WP-ORG is an Internet community of 30,000 West Point graduates, parents of cadets and midshipmen, and friends of West Point and Annapolis. WP-ORG provides valuable information and communication resources to this community--free of charge--through scores of websites and more than 300 listservices in support of most
USMA classes, 65
West Point Societies, 61
West Point Parent Clubs, and the
USNA parents. Two of the more active listservices WP-ORG supports include WP-Forum, a moderated list open to USMA grads of any year group and rank; and Parent Forum, a moderated list for USMA parents to learn about West Point and exchange information and questions with other parents. WP-ORG is also host to 30 cadet activity and sport listservices.
The initial structure of WP-ORG was developed by Ditus Bolanos '90. From the beginning WP-ORG has grown in response to the West Point Community's requests for additional support and service. A Board of Advisors including eleven USMA graduates and two cadet parents ('02 & '04,'05,'07) oversee the day-to-day operations at WP-ORG. Our cadet parent Advisor fills another role at WP-ORG as a full-time employee responsible for handling feedback messages received through the WP-ORG website. Dian Welle and Megan Klein are the customer service face of WP-ORG.
Our purpose at WP-ORG is to support the communication needs of the Service Academy Community.
WP-ORG has developed the functionality to provide all 40,000 living West Point graduates with a Personal Homepage (PHP) that converts, upon the death of a graduate, to a Eulogy page for the gathering and display of testimonials and pictures from classmates, family and friends.
We support online payment sites for the collection of Society and Parent Club dues as well as registration for club and society events.
A recurring question is, "How much should I contribute to WP-ORG?". The average individual contribution has been rising for the past 3 years from about $40 to a little over $60 now. Our goal, however, is to double the participation. WP-ORG encourages those who use its services to consider a contribution that reflects the value they receive from the WP-ORG services they use. The key to expanding your knowledge and your use of WP-ORG services is to study the WP-ORG homepage and simply click away and explore the functionality provided. The homepage is located at:
http://www.west-point.org. Please take a few moments to check it out.
WP-ORG is a completely separate entity and is independent of USMA and the Association of Graduates. WP-ORG does work closely with both as it serves our primary interest of serving the West Point Community. Through the Feedback links on WP-ORG webpages, hundreds of queries are received from high school students, scholars, former military, and other citizens of the world seeking information about West Point.
WP-ORG is a labor of love of your classmates and friends. Our semi-annual fundraisers maintain existing WP-ORG resources, provide for the scheduled upgrade of hardware, and fund the development of new offerings to support the West Point community. The network architecture at WP-ORG has recently been redesigned to take advantage of open-source software and technology that makes more efficient use of hardware. This change, combined with a gradual migration from tower to rack-mount servers, has cut our hardware footprint to 1/8th of its previous size. Our imminent move to a co-location facility will double our bandwidth and reduce our monthly cost by a third. Responsibility for the environment surrounding our equipment and its physical security will be assumed by the facility. We will also be establishing offsite backup servers in Dallas and Los Angeles. At the same time our backend is being upgraded, you will notice a facelift to the public face of WP-ORG. Our homepage has been moved to Joomla and now hosts continually updating West Point news. Joomla templates for class, society and parent club websites are under development and will be available within this next six-month cycle. So look for the changes and be sure to tell us what you think.
Fund Drive 26 focuses on raising money to support our employees, primarily tasked with the migration and facelift of WP-ORG, operational expenses, system upgrades and a cushion providing for unforeseen failures.
