Final Website Suggestions

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9421457#post9421457 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by overanalyzer
A couple of things .....
1. Which site will get more hits reef central's iowa forum our the GIRS home page?? if we leave RC and this forum dries up we lose out on some free advertising. I think more folks learn about GIRS after stumbling on this forum group than they do by stumbling on a member out in the public. Heck I window-shopped daily when my wife was still in KC and no one once mentioned GIRS (Adams, Iowa Pet Food, PetCo). it was not until I searched forums on RC that I found GIRS. We need a sticky and to make sure things get double posted here on a regular basis (upcoming events, etc.)

2. as a not for profit we sure as heck can charge for advertising space. You can't charge to make a profit or build a long term financial base that falls outside of our mission. Last I checked web hosting space is not free. SO - I think we should offer up a really cheap banner space to help defray the costs!


4. How many times are we going to re do this.... I've lived here for three years and this seems like a twice yearly task. we get it very genericized then someone pimps it out then we have to struggle to get it back. Can we just add a note/tag somewhere that says we spend all of our time trying to make our tanks beautiful - not the fricking website!
Click to expand...


Gunna try and answer a few more question's hopfully.

1. I don't think that the RC forum will ever dry up nor do we want it to, we are trying to pull members to use our website more. For several years we have had a sight and it hardly ever got used. This was mainly due to the lack of attention it received. This sight is much easier to use and update, this makes it easy for the next set of board members to change things easily. And yes when the new site launches a sticky will be posted on the top of the RC forum for the site, there's one on the new website already.

2. We are actually NON-profit, not, NOT for profit. As I was told by previous BOD members we cannot charge for things like web space, or they would have been doing it years ago.....But I will look into it again and see if anything has changed, it would be much nicer if we could charge.

4. LOL....YOU think it sucks, try being one of the BOD. The first time we redid the page was due to the server being shut down. That caused the building of a new page which was taken down due to "creative differences". Thus the current site being built, this site is great but requires a masters in everything web to change anything on the site. The new site is far easier to manage, as an example I have NO web knowledge, I've been on the site for a few weeks adding things, moving things, and getting things ready.....it's very easy to use. Oh and the bonus is it's hosted at godaddy dot com. The we pay very little a year to run our site, and we can all sleep at night knowing the site will still be running in the morning. So to make a long story short this new site was designed to make things simple, not just for this year, but for years in the future.

Hope I kinda cleared a few things up, Jason
 
I like the new site and hope to use it but ...

the email address field in the register form doesn't accept a .edu extension.

Could this be changed, pretty pretty please.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9421667#post9421667 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by glaspie69
I don't think that the RC forum will ever dry up nor do we want it to, we are trying to pull members to use our website more. For several years we have had a sight and it hardly ever got used. This was mainly due to the lack of attention it received. This sight is much easier to use and update, this makes it easy for the next set of board members to change things easily. And yes when the new site launches a sticky will be posted on the top of the RC forum for the site, there's one on the new website already.
Click to expand...


RC brings to many good things, to the table, but at the same time just having a single forum is so limiting and their rules are sometimes a bit draconian.

It will be difficult to strike a balance between using this RC forum and the ones on the website, but hopefully everyone will get accustomed to using both of them.

One thing that I think that could easily be done (in fact, I'm suprised that it hasn't been done) is to post a sticky message at the top of our RC forum that provides some basic information about the group and directs them to our website for more info.

If you happend to be using RC and you discovered the GIRS forum, you'd have no idea that the GIRS website even exists unless you happened to stumble onto a thread like this.

-JB
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9422756#post9422756 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by eshook
the email address field in the register form doesn't accept a .edu extension.
Click to expand...

Are you sure it wasn't something else that was causing it to be rejected? Maybe a "," instead of a "."?

I was able to register with a .edu email address with no problem

-JB
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9420867#post9420867 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Tank Razed
As for site suggestions, I think it would be helpful if there was some "about us", or "who we are", or the GIRS mission statement or something... (or is it there somewhere and I am missing it?)

If I came across the website I wouldn't really be sure what GIRS is. If I just stumbled upon the site (say if I was googling "reefs in iowa" or something) I don't think I could tell that this wasn't a commerical venture, and may be less likely to examine it further. Where if I knew it was a non-profit collection of hobbiests I would be more interested.

