>So, if Kris decides to to this again next year, please think about
>all this and be patient while you wait for trees, stockings, bios, 
>snowflakes, etc. to be posted.
> 
>Kris does an incredibly good job with the resources he has. Helping 
>him out this year was a very eye-opening experience for me. 

Greetings all and thank you to the Giving Tree Santas who sent all the
wonderful gifts to the Ferret Rescue Society of Ottawa and Area this
year. Your generosity is greatly appreciated and you will each receive
a thank you note once our tree coordinator is feeling better.

I too was one of the tree helpers and after it was all over, decided
we need a better way of creating the trees and automating the process.
I'll be working with Kris over the next few months to fine tune a
system (using PHP scrips and a mySQL database) that automatically
creates the web pages and automatically adds the stockings the moment
a ferret is chosen from the tree. This will allow the helpers to focus
on creating the snowflakes and entering the details using web forms -
a much simpler and more efficient process. Feel free to test our our
work in progress at
http://www.ferretrescue.ca/tree/showtree.php?treeid=1
as the notifications will only be sent to myself. Your suggestions
for improvements will be gratefully accepted (I'm also trying to make
it compatible with as many browsers as possible - please let me know
if you experience any errors with the pages)!

Lynn

[Moderator's note: *Really* glad to hear that. Would suggest an e-mail
confirmation via code before a ferret is "taken", else anyone can fake
an adoption. BIG]

[Posted in FML 6204]