Stages: The Story of the Merit Badge Center

The Merit Badge Center is the leading Scouting website in the Philippines. It is the mission of the Merit Badge Center to provide Scouts and Scouters a means to maximize their use of the Internet by providing resources and maintaining a collection of searched websites that can help in the Scout Advancement process.

It is important that we remember our humble beginnings in order for us to reach the pinnacle of our objectives. As such, I maintain this page for my own purposes to remember what it was all about.

In the Beginning... Beta Version

It all began as a project at the De La Salle University-Manila. It was a simple idea then: create online copies of all the Merit Badge requirements.

The project was completed on August 4, 1999 and became part of the Grace Christian High School Scout Center's website as a tool specific for the institution. No resource links are available, but the names of institution specific Merit Badge counselor are listed with the Merit Badges. This website was never intended to serve the entire Scouting population.

Version One: The Big Bang Flop

I left the Philippines to start a new life in the United States of America on November 18, 2000. That was an eventful Saturday.

On November 21, 2000, the Merit Badge site on the Grace Christian High School Scout Center site was removed and the Philippine Merit Badge Center was launched. The new site was envisioned to provide a useful service to the general Scouting public in the Philippines and a website to rival that of Michael Kauffmann's Merit Badge Research Center (MBRC), but at the same time using his website as a guide.

Version 1 was mostly a host migration. All the encoding structure remained the same on the new website except for the added feature of having resource links. With several features being introduced to a web design never intended to withstand the abuse of such features, the website suffered from numerous problems.

The problem with version 1 is that each Merit Badge is encoded as individual HTML file, which meant that to add a resource link that will be used by 2 Merit Badges it was necessary to update two HTML files. Similarly, the regular maintenance of making sure a resource link is still live means going through each individual Merit Badge file. Uploading the files is another problem where in it takes too long to upload all the Merit Badge files that was maintained.

Despite the problem that was never going away and the inherent difficulty in maintaining the website, version 1 also introduced the Senior Girl Scouts Eight-Point Challenge Badges. Eventually the entire Girl Scout badge site was removed due to the site not receiving enough traffic to justify the work-load involved.

Version 1, being built on top of the beta version, suffered from the poor encoding mostly done using Microsoft Notepad. The website eventually failed to support the new releases of Netscape and Internet Explorer. This prompted the need for a massive site re-design. But due to the massive amount of work involved in fixing the problem, I debated with myself for sometime regarding continuing this project. Today I am glad I made the right decision.

Version 1 was very short-lived and had no more than 50 resource links altogether. Eventually, in April 2001 I started the work on the new version to be developed from the ground up.

Version Two: The Re-Birth

On May 30, 2001, version 2 of the Merit Badge Center was completed. We finally adopted the name "Merit Badge Center, Philippines" and introduced our logo.

Having limited resources available on free web hosting, this version was driven by JavaScript. On this version, all the Merit Badge requirements are listed within a JavaScript file that is called by a single HTML file responsible is displaying a dynamic outward appearance. All the resource links are also controlled by its own JavaScript file. This meant that updating resource links will only involve a single file.

Due to the ease of maintaining, this website made it possible for us to include a plethora of resource links that we cannot include during version 1. Our resource links increased from 50 to 200 almost overnight. Cross-browser compatibility issues were also addressed in this version.

This version was entered to compete in the 4th Philippine Web Awards and went as far as to be one of the ten semi-finalist for the Education and Resource Category. This version also introduced the "Ask a Consultant" feature that did not receive much acceptance.

With the sudden surge in resource links, the website outgrew the single JavaScript file for resource link. The design required webusers to download the entire JavaScript file with the pool of all Merit Badge requirements and resource links, when they might only need one Merit Badge that has 2 or 3 resource links out of 300+ links. That resulted to slow initial download, since it runs very fast once the JavaScript files are downloaded into the clients computer.

The increasing amount of resource links became a huge burden. To provide a quick remedy, the single JavaScripts that handles the merit badge requirements and resource links were divided into four separate JavaScript files each (total of eight). One dedicated to merit badges required for Eagle Scout, one for merit badges from A-E, one for merit badges from F-N, and lastly one for merit badges from O-Z.

