Martha HardCastle FOR THE DAYTON DAILY NEWS
Insert NACNET 7/24/96

You don't have to walk out your door to take a virtual visit to local communities who have web pages on the World Wide Web.

And if your community doesn't have one now, just wait. More are coming online all the time.

Web pages are screens of information and graphics found in the World Wide Web on the Internet. Users can click on highlighted words and icons to link up with subjects or go to another related page in seconds.

The link could list all of the churches or community centers in a city. Some web pages allow the user to type in a word or phrase to find related topics.

Currently, there are web pages featuring Dayton, Trotwood, the Northmont area and Beavercreek. The communities of Miamisburg and Huber Heights have pages still in development.

The pages could become promotional tools for the communities because the information on them can be accessed by residents, potential residents and visitors from all over the world.

"You'll be here on the Internet sooner or later, even if you think you won't," said Peter Wenk, editor of the Dayton Home Page. His counterparts on other web pages are known as webmasters, but Wenk likes "editor" better.

"Webmaster sounds like you're wearing a pointy hat and a cape," he said.

The Dayton Home Page is not an official web site of the city of Dayton, but that's not unusual. The only local community to have a city-sponsored web page is Trotwood.

The Dayton Home Page is a part of Dayton Internet, a commercial operation selling web space and access to businesses, individuals and communities. "The Dayton Home page is designed to showcase the Dayton area," Wenk said. "It is a cooperative project that benefits all its members. Anyone with a legitimate web site pertaining to the Dayton area is eligible to get a link to the Dayton Home Page."

While some visitors to community web pages may be from the other side of the world, some may be residents looking for the telephone number for a local park or community center.

"The Realtors with web pages are waiting for the suburbs to get their pages on-line so people can click to visit the related city home page," Wenk said. "There may be a link that, for example, a home is close to the Germantown MetroPark, and you can click on the MetroPark and visit there. Or they can go to the web site for Dorothy Lane Market for convenient shopping."

Some community web sites, such as Beavercreek, now only have limited links, while NACNET, the Northmont Area Community Network, is dense with information and local links. It went on-line last October.

Randolph Twp. Trustee President Ted Gudorf was one of the founders of NACNET.

"My brother did a similar project in Lake St. Louis, Ma., one of the first communities in the nation to go on the web," Gudorf said. "I raised it with the township trustees, and lo and behold, one of our residents, Jack Marshall, and I formed NACNET, a not-for-profit corporation . Jack took off with it and has been the primary impetus for creating the Randolph Township home page. E-mail to the township goes to Marshall, who forwards it to its recipients. "He has been responsible for it and has been servicing it for us as a volunteer." Gudorf said. "He sees that it gets to the right people." Marshall wants the emphasis of NACNET to be more on people than technology.

"We're more people-oriented than Dayton Net, but we're all tied together," he said. "Our current project is expanding the religion pages. The Rev. Charles Arnett (Union Baptist Church) is putting his sermons on his home page. We have a complete business and finance section with links to stock quotation services, too."

In addition to Randolph Twp., NACNET also has copyrighted home pages for Union, Englewood, Clayton and Phillipsburg.

Englewood declined to participate, citing security reasons. Smith said the city will have separate e-mail boxes for officials and employees. "Everyone would have a password for their access to the city's computer," he said. "We want people to know when the public sends a message to us, the message is secure," said City Manager Eric Smith, who added the city is hoping to go on-line with its official web site in the Fall.

"It's important for the public to know that Englewood has nothing to do with this home page and so the information that is portrayed there may be inaccurate," Smith said.

Miamisburg is in the process of putting an official web page online this month.

"First, we're putting up a basic page so people will know we're out there, and it will eventually become a full-blown web site," said administrative assistant John Dattalo Jr. "It's a perfect medium for local municipalities to get more information out to their constituents."