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What do you look for on a woodturning club website?

First - the Google Groups tangent - then back to Criteria For a Turning Club Website.

Silicon Valley Woodturners has a Yahoo Group - similar structure as Google. There's a Message Board, a Files area, a Photos area and so on. This group is set up as Members Only - with an even more "secure" area that's requires an additional password to get into. Great for inter-club communication and a depository for club info. BUT - it's one, or, in this case, two more user names and passwords to keep track of. AND the navigation is - poor. Don't know about Google, but with Yahoo it's a See the Text BUT Not The Photo - OR - See the Photo But Not It's Text. Context gets fragmented. AND - Yahoo periodically changes their software and login procedures. What worked yesterday may or may not work today - or tomorrow. Finding out WHY can take days. Sometimes the new software won't work with certain browsers, or older versions of browsers.

I'm on a Mac (Apple computer), using Netscape 3.0 for most browsing, and Explorer 5.0 for sites where Netscape 3.0 doesn't work (it's a java scripts thing primarily). Yahoo changed something that makes accessing SVwoodturners group impossible - unless I move to Mac OSX. I can do that and use Safari - but that requires rebooting into the newer operating system - and that has its own "challenges" (older software that I know like the back of my hand doesn't always work with the newer OS)

The advantage to doing a club website is that it can be kept pure Vanilla - no whistles and bells which may or may not work with older browsers or some browsers. JAVA was a great idea, a platform and operating system independent language with plenty of power - IF standards were set and followed. ALAS MicroSoft "joined", took the concept, and ignored all the standards

- perhaps as part of what has been called "their predatory way of doing business" (steal the food and starve or kill any competitors.

Now back to the criteria for a good turning club web site.

My goal, as the club webmaster, is to promote the club, the AAW and turning in general. To do that I want "non-private" club info available to as many members - and turners in general - as possible, and as easily accessible as possible.

Now several contributors to this thread have pointed out what I think is critical to a club site like this - keeping it up to date. That means not only keeping club information up to date - but also fixing problems people find - like dead links, missing photos or illustration or bad e-mail addresses. Those are things that visitors can help with - IF - you a) make a point of asking for help and b) provide a way for visitors to give you feedback.

I've often visited a site, found a problem and then tried to find out how to provide feedback. If it's more trouble than it's worth, I just move on. If it's easy to let someone know there's a problem I'll try and help.

So, I've made a point of providing a feedback method - on each web page. And, if someone lets me know there's a problem on the site, I'll fix it and send back an e-mail with a thank you and a link to the page that had the problem.

One of the challenges of doing a web site is navigation - can you see what's on the site easily - or do you have to dig for it. Frames are one way of doing that - but frames take up precious screen space - and aren't always compatible with some browsers. They also can make bookmarking an interesting page tricky since the bookmark may not get you back to the stuff you wanted to see again later.

ANYWAY - the first cut at the SVwoodturners.org site is up. Still needs some fleshing out - but the guts are there. Comments, suggestions, constructive criticism would be appreciated.

charlie b

Reply to
charlieb
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In message , charlieb writes

Hi Charlie My first reaction is that you have set the minimum ideal resolution too high. Go for 800x600 as there are still plenty out there using it

Second DO NOT put an email address on the website that is clickable. Use an image of the email address, This may require the user to type it into their browser, which is a small effort, but has a tendency to deter some people from making contact, and they will, because they are too lazy to look on your site for the information. The BIG advantage of using an image is that it is not harvestable by BOTS looking for email addresses to use in SPAM. I went over to this method over 5 years ago, and do not get any Spam to my listed addresses, however the addresses I was using in 1998 get tens of thousands a day !

On your links you have "ALWAYS UNDER CONSTRUCTION" that's a no, like the guy digging a hole etc., very much the last decade. When people read it they tend to think, not worth looking at as its not complete will look later, so go away. They usually forget to come back too

Consistency of Layout Mainly logo I notice you have two, and position seems to vary

Consider making the links "

Reply to
John

Charlie, I tried searching Silicon Valley Woodturners and got nothing on Yahoo.

TomNie

Reply to
TomNie

One suggestion for the Alamo site - make sure all year dates are up to date and showing the current year. For example, the officers shows

2006-2007. When I read this, it sends up red flags... has the page been updated since then and they merely overlooked changing the year for the new officers or is it an old page which means the Jan's Demo on birdhouse earrings is old too? Now I can't use the information on the page since I have no idea whether it's accurate or not.

I am in favor of simple websites. Tricky Javascript, Flash or other doodads merely complicate and frustrate not only the viewer but the site's manager as well. There are so many browsers out there, so many monitor sizes, and so many 'net connection methods - plus the inexperience of many viewers to troubleshoot at their end of the stream

- that you can't rely on any single notion of how your viewer is accessing the pages.

Here is the one I made and update monthly which takes about 10 minutes:

It's a little clunky in some aspects, but it's simple and seems to play well with a number of browsers. Each December or January, I go through every page and downloadable file to change the names, emails and phone #s of the guilty plus check web links. Otherwise it's merely a matter of uploading newsletters (which the editor does on his own) and deleting the past event and adding the next month in the progression - I try to detail out at least 2 months.

Reply to
Owen Lowe

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