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

TomNie

"charlieb" wrote in message
...
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