Version Two and a Half: The Face Lift Version

As the name suggested, this is a mid-way version that involved an image change rather than an actual change. The delivery engine remains with JavaScript.

The face lift took place on December 5, 2001 following the conclusion of the 4th Philippine Web Awards. A slight modification of the logo was done, but it was not as appealing and we also received numerous comments from users of what we already know.

Version Three: Welcome CGI and PHP

On February 16, 2002, the new CGI delivery engine was deployed into Tripod. The web site design and layout of the face lift version was retained and much of the links and pages had to be modified to use the CGI pages instead of the JavaScript engine. The CGI worked seemlessly and no one knew the difference, except for the instant downloads.

Version 3 was up and about for almost two years. This same version also saw us move from free web hosting to our own ad-free web space and domain. With a new web host supporting PHP, a new design was in order to upgrade the entire web site.

On May 10, 2003, the Merit Badge Center was one of Yahoo! Asia's weekly pick commenting that the site, "showcases a collection of merit badges for the Boy Scouts of the Philippines with downloadable scout handbook and requirements."

Version Four: A Change for the Better

Version 4 shared the external design of version 3 and the original top banner logo of version 2. The permanent migration prompted a change in the inner design as the new webhost did not supported a CGI-BIN as Tripod did. But it did supported PHP.

During the period of development, the JavaScript engine was again uploaded for temporary use and slowly each section of the website was converted to PHP enabled ones.

Development was completed on September 30, 2003.

The "Ask a Consultant" feature was removed from this version due to lack of interest among our webusers. Currently the resource links database has more than 600 third party websites and pages. With the surge of resource link suggestions all over the place and the potential virus threat out there, the submit-a-site form was created with a web-based management system to easily manage all submitted suggestions and easily include them into our database.

A Change of Image

On April 20, 2005, a new web design was created to give the web site a fresh new look, while the inner workings are left the way it is.

We've added additional publications including works of Robert Baden-Powell and those of Scouting individuals and groups from the Philippines. Merit Badge worksheets were also introduced to further assist Scouts and leaders with Merit Badge advancement.

In addition, we revive the "Philippine Scouting Movement" website by the Grace Christian Service Scouts and incorporated it into the Merit Badge Center as a resource for Philippine Scouting history. We also added an unofficial Boy Scouts of the Philippines set of pages in response to the sudden absence of its online presence.

In October 2005, the Merit Badge Center participated in the 8th Philippine Web Awards and again made it only as a semi-finalist for the Organizations category. During this month, the Merit Badge Center also introduced the Merit Badge Center issued certificates to recognize the contribution of individuals and groups to the website as well as commendations to individuals or groups that has extraordinarily exemplified values the Scouting Movement holds ideal.

In 2006 the Merit Badge Center participated in multiple award search: Webby Awards, International Davey Awards, the W3 Awards, and the Philippine Web Awards, where the site received recognition of being one of the finalist of the Philippine Web Awards and a Silver W3 Award from the International Academy of the Visual Arts.

In June 2006, we launched a Discussion Network. Acceptance was very slow with only a handful of registrants and no real active users. After seven months of operation, the discussion board proved to be more burden that its worth. Time was spent more on keeping abusive individual(s) in check. It was finally removed in February 2007.

Another Change of Image

On March 25, 2007, a new web design was created to give the site a new look and feel. Minor updates were made to the PHP codes, but relatively it remained the same.

As early as February 3, 2005 the Merit Badge Center purchased the domain ScoutCenter.net, with the ultimate purpose of segregating various non-advancement related information from the Merit Badge Center. It was not until August 17, 2007 when Syd Castillo, Director of Youth Programme and IT for WOSM Asia-Pacific Region contacted the Merit Badge Center when this idea of segregating topics switched to full gear. Finally, on February 8, 2008, the segregation was completed and the Merit Badge Center focuses on Merit Badges and Advancement Ranks, while the Scout Center Dot Net focuses on other Scouting topics.