Overview of the New and Improved SAVE SMC Website

For the past month, we've been overhauling the official SAVE SMC website. We've revised all our main pages and added quite a few new pages. The sidebars of each page are filled with valuable information, links, quotes, and comments. Our rollover menu highlights each key section of the site, so you will always know where you are. We've also added a "last updated" sub-header under each main page title so that you will know the last time we've revised that page. We've also added a breaking news animated banner at the top near the menu that you can click on to go to the article currently being displayed.

Here's a quick overview of each new section with a few screenshots.



MAIN PAGE

We've got links to all the key pages and databases. We've added quotes and comments from Santa Monica College faculty, staff, and students along with some nice images. The most recent information pertains to a lawsuit filed by the Santa Monica College Associated Students. It's worth checking out. We also have quick overviews of our featured pages on SMC, AET, and our profiles page. We've also added a list of partial state and federal laws that SMC has violated. In our SMC section, we have links to documents pertaining to the California Public Records Act.

NEWS

Our news page gives you the latest on our developments and site updates. Our recent entry for October 22, 2006 gives an overview of the recent revisions to the site. We've added permanent links to the Secret Studio Animatics Contracts as well as SMC's Scandals.

MISSION

Our Mission Statement page provides background information on the problems that plague Santa Monica College and our efforts under the California Public Records Act. Excerpts of the various laws are listed in the right sidebar.

SPOTLIGHT

Our Spotlight page lists our miscellaneous articles by topic. Topics include Education, News and Politics, Civil Rights, Entertainment, Legal, and the California Public Records Act. There's a wealth of valuable information, so dive right in and make yourself at home. More articles are in the works, so check back frequently.

SMC

Our SMC page gives an overview of articles pertaining to Santa Monica College. There's a wide range of topics, from the Bundy Campus to SMCPD police misconduct, complaints by faculty and staff, financial audits and accountability issues. We've also added a map to SMC. There will be more articles added soon.



AET

Our AET page gives an overview of articles pertaining to the Academy of Entertainment and Technology. This is SMC's vocational school. As in the SMC page, we've added a map. Here you can read about the lack of jobs and internships, questionable sabbaticals, and problems with the programs career certificates and courses. We also have a brief history of AET and information on the program's past and current faculty. We have links to many charts, including AET's donors and industry partners. There are more articles in the works, so keep checking back.

PROFILES

Our Profiles page contains key profiles of Santa Monica College administrators, faculty, staff, students, and friends. We've separated the AET faculty from the SMC faculty. We already have a few profiles placed online. By clicking on "view profile," you will be taken to that individual's profile section. For some profiles, we may only have one page, but for others, we may have a mini-website devoted to him or her.

JIM KEESHEN'S PROFILE

In the last month, we've taken our single Jim Keeshen page and expanded it quite a bit. There's a submenu with topics ranging from ethics to financial information. We have an about page, a hobbies page, facts, comments, and quotes. We've added a key documents page as well as a page devoted to Jim Keeshen Productions with a nice slideshow (for Internet Explorer users). Here you can read about the various animation projects undertaken by Jim Keeshen, utilizing AET's resources. There's quite a bit of information, so bookmark this page and keep coming back.



BLOG

Our Blog page is the SAVE SMC Search Guide for both the official website and the SAVE SMC blog. Our sidebar features a wealth of hyperlinks both internally on our site and to other sites of noteworthy importance. This page contains links to all our articles written to date in order from most recent to oldest. At the bottom of each month, there is a link to the AET database where you can search for articles by date, title, topic and keywords. Our individual blog articles have an expanded pulldown menu with a vast wealth of resources to explore.

We are in the process of transferring all our blog articles from Blogger over to the main site. In the process, we are revising the articles by updating links and color coordinating and adding a few more images here and there. Our text is a big larger and thus more readable. We're indenting quotes so that they stand out more. So far, we've transferred over September 2005, August 2006, September 2006, and October 2006. Within the next two weeks, we should have all the articles transferred over and linked to the official website. We have written almost 200 blog articles since our inception on September 14, 2006, with well over 1000 pages of information, many of which are illustrated, so there's so much to learn about SMC and AET.

BLOGGER

This is the blog mirror index of the site. It is the same structure as the Blog page, but these articles link to the original ones posted on blogger. Although we prefers the new articles, some visitors may want a light blue background with smaller text and the ability to post comments and view the blog by month. So, we've given you two choices and a steady stream of information in case one server is offline for maintenance. In order not to be confused, we've color-coordinated the Blogger page to match the blog articles, both in light blue, so you will know which page you are viewing. We've also given a small facelift to the SAVE SMC Blog on Blogger, so that it matches the new look and feel of the official website.

DATABASES

We've got three major databases online. The AET Database is the advanced search for the SAVE SMC website. It is divided by category with topics and keywords. We've also have a SMC Litigation Database, which provides all the key legal pleadings in our lawsuits as well as our public records requests under the California Public Records Act. Lastly, our Family Guy Database has all the information and key documents relating to the popular animated show by Fox. The Family Guy Database has links to articles, legal pleadings, and an art gallery with images from the pilot pitch. Each database should be accessible from the SAVE SMC Directory on each page, located in the top sidebar.

CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

Our Civil Rights Violations page contains information pertaining to student rights, SMC's smear campaign and extortion, and the AET money tree of wasteful spending. The money tree link can be clicked on to view a larger more readable picture. We'll add a lot more information to the page in the future, so check back again.

MISCELLANEOUS PAGES

The highlights provided in this article are merely the portal overview pages that link to many more pages on the site. We urge you to begin your online journey and see what you can discover. We'll add many more pages in the year to come and look forward to another year in which we continue to SAVE SMC. For those interested in video games and game industry news, visit our Phoenix Genesis online news media website. Once we've finished transferring all our blog articles, we'll jump right back in with more exciting articles. There's so much more to write, and after more than a year, we've only begun to scratch the surface.

-- Des Manttari,
Editor-in-Chief,
Phoenix Genesis

(c) 2006: Phoenix Genesis/MBS LP

Feel free to link or print this; just include the SAVE SMC URL: http://savesmc.blogspot.com/

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