How VUNA Membership Can Put You in Touch with the Rest of the World

VUNA Views, Vol. 8, No. 1, Winter (December), 1998

How VUNA Membership Can Put You in Touch with the Rest of the World

Joining VUNA and the International Vegetarian Union is more than an altruistic gesture of support for the worldwide vegetarian movement. Thanks to the IVU's growing Internet presence, group and individual VUNA members qualify for substantial benefits far beyond the cost of membership. For example, your group can receive a stable and easy-to-remember e-mail address and URL (Web address) for a World Wide Web page, and the IVU Webmaster will even create a simple Web page for you. Read on as the IVU's John Davis describes these and other Net benefits available for VUNA/IVU members.

Membership in VUNA automatically includes membership in the International Vegetarian Union (IVU)--which means you can take advantage of the IVU's Internet resources on the ivu.org domain, all completely free provided you keep your membership up to date. These are some of the options available so far, and they are expanding all the time:

IVU-Talk mailing list

This is a discussion list which currently has about 120 subscribers from thirty-five different countries around the world. Subscription is open to anyone with an individual membership in VUNA or anyone with an official role in a member organization. If you believe you are eligible and would like to subscribe, send an e-mail to: majordomo@ivu.org

with this and only this in the body of the message: subscribe ivu-talk

[Editor's note: When you join an e-mail list, all the messages posted to the list are sent to your e-mail address, either individually or all together in one message called a digest. You can read the messages or not, as you wish and your time allows. You can save messages or delete them. You can send replies either to the person who posted the message or to the list, in which case all list members receive the reply. You can also send your own message to the list. In this way, discussions take place on the list. If you decide to unsubscribe, you can do that with one message that handles it automatically and you may resubscribe at any time.]

E-mail address (organizations only)

You can have a forwarding address for your veg group. For example, the Vermont Vegetarian Society has vvs@ivu.org--any mail sent to that address is automatically forwarded to Judy Miner's private e-mail address. It's rather like having a PO Box for privacy and a more professional image, but it also means that the private e-mail address of your group or the person who handles your group's e-mail can change, without requiring you to change your letterhead and all your publicity material.

Web pages (organizations only)

Even if you know nothing about the Internet, you can have one Web page created for you containing basic contact information, something about your regular meetings and upcoming events, etc. The VVS has such a page at: http://www.ivu.org/vvs

To have a Web page your group must be able to be contacted by e-mail, but any member with an e-mail address could serve as the on-line contact.

If you have someone who can create Web pages for your group then you can have as many pages on the IVU server as you want, complete with your own password for directly updating your own website. A good example of that is Oxford Vegetarians in the UK, at: http://www.ivu.org/oxveg

Your group can have a www.ivu.org/ address even if your pages are on another server. You will thus have a permanent address even if your pages move to another host. An ivu.org address is easier to remember than the typical five-level-deep address from most hosts and ISP servers. For example, consider: www.ivu.org/av

and compare it to their real address: http://www.envirolink.org/orgs/francoveg/orgs/alliancevegetarienne/

It is also becoming more difficult to register a group's own domain name as many logical abbreviations are already taken. Another advantage is that IVU itself gets noticed when it is part of your group's address.

There is also technical support available, primarily via the "tech" mailing list which includes everyone with passwords or contributing directly to the ivu.org domain in various ways.

If you want to put your group on ivu.org, contact me, John Davis, at webmaster@ivu.org

If you know of another group that should be on-line but isn't, persuade them to join VUNA and reap the 'net benefits!--John Davis, IVU Webmaster

Maintained by Judy Miner jwminer@accessvt.com
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