West Coast Fieros Redesign

Graeme wrote: I was wondering if anybody had any thoughts on a redesign of the site... Layout? Content on main page?

It depends on what the purpose is for the main page. Is it for current members to quickly navigate to where they already know they wish to go, or is it for first time visitors to the site to learn what the club is all about? Probably a little of each I suspect.

First of all, if we're going to have the monthly meeting write-up appear on the home page, it needs to be updated promptly right after every meeting. It's now one day away from January and my ugly mug is still on the front page from November's write-up.  That should've been pulled almost three weeks ago and December's write-up put in its place. Prior to that we had the same monthly write-up on the home page for what... six months?

It just looks bad for a first time visitor to any webpage to see old, outdated stuff still posted. Okay, 'nuf said about that.

As has already been brought up, I'd like to see the entire topic heading shown under Recent posts to our forum, not just the first three or four words of the heading. If space is an issue, we probably don't need the category mentioned that each thread is listed in. It would also be great if we could possibly have up to a dozen recent threads listed, as opposed to the half dozen or so we currently have. What often happens now is that there'll be a surge of posts and recent threads will fall off the bottom of the list. With so many categories in the forum, once a thread falls off that list it requires a lot of effort to track down threads that have been added to since last being viewed. Perhaps a future discussion could be the number of categories we have in the forum and how we might be able to lessen the number of them.

I'd also like to see a link separate from the forum categories for any downloadable stuff like text files (repair manuals, etc), images and/or videos. Dave has quite a stockpile of quality Fiero resource material and I think by and large it's unknown to most people, members and visitors alike.

Regarding videos, it's a shame that more members don't make use of the ability to upload Fiero related videos directly to the club's server. These videos can then either be played back directly from the server and viewed online, or they can be downloaded. I think I'm the only one who's bothered to upload videos in this manner since Graeme went through the trouble of setting it up.* It's so superior to uploading to YouTube for videos that are of interest to club members. Perhaps a link to a page dedicated to explaining how it's done would encourage other members to try it out. It's a simple process once it's been attempted, we just need to get the word out. Heck, I'll do the write-up if that would help, but there needs to be a easily found link to it, hopefully on the home page.

And just in case there's been an update to the forum software which would make it possible, I'll quickly mention (as I have previously) that it would be real nice if people signing up for the forum had a "box" to fill out that would display where they're located (other than country). I understand that this "box" hasn't existed in the software up to this point but I'm ever hopeful.

Anyway, my thanks to Graeme and Dave for taking care of the club's website.

 * Here's an example of a video I uploaded to the club's server for one of the autocross threads...

Cheese wrote: I'd recommend integrating JW Player

Wow, what a great demo video!

You are most welcome, Kevin.

Still getting my bearings, but thus far the changes have addressed everyone's concerns, Graeme.