New Website

I know I'm not even even a member, but I think the club needs a new website.

Free forums are great, but they have limitations... it seems like you are a community based group... and should really use a community type website.

I made a mock-up of what I think might be easier to use in the long term. Feel free to create an account and play with the site.

www.aandtsociety.org

Let me know what you think.

For the club there needs to be a website in total belonging to the club and pass words only for applicable members.

A portion of another isnt very secure for us as our own so to speak,there will most likely be a far better one than what we have now made by the club and totaly controled by the club in the very near future beyond our free word/home made home page and web pages soon.

Most likely the one used to create this will be dream weaver and the soft ware will be owned by the club as well.

If not then the web site will be at least built using it and than controled by the club.

Thank you for your interest,but the club needs its own complete site and not a portion or something not with in our total control and based on our domain name.

We get our hosting for free and domian name for very little as a community group through the mob we use,so its a very cheap option so far and will be with the site that will look far better for the folks using fire fox and others rather than standard internet explorer.

The free forums are not our website and will never be that,its just a spot to show a bit of us and apply threads with our photos of what we do from time to time for all to see with out any space for these taken up on our website.

The way the forum is noticed and how google uses our forum as with all others for wording web search results is doing our exposure quite a bit of good.

So far if a search is done in any way similar to what we are,you get our website or free forum address.

We are finaly gettting out there with a lot of meta data maniplulation and showing our special interests of chasing our own species and being noticed after all those years of being passd by for so long in not taking on the internet.

What we have now http://www.aandtsociety.org.au/ is free and not great but it is ours and will be quite a bit improved beyond the simplistic one that it is now,hopefully very soon.

I don't understand what you mean by 'not owned by the club'. The address, background and content I gave you was just for a demonstration.

It would take about 10 minutes to have it hosted on whatever server you wanted to. From there you can do whatever you want in regards to changing and modifying it.

If you would prefer Dreamweaver, I own a legal version of the Adobe Master Collection.

I have expressed an interest in joining the club, but meetings clash with work.... Except now I'm on holidays, and you have no January meeting.

If you change your mind you're welcome to pop and and discuss it (you can also check on how those Latz are growing).

Far enough we will run it by the club pres.

I quite like that other forum as far as design and looks goes.

no doubt deadsled but the main issue with anything on the net is security.

Than simplisity and contenuity in attitude with the running of what represents us in the best ways to allow moving forward,these are very important points.
The soft ware or total website has to be with us and at no time does the pass word get any where near compremissed.

1.Who ever runs any of this has to be able to understand its workings in relation altering it at any given time and to be there for the club and remains directed at buiding interest in the club and not to argue or be there for them selves,who do you know like that,there are not many worst luck that can truely mean that.

2.If we change anything it must be totaly under the clubs control and easy to maintain or it is useless.

3.Trust virtualy nothing on or from the net.

4.Poor old fish geeks got hacked twice what a mess that was and it happens a lot out there.

5. I do not know for sure but it may be simpler to remain simple in what we are,we will talk at the next meeeing.

6.You are in the position of if this falls down you will walk away,myself and one or two others would not do that as the club is not far of being a largeish part of the net compared to not far back,it is basic looking but getting noticed and in the not to distant future i hope it has many in it that value the clubs continued existance and look after the net side of it totaly unbiast and sensible,especialy the forum.

7.Forums are everything these days for net support for clubs and we have a free one that does not exceed any size limitations in our reliable free internet host and the forum has a lot of content that took a lot of work and internet time putting it on here,do you pay for your own internet time deadsled.

8 Things are rarely as simple as they seem.

Yeah i know security is your main deciding factor.

You gotta realise, even when people have professional companies designing them a website they will do it and make their own login / password but once the sites handed over the site owner is then able to change the password to whatever they want, and from then on its them and only them who can access it to modify stuff.

Security and consistency are important.

On security, shouldn’t the most valuable piece of information on a website be the user data of your site... The personally identifiable information each user puts in to become a member of your forum.

You do realise that by getting your users to sign up to this forum they are not giving their information to you, but to another company that is allowing you to use this free forum... It is free because they want this information, by using this forum setup you are giving it to them.

