Website bollocks

[cap n chris]

We'll here's an overnight thought for club members.

Given that UKCaving can have photos uploaded (or at least linked via a picture hosting service such as Imageshack), can have threads created by anyone, could easily have trip reports and proposed trips on it then why are we bothering to have a separate website AT ALL when everything can be done here?

So, my new proposal is that the club forgets about the website and just concentrates on its online stuff via this amazing website - a far better one IMHO than Cheddar CC's could ever be unless we had our own tame bubba kept in a gimp box for special occasions... and that's probably not going to happen for a day or two now that he's found out about our plans to kidnap him.

 

[bubba]

When I finally get the bloody gallery fixed things will be much better here.

unless we had our own tame bubba kept in a gimp box for special occasions

Ooh goody...now where's my ball gag?

 

[cap n chris]

So, in good old constitutional stylee all I need now is someone to second the idea and then for at least 51*% of the club membership to disagree otherwise it's all systems go and I'll copy over all the relevant text under relevant new headings and tell our host we no longer require his services.

Anyone? Your initials or simply a blank response to this thread will be considered all the approbation I require to actually DO SOMETHING about this impasse.....


* Which won't happen cos 75% of them can't read.

 

[Andy Sparrow]

So, in good old constitutional stylee all I need now is someone to second the idea and then for at least 51*% of the club membership to disagree otherwise it's all systems go and I'll copy over all the relevant text under relevant new headings and tell our host we no longer require his services.

Anyone? Your initials or simply a blank response to this thread will be considered all the approbation I require to actually DO SOMETHING about this impasse.....


* Which won't happen cos 75% of them can't read.

For the time being, Chris, I will take over the website.

 

[Les W]

A good reason for a web site is that it is a place to promote the club to prospective members and the general public at large. It also offers a route for contacting the club / officers.

Neither a forum or photo gallery can do that efectively.

Also a private members area for distributing minutes and notices will help keep admin costs down. Oh and perhaps an online newsletter to keep printing / posting costs down.

Lots of good reasons for a website.

The forum is a good place to keep a log book and a photo gallery though

Make sure you print off the log entries though and stick them into your real (as opposed to virtual) log book. This is your clubs history and is possibly the most important part of the clubs output. DONT RELY ON THE INTERNET to protect your log entries.

 

[cap n chris]

Yeh, but three quarters of our members can't read and the other quarter don't own computers.

 

[Les W]

Thats a fairly substantive argument

 

[cap n chris]

Oh, they're only approximate figures, plus or minus a percentage point. 

 

[Tree Monkey]

You should speak with the c**tplaces chap, He will be able to advise you! :idea:

 

[cap n chris]

While, once again, I appreciate people trying to be helpful (a very worthy thing to do BTW) the expressions "You should do this", "You should do that" etc. are somewhat missing the point since the things which are being suggested fall outside my repertoire of abilities and, given the way things have panned out, are no longer relevant to me since Andy has stated his willingness to take over the reins; thank you, Andy.

 

[Tree Monkey]

Problem solved! 8)

 

[Dep]

And the save as HTML option writes absolute garbage HTML code that no one could possibly maintain as code. It totally fails to meet any compliancy standard for the code it produces.

This is very true - abandon Word for anything like this:

IMHO by far and away the best text edtor available is freely available at:
http://www.notetab.com/

Actually it was me that said that.

Also check out Notepad Plus for a well regarded and free general programming editor.

If you want something a bit more like Frontpage, but that will produce decent code, Nvu is meant to be excellent.

I would choose webspace that uses LAMP - Linux/Apache/MySql/PHP - these are proven, open source technologies. This site runs on such a server. Personally I'd avoid webspace running on Windows server...though by the sounds of it Win 2003 server is much more secure than their previous offerings.
...

I totally agree with Bubba's comments on LAMP methodolgy and avoiding Windows server environments.

I would add that I use win32 apache, perl and mySQL on my windows PC and that in practice they are functionally identical to their linux equivalents, enough so that I can completely simulate a linux based web-server on my PC
I don't run a _live_ server fom windows as the only let-down is security, but it does make a very convenient win32 test environment where I can develop the code before uploading to a live (3rd party) linux server.

All the stuff I use for my sites is free, add a bit of shell-scripting/batch files and it all glues together to an effective working environment.

 

[anfieldman]

Yeh, but three quarters of our members can't read and the other quarter don't own computers.

I take it that the SCG must be made up exclusively of brain surgeons, rocket scientists and quantum physicians..................

 

[Dave H]

Yeh, but three quarters of our members can't read and the other quarter don't own computers.

I take it that the SCG must be made up exclusively of brain surgeons, rocket scientists and quantum physicians..................

And the one's who don't know what the Internet is, must be Judges!