Just my 2 cents
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That was my exact thinking. We need a mission statement so people know that it's a hands-on club and not just an online forum. JB is working with me to help design 'skins' and that is going to be my goal when I get working on it. I would like to try and make it look a little more like an organizations website rather than a forum...but it will still be just as easy to update. I would also like to design a standard 'featured tank' page.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9421457#post9421457 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by overanalyzer
2. as a not for profit we sure as heck can charge for advertising space. You can't charge to make a profit or build a long term financial base that falls outside of our mission. Last I checked web hosting space is not free. SO - I think we should offer up a really cheap banner space to help defray the costs!
Click to expand...

Well we are still non-profit but according to the by-laws we CAN have vendors as members and in turn giving them a small advertising space. SO the good news is we might have really good speakers the next few years if I can figure out how to be more like Rob from the Rockford club.
 
I think the forums on our website would be best used for discussing internal issues within the club that don't need to be aired in public. We can use the RC forums for general chat and conversation.

Chris
 
Still not working, perhaps its the dash?

the addr is 'my-name@uiowa.edu' (don't want to post actual address for fear of spamming)

thanks for looking into it (who am I thanking again?)
 
I don't believe "-" is a valid character in email addresses. Besides, you will need to provide a valid email, otherwise you will never receive the authorization code required to activate your account.

You can rest assured that your email will not be exposed on the site unless you choose to do so. By default, users emails are never displayed to other users.
 
"-" is a valid character in email addresses.

my address is firstname-lastname@uiowa.edu

where firstname is 'eric' and lastname is 'shook'. This is the same email address that I used to sign up for RC. So it should work.

Could the form checker be changed to include '-' as a valid character so I can sign up? I would appreciate it.
 
It turns out that this is a known bug in the software. Supposedly, they are releasing a new version this week (tomorrow?) which will hopefully fix it.

-JB
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9423273#post9423273 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by glaspie69
Well we are still non-profit but according to the by-laws we CAN have vendors as members and in turn giving them a small advertising space. SO the good news is we might have really good speakers the next few years if I can figure out how to be more like Rob from the Rockford club.
Click to expand...

I'm not a lawyer (though I do play one on TV)..... but my point is not for or non profits are entities that do not seek to enhance or garner personal wealth for its board or members. we CAN charge someone for advertising provided 100% of that advertising fee goes back to the original mission of the organization. In this case - if we charge a nominal fee to vendors for banner adds to links to their sites then that money has to go back to our mission: promoting the hobby and all the other "stuff" in that upper right hand box on the GIRS home page.

not sure why we want to have vendors as members instead of vendors as advertisers for their products & services. I have seen two large professional organizations get tarnished by bringing in vendors as members for various reasons.

not sure if there is some legal hang-up or worry but let me know and i can find and site case law that says as long as we do as stated and promote our organization then we can charge fees in-line or at market value. of course if we wanted to charge vendors more for a vendor membership I don't see why we can't.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9478673#post9478673 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by overanalyzer
DOH - http://girs.brunkens.com/site/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx is the link.... will we be going back to the old link anytime soon? I will change my internal links here if we are not....
Click to expand...

It's going back to the old address, there were a few issues with getting the domain name changed but it's being worked on.

As for the topic of having vendors for members (or not) I just went by the guide lines in the by laws, I didn't write them, just trying to follow them as close as possible. But I can say the few vendors that did opt to "sponser" or buy a membership with the club declined the membership, they just wanted the cheap space and to help the club out.
 
I keep getting Timed Out errors when I try to use the forum.

I keep getting this if it helps
"Server Error in '/site' Application.
Request timed out.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.Web.HttpException: Request timed out.

Source Error:

An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

Stack Trace:

[HttpException (0x80004005): Request timed out.]"
 
Ok, I've got the forum fixed again. I had to delete a few posts in the debug process so if you see some of your posts are missing that is why. There are definitely some "issues" with this version of the software.

The good news is that there is a major update due out in the next few days that should correct most of this (and add some nice new features).

-JB
 
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