On Jan 19, 1:02*pm, mac davis wrote:


I feel your pain.. When I lived in the States, it took me 6 months to FIND my
local club because the contact for the club whose email and phone was listed for
contact had been DEAD for a few years..

Dammit, Mac... if your going to type something like that, give fair
warning. I just about spewed coffee all over the place.

Talk about out of date, our local club's website had one section
updated every month to tell name of the guest turner and when it would
start. The rest of the site went untouched for about 2 - 3 years.

This part is probably pertinent to Mr. Beldon -

Part of the problem they had with the site was they tried to be all
things to all turners. They set up a member's gallery, tips and
tricks, a recap and pics to the month's previous meeting, membership
information and contact points for each, and on and on.

With all that in the monthly mix of things to do with the website, our
webmaster was also tasked with trying to make the page work properly,
answer questions about why the site didn't work with the Opera, or a
1924 Apple computer with a modem. He became tech support as well for
all the computer illiterates.

He QUICKLY became overwhelmed. He struggled on for a while, others
helping when they could, but it was too much. To make matters worse,
we had a large portion of the membership that passed into retirement
from professional life without ever touching a computer, and they were
damn proud of that fact. So he got no support there, either.

This is what is up now:

http://www.alamoturners.com/

He was tired of the complaining, the "suggestions of how to make it
better" that would take weeks of his spare time to make some of the
lesser experienced (or lazier) people, happy.

For me, I would think that putting up most of the pages in HTML would
be great. But, making PDFs is a snap anymore (that's how I send
contracts, invoices and inspection reports from my personal company),
so I think that links to pdf as well as a pdf library is great.

And it is amazing how small a pdf can be when there isn't heavy
background colors, multiple font colors and sizes, and not too many
pics. A link to your club library might be a great idea for someone
that wants to print and archive your club's work.

I personally thought our old webmaster could have saved himself a lot
of heartburn and overwork if he had linked to other sites. I
personally suggested that he link to Darrell's site when it was just a
couple of pages, namely the pages he had on making the sharpening
jigs. Why reinvent the wheel? I thought maybe a couple of comments,
then the link, and then any other pertinent comments on that subject.
The same with Bill Grumbines site (how to cut up a log), and some of
the old links I had to segmented turning and pen making.

He felt like he needed to put original, Alamo Woodturning content on
the site. He couldn't do it all; he has three kids, a wife, and a
full time job. Just doing the page layout with pics and commentary on
the month's previous meeting wore him out.

So, having witnessed your analytical mind on the matter of exploring
and reviewing the Festool Domino, I think whatever direction you go in
the site content will be great.

But I believe what I would be thinking of is who the site is actually
for. Who will use it? Why is it there?

Is it an information depository and current events kiosk for
your club's membership? Is it for your club to be able to archive
valuable turning information and club milestones that really are to be
appreciated by your own club? Realizing you will no doubt have
visitors other than your club members, will the thrust be 80% for your
club and 20% for others?

Or are you trying to be a nationally recognized site that others from
around the 'net gravitate to so they can see
something like going to the AAW site?

I think those are two entirely different things, and I think I would
be more worried about the direction of the website first to find my
target audience, then the content and delivery method of the
information will sort itself out.

As always....

Just my 0.02.

Robert

(can you tell I can't go play outside today?)