Prelude
During the late 1990's, Les Gruebner operated a design and programming service for producing smart computer chips - microcontrollers - for clients who needed some economical electronic wizardry included - embedded - in their products.
The World Wide Web of the Internet was becoming public knowledge. Web pages, like microcontrollers, are spun from code too. The required dialect was relatively simple in those days and in 1996 Les wrote and uploaded his first web page Nzero Engineering (with a lot of help from the Internet, and Steve Lang of Internet Service Providers wave in particular).
Working from a lifestyle block with tree-planting partner Gail Newcomb, and under the influence of tree cropping legends like Gordon Atkinson, promotion of the New Zealand Tree Crops Association on the Internet was examined. The Evans family of Purangi Estate had kindly established an early web presence for the association, but with absences overseas the web site soon fell out of date.
Les made space available on Nzero/treecrops during 1998 initially for the local Bay of Plenty Branch, and content began to grow there until it reached a stage where an official dedicated web site became desirable. Year 2000 came and went with most date rollover problems well anticipated thanks to the "year 2000 bug" publicity. By 15 October 2001 the domain name "treecrops.org.nz" was bought and the web site was launched, using advanced web hosting services at iserve.
treecrops.org.nz
So began a seriously busy time for many people. Web page publicity of available publications helped keep publications officer Judy Bool busy, in conjunction with technical editor Gail Newcomb roping in support from the experts to upgrade key publications for sale, always with the steady hand and sage advice of Mary Banks from the Treasurer's, then later Membership Secretary's office. Individuals who at different stages played a helpful role included George Sutton, Maurice Denton, various treasurers and many others.
In April 2002 the need had arisen for an area of information for members rather than the general public. Roy Hart had completed some momentous olive research and it was felt that the association members should have first access to it.
Members' Only
A system whereby members had passwords pre-configured for no-wait log-on was devised using the membership database, and a substantial effort of some weeks work went in to loading the membership accesses one by one was the only method permitted by the web host at that time. The system was maintained for resignations and new members every few weeks, made possible because Mary Banks always kept the database up to date and available for use by the web site manager.
More material intended for limited release soon followed onto the web site. There were other challenges too - international web standards had evolved faster than the corporates cared to update their browsers. For instance, the Netscape cutting edge browser stalled at version 4 while Microsoft and others stumbled on. Webmasters wanting to use modern code facilities had to write 2 or 3 iterations of every page to suit the different interpretations of the common browsers. With web space being limited, we confined our single iteration code to earlier standards but had to put extra effort into checking it for compatibility with most browsers, most of the time.
National Events web page
Posting lists of branch events on the Bay of Plenty web site was noted to attract a few extra visitors to our field days. Some became keen members, so an effort was made to list all branch activities nationwide on the web site. Again with the help of the membership secretary ensuring newsletter address labels included web management, the National Events web page was begun - thanks Mary Banks.
The system pushed time lines somewhat, with some events being listed on-line after the event, due to last minute mail-outs of newsletters and the extra days post seems to take to get to the Western Bay of Plenty. However, the Events page is an indication of branch activity for intending members, and an interesting archive.
Newsletter editors were soon encouraged to email their newsletters, preferably before or as they go to press, to maximise the chance of attracting visitors to events via internet exposure. Few editors ever did this but those who have participated have accumulated some nice branch web pages to testify to their efforts - for instance, Wellington-Manawatu branch web page. Emailed newsletters are most suitable to extract reviews, graphics and interesting articles from, for on-line branch archives and great publicity for prospective local members.
Q & A
Trial "question and answer" pages (Q & A) began, initially just for members but later thrown open to the public. Only one difficulty arose; it proved very difficult to get knowledgeable members to answer the questions of newbies. A generous few made very considerable contributions but they were being overly prevailed upon. The Q & A pages had to be abandoned for lack of "A".
In a move towards self-help, a couple of blog trials followed, but even allowing knowledgeable public answering and a list of earlier solutions, new variations of questions, Spam and other attacks on early blogging software soon convinced web management to end those trials too. Nothing ventured, nothing gained - we did gain a few new members.
Joining NZTCA On-line
Internet vandalism demanded considerable vigilance but the Internet seemed to strengthen after each stumble. On-line banking was one such advance that made it practical to offer on-line membership for those surfers-turned-visitors keen to join our ranks. In July 2003 our Joining page went live, and has been well used since. About a year later there was at last a demand for online Renewals - probably from those same on-line joiners - so the on-line Renewal page went live in October 2004. Its use was very low initially but it got busier each year.
Les Gruebner was awarded the Dr. Don McKenzie Award in 2004 "for the Tree Crops web site, the communications breakthrough". Les was not sure that web paging had anything to do with tree or crop advances, but democracy dealt him the award anyway. The intent was much appreciated. Les's partner Gail Newcomb had won it in 2002 for her work as Technical Editor. "The Walnut" is a beautiful trophy, and was much admired by the many tree cropper visitors to their Ecoworks woodland orchard in those years.
Upheavals - personnel
We lost Mary Banks in August 2003. Diana Loader valiantly held the membership fort for some months but changes were imminent.
[Her efforts saw the membership database rebuilt, and under new management — but apparently with a different attitude compared to the generous co-operation shared previously.]
The web site suffered the decline of its members-only access when the membership database became unavailable.
[Another service to suffer was the National Events web page, with Web Management being removed from the branch newsletter mailout labels so there was little information to support this popular page. It took a few weeks to recover from this problem, only to have a change of address for Web Management go unprocessed for an extended period so that newsletters were retrieved hopelessly late for the Events page. Despite several change of address notifications this situation persists, bewilderingly, some six months on...October 2007]
Upheavals - internet
Our long serving web hosts began to complain that the web site was exceeding its space allowance. Investigation revealed that the hosts had changed without notice to larger "minimum file block" sizes which meant that our 24 MegaByte web site of 500-odd files needed 40 MB of their courser web servers. For us, such business ethics were very testing. Removal of the members-only web pages allowed a reprieve. Eventually in May 2007 we were forced to move our entire web site to new hosts Hosting4less, which has proven quite satisfactory to date. We enjoy much cheaper hosting with more recent versions of support software and more freedom of choice, with very few niceties foregone.
Usage
In summary, the web site has grown big and complex, just like tree cropping - thankfully the Google search tool on the front page works very well for locating most information. The web site tends to contain Lists of information rather than actual information; a 'teaser' more by accident than design. The archival material already on-site is astonishingly rich in useful information which has been overlooked for years. There is much archival material from private collections which could be made available on our web site or elsewhere, given time and support.