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Thank You Teacher!
FAQ

 

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1. What is Thank You Teacher!?

Thank You Teacher! is a website where one can thank teachers who were excellent and influential in one’s education.

2. How do I thank my teachers?

Simple.  Just go into the forum and register using the link in the upper right hand corner which says “Register”.  Then follow the steps of the email validation procedure, and log in. Finally, navigate through the forum structure to the category which is the most specific to your teacher, and make your post according to the guidelines of the Welcome forum’s standards.

3. Is there a monthly newsletter?

Yes! You can sign up using the link from the main page.

4. What are the live chats for?

The live chats are for holding realtime discussions in.  You can talk about absolutely anything related to the chat topic or Thank You Teacher!

5. Why is there advertising?

As the Thank You Teacher! homepage explains, something has to pay the server hosting fees.

6. Why does the address in the address bar never change?

Thank You Teacher! uses frames technology to deliver assistance to those who need it.  Using a program called in2site, we can immediately initiate a direct chat with any website visitor. This is also why you only need to bookmark the site once.

7. Where can I go if I need help?

You have several options when it comes to asking questions or receiving assistance.  Using the in2site technology, we can observe that you are experiencing errors and may initiate a chat with you.  Also, the Help & Assistance chat provides live support. In addition, the the Help and Assistance forum provides support which is more substantial and enables others with your problem to use your solution. Finally, if none of the above works, please use the Contact Us section “Help” address to email your problem to us.

8. How is the Education News page possible?

For only one reason: it’s done entirely automatically.  To start the creation of the Education News section, we looked around the web and handpicked some excellent education news RSS feeds.  RSS feeds are automatically updated text pages built to follow specific requirements.  The standardization of RSS feeds enables one RSS reader to read feeds from every website which has them.  RSS readers are fairly common desktop software, but we need server software to publish a dynamic, publicly accessible webpage. We know who to turn to:  CaRP and PHP. CaRP is a special program that transforms RSS feeds into PHP code. The PHP code that CaRP creates (and some that our team created, too) enables Thank You Teacher! to put all of the RSS feeds into one easily readable, comprehensive, automatically-updating webpage.

9. What is Thank You Teacher! built with?

Good question! Thank You Teacher! uses lots of software:

  • Macromedia Dreamweaver MX and Websitepros NetObjects FUSION 7.5 are used to create the main pages.
    • NetObjects FUSION is used for the creation of most of the pages, while Dreamweaver MX is used for more advanced pages and maintenance.
  • The site is hosted on Linux servers with Apache webserver software.
  • phpBB forum software is used for the forums; phpBB depends on a MySQL database.
  • Our hosting provider, 1&1, provides the five chat channels.
  • We use PayPal to accept donations.
  • To display the current date and time on non-Forum pages, we use JavaScript.
  • In order to translate the Education News RSS feeds into text which follows the style of Thank You Teacher! and is one large page, we use CaRP.
  • All dynamic pages are built with PHP.
    • One example of a dynamic page is the Trouble Identification Assistance page, which is accessible from the “Contact Us” section and is built with PHP.
    • Another example is the “Education News” section, which is also built with PHP and is based on RSS feeds from leading educational news sites from around the globe.

As is easily observed from the above list, most Thank You Teacher! software is open-source.

10.  Why did you found Thank You Teacher!?

Thank You Teacher! was founded because its founders believe that excellent educators deserve to be complimented and noticed.  Its founders also believe that such compliments are not as common as they should be.  Also, since education is integral to society and our future, Thank You Teacher! donates a portion of all profits to the cause of education.