, and commercial revenue is generated from this. Please do not abuse the privilege of using this bandwidth for your hobby -- they use it for their income!
All groups (baronies, shires, guilds, peerage orders etc.) within Lochac are entitled to one free e-mail address in the lochac.sca.org domain.
In the past, some Australian groups were issued with a number of free email addresses for a group and its officers. We are not currently doing that because it seems that most of these groups' officers forget their passwords regularly, and we have to spend a lot of time resetting them (there are many groups in Lochac!). If people start taking more care of their passwords, then we'll re-think the policy on this. A different approach is used in New Zealand, and it is generally possible for a group to use and manage its own officer-specific addresses.
All groups who have a mailing list on the lochac.sca.org domain must have a nominated person to run that mailing list. They must subscribe to the "site" mailing list, and must have web access in order to maintain the list. See below for information.
All officers of the Kingdom of Lochac are entitled to one free e-mail address in the domain. For example, seneschal@lochac.sca.org or herald@lochac.sca.org. Officers are also entitled to a free e-mail address for each deputy, eg: rapier@lochac.sca.org or bombard@lochac.sca.org.
Officers, groups, and others holding free addresses are responsible for making any updates or changing any redirections. This is normally done via the SquirrelMail program on the principal server, or by editing simple "forwarding" files on the NZ one.
The King and Queen of Lochac are entitled to a free e-mail address, which is royal@lochac.sca.org, and the Crown Prince and Princess can use heirs@lochac.sca.org. Each can be accessed via SquirrelMail.
You will get thrown off the server for sending spam. You have been warned.
All groups in Lochac are entitled to a web site. This includes Shires, Baronies, Colleges, guilds, peerage orders, etc.
All Kingdom Officers including the Seneschal, Chronicler, Marshal, Web Minister etc, are entitled to a web site.
Large events that have significant attendance from other Lochac groups may apply for a website. The applications will be evaluated on a case by case basis.
To obtain a web site, contact the Masonry Deputy directly. You will require a confirmation e-mail from the Seneschal, guildmaster or clerk of your group, guild or order, stating that you are the person authorised by them to manage their official web site.
In the case of groups, if you don't know who the Seneschal of your group is then have a look on this page. That's the person from whom we'll be expecting a confirmation email. If the person listed on that page is not your current Seneschal, have the new Seneschal either get their entry properly up to date, or contact the Kingdom Seneschal if they don't know how.
If everything is in order, you will then be issued with a login name and password. You should upload your web pages via FTP to the web server, placing them in your home directory. You can have SSH access as well if you ask me for it and you know what you're doing.
If you do not know how to design a web site, then there are many people who can assist you - try asking on The Shambles or the Lochac Web Ministers' mailing list (see below).
There is no limitation on web space (the server's web storage directory is currently under 40% full), however be reasonable with the use of large files for bandwidth conservation purposes.
PHP-4, MySQL, Perl, and other useful programming utilities are installed on both servers. There are no FrontPage extensions, nor will there ever be. You should not use CGI programs but you can use PHP. If you want a database set up, then ask for one, and we'll set one up for you.
All web ministers (i.e. people with FTP access) and all people running mailing lists on the Australian server are required to subscribe to the "site" mailing list. To do this, see the site mailing list information page.
If you run a web site on this server and you do not subscribe to the "site" mailing list, then your web site may be shut down without warning. Join it now. Web ministers are also strongly encouraged to join the Lochac Web Ministers' mailing list.
If you run a mailing list on this server and you do not subscribe to the "site" mailing list, then your mailing list may be shut down without warning. Join it now.