Kappa Sigma Xi Epsilon — Chapter Website

Overview

This is the official public-facing website for the Xi Epsilon chapter of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity at Thiel College. It serves as a central hub for prospective members, alumni, and the campus community to learn about the chapter's membership, values, events, and philanthropic initiatives.

Why This Exists

The chapter needed a dedicated web presence to communicate its identity, recruitment criteria, leadership structure, and ongoing service efforts — particularly its military-focused philanthropy programs. The site consolidates information that would otherwise be scattered across social media or word of mouth into a single, navigable resource.

Tech Stack

• HTML5 / CSS3 / Vanilla JavaScript — all pages are static, hand-authored HTML files
• Bootstrap 5.0.1 — responsive grid, layout, and component styling
• Mobirise — visual page builder used to scaffold and style the site (evidenced by mbr-* class conventions and assets/mobirise/ directory)
• Jarallax 1.12.7 — parallax scrolling effects on background images
• countdown.js 2.6.1 — event countdown timers
• yt-player — embedded YouTube video support
• Socicon — social media icon font
• Themify Icons — general-purpose UI icon font
• Devicon — developer/technology icon font
• Google Fonts — Merriweather (serif headings), Jost and Open Sans (body text)

Key Features

• Multi-page site covering membership recruitment, chapter history, leadership profiles, code of conduct, awards, news, blog, and newsletter sections
• Dedicated pages for signature philanthropy events: a 72-hour seesaw-a-thon benefiting military veterans and an annual 9/11 Stair Walk honoring first responders
• Donation page with downloadable PDF forms for the chapter endowment fund and local Reynolds VFW support
• Reynolds VFW partnership page for fundraising events including a spaghetti dinner and raffle
• Parallax hero sections with full-bleed photography
• Responsive navbar with dropdown navigation and smooth scrolling
• Open Graph and Twitter Card meta tags on every page for social sharing
• Maintenance page for graceful handling of pages under construction
• Image hash manifest (hashes.json) suggesting a basic asset integrity or cache-busting workflow

Architecture

The site is entirely static with no server-side rendering, build tooling, or package manager. Each page is a self-contained HTML file at the project root that links to a shared assets/ directory. The assets/ folder is organized by library (bootstrap/, parallax/, socicon/, etc.) alongside a theme/ subdirectory for custom overrides and a images/ subdirectory for all media. There is no templating system; the navigation and footer are duplicated across pages.

Installation / Getting Started

Prerequisites: Any static file server or modern web browser. No build step, package installation, or runtime environment is required.

To run locally:

# Clone the repository
git clone <repository-url>
cd XiEpsilonWebsite-main

# Option 1 — open directly in a browser
open index.html

# Option 2 — serve with Python's built-in HTTP server
python3 -m http.server 8080
# then visit http://localhost:8080

# Option 3 — serve with Node's http-server (if installed)
npx http-server . -p 8080

To deploy: Upload the entire project directory to any static hosting service (GitHub Pages, Netlify, Vercel, or a standard web host). No environment variables or server configuration are needed.