Consistency is also important... That's why I'd like to see www.aandtsociety.org.au and [url]aandtsociety.org.au[/url] actually point in the same direction.

I know it is something simple, but I think your forum also really needs a spell check.

Other forums are also more consistent with their moderation. The moderator (s) uses an account with an identifyable name (not the admin account) and when they enter into debates they do so under their own name rather than looking like they are speaking for the organisation the whole time. This way if they say something that not everyone agrees with, the problem is with the user not the whole site.

Hacking happens to many sites and generally has nothing to do with passwords or user accounts, they use vulnerabilities in the mysql database of the site to insert code to stop the website from going to it's default location and then lock the admin account out. This is why you backup and use a modern CMS to build your website.

However, sites that are hacked are usually hacked because of their high traffic flow... you are hardly in danger of this... I just looked at reefcentral and they had 1900 people online and you had 1 (me). What I mean by this, is perhaps you can cross that bridge when you get to it.

I am enjoying this discussion and will be interested to see where it goes.

Where it goes? interesting! that is a little condescending don’t you think!

As far as can be seen most all the forums that we are promoted on are free ones as well, are they community based?

To take on another form of forum, how easy would it be to transfer all this data that took hundreds of hours to place on there?

Spell check, if it is avaliable, it doesn’t even get used on the biggest marine forum here in aus.

I don’t see what is wrong with a company offering a free product that will benefit them in some way, that’s just good business and lets face it these days an email address is a dime a dozen, even google offers up to a hundred for each person.

Anyone who puts their exact personal info on the net is asking for potential trouble anyway.

How is this not a community forum, its mainly just based around the club so that we can put things on here that we do because lets face it what can any group offer above any other group, whether it be just a forum or a club based with in it, all info is available via the net, good or bad.

No one was really interested in us with all the other groups out there that took on the net much earlier than us, except for the trips that get them here and hopefully a little info and some interesting local and national subjects that may keep a little more interest and lead somewhere, maybe,what else do we have?

Its created something as we were reduced by not using the net to the near nothing stage not long ago.

The forum serves its purpose quite well, when looking for marines or any section you see where everything else is as well, whether you want to or not.

The website does really need to be upgraded to something all forms of internet users can look at with reasonably clear quality.

The forum is as is for the moment to promote the club, but the website is another issue, to talk about this is at another time is a good idea!

Sorry, I never meant to be condescending.

I just thought that there could be a number of ways the conversation could head.

I’ve obviously upset you, which was not my intent.

I guess we can just drop it.

No it’s not as if any of this warrants any one getting upset about anything really, especially another’s ideas put to type out on the internet.

You know your stuff it appears and the website could use a remake.

Now this website, not the forum, okay what we use is file zilla, you know that type of thing to send web pages in and out of our host site how do we alter any pages at any given time and add new ones to what you have in mind?

Do we need soft ware on the computer or can the pages just be made and altered with out soft ware?

How would this way work if we don’t have original software to change or build pages?

I know google and many other companies offer templates that can be used for free ,plus google offers very cheap hosting, is it that type of thing and how do we send in our pages?

There are questions on how to make links in buttons or wording and the word made one in there now is made in ways that make the kilobytes almost non existent in file size to not go over our 10 megabyte quota to remain free.

What is there now is finished free and very simple for anyone to handle or change with no great website making knowledge at all on any computer with just word on there; can we use the one you have in mind as easy?

Don’t get me wrong it will look much crisper on ones other than standard internet explorer, so that’s why this conversation so to speak is not about who’s right, wrong or abrupt, we know very little of the workings of a web site.

Two of our members have a great deal of knowledge on these matters but to get something happening that we the more simple ones can manage easily is not an easy task to initiate.

If what I have typed makes any sense if you have something that meets this criterion, than it sounds fantastic.

Just the forum is as it is and hopefully phpbb,if that is the companies name won’t just shut its doors on us and several other forums that will hit the pavement literally if that happens.

The way the website sought of looks and how it works to remain in play with a far better coded backing than now, obviously not with word though, if this can be managed that would be great.