You know what they say - if you don't own your web presence, you're taking a huge risk. For example, let's say that you decide to start the Red Green Company, and that you decide to establish your web presence on Facebook. Lo and behold, one day color blind Mark Zuckerberg decides that all red green companies should be banned from Facebook...and your company is out of luck.
(And yes, I know that most of my blogs are on the blogspot.com domain. I didn't say that I practiced what I preached.)
So now it's time for a local example of this phenomenon.
Last year we hosted an exchange student who attended Chaffey High School - well, she attended Chaffey until all foreign exchange programs were terminated and she had to return to her home country in March. Before that happened, students and parents/guardians would keep track of their students' progress through a service called School Loop. Not only did they provide students, parents, and guardians with a handy app to check grades and communicate with teachers and staff, but they also set up a website for the school. Over time, I began to think of that website as THE website for Chaffey.
Anyway, even after our student went home, we continued to receive email from Chaffey, including an announcement that for the 2020-2021 school year, the school was moving from School Loop to another service known as Canvas.
Although we are not hosting an exchange student, I have an...um...academic interest in what the school is doing, especially in this very unusual school year. Unusual because Chaffey High School, like most schools in the state of California, is starting its year with virtual learning only, rather than in-person learning.
Today happens to be the first day of school at Chaffey, so I thought I'd check the school's website to see how the school is handling things.
After a bit of searching, I found an active website for the school. (And another.) But I'm sure I'm not the only one who made this mistake.
And you can't blame School Loop for failing to provide a forwarding URL for a customer that didn't renew its School Loop contract.
