Computer Answers

Project: Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1321

Services Provided:

  • Website Design
  • Basic Site Framework
  • Image Processing
  • Accessibility Improvements
  • Site Optimization
  • Web Hosting

Feature Highlights:

  • Structural HTML
  • Graceful Fallback CSS Layout
  • Member Area Protection
  • Automatic Inactivity Log Out
  • Session Continuation
  • Validating Contact Form Mailer
  • Theme-integrated Form Controls
  • Pages Editable In Any Text Editor
  • Highly Accessible

Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1321 is a transit union local chapter covering the capital region of New York, USA.

They needed their site brought up to date, polished, and secured to provide their membership online access to information and resources important to them. The secured members area of the site provides retirement and pension information, meeting schedules, bulletins, grievance filings, and a contact form, as well as photos, commemorations, and content relating to other facets of union life.

We designed a light, clean site that served as a professional face for their local union chapter. Using optimized and retouched imagery and external stylesheets, the site loads fast and is light on bandwidth. Along with other techniques, the accessibility menu at the top of each page (the same as on Computer Answers) helps ensures usability for a range of visually-impaired, limited-motion, screenreader, and other special needs users, while providing the same options, via keyboard or mouse, to your average dexterous and well-sighted users.

The secure members area is protected by a session management program which logs out users after a short time of inactivity. If the session times out and the user logs back in, the session is restored right where it left off. This prevents lost form submissions if, for example, a user takes a considerable amount of time to fill out and submit the contact form. This session management program, as well as all other programming logic, is provided by a custom site framework recently developed by our senior web development staff. Friendly page addresses, contact form mailing and validation, login redirection, and custom error pages are some other included features that were used on the site.

The site is easily managed with static pages that are editable in any text or HTML editor, short and simple (set and forget) configuration files, and a dedicated "web publishing" FTP account that only shows the pertinent page files and image directories, keeping scripts, design files, and other clutter out of the way.

The site is currently live and available to view at: www.atu1321.org