Website History

        Currently, this is the 2nd build and the 5th home of the Yanush Chapter on the World Wide Web.

        The first Yanush website was launched in 1999 and hosted by Xoom. About a year and a half later, the site moved to Tripod. Both Xoom and Tripod were free web hosting servers and had limited space and made it difficult for the average user to find the website. The original site was built using frames, which uses multiple areas for content in the same browser window. It included links to other chapters, officer duty descriptions and a lodge calendar. At the time, the Yanush website was pretty decent, considering the lodge site had only been started 2 years prior and the dotcom boom was still in its rapid growth period. The internet was a very large place for an OA chapter website to spring up in, so it would not be long before the Lodge or the National Order of the Arrow committee would set policy for internet content.

        In 2002, the Chapter Officers elected to move the Yanush website to its own server. In doing this, they were complying with the new lodge guidelines, which requested that a chapter website may contain no advertisements. The Tripod server had always been free to use because they could place random pop-up ads anywhere in the Yanush Webpage. This was very annoying to users and inappropriate for a Scouting based website. After purchasing a domain name and server space, the Yanush site, in its entirety was copied to www.yanush.com. The old Yanush site was not taken down until November of 2004 and between those two years there was a lot of confusion as which site was the actual website.

        At some point during 2003, the Yanush.com site was no longer regularly updated nor was there a webmaster appointed to upkeep the site.

        In August of 2004, the Yanush Chapter was beginning to take a new direction. With the newly appointed Adviser, Tim Conard, an optimistic plan of 'getting the word out' went into effect. Part of that plan was the building of a new Yanush website. Since administrative access to the Yanush.com site was unavailable and the 2-year license was almost up, it was decided that a new and more fitting domain name would be chosen. So, Yanush.org was the likely choice. Just as simple a name as its predecessor, Yanush.org established that our chapter was part of a non-profit organization; the Order of the Arrow and the Boy Scouts of America. Until mid 2007, the site was hosted on server space donated by a former Yanush member, but was moved to a shared server with the North Trail District's homepage. The difference between the old site and the new one is night and day, literally. The old site had black text on white-colored OA background and used very few images or pictures. With high speed internet now in more abundance, the new site offers much more content and features such items as online registration for Unit Elections, lots of photographs of our members and a sleek, graphical interface. The current website was built by and is now maintained by former Chapter Chief, Jim Slaughter.  Hopefully, the new site will be useful to Yanush members and be up to date for years to come.

Yanush Webmasters

1999 - 2000            Austin Dennis
2000 - 2002            Josh Terasaki
2002 - 2003            C.J. Carter
2003 [site inactive]
2004 - Present         Jim Slaughter