[Darren Hammond]

http://www.wtmc.org.nz is our ‘window to the world’, and also a source of information to members

If you have ideas and suggestions about how we could make the website even better than it is now, you can enter them on this Wiki page

https://www.wtmc.org.nz/craig/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.HowCouldWeImproveTheClubsWebsite?

[Darren Hammond]

The website currently has a small Gallery of photos (Gallery section on left hand side!), it would be good to get some more photos here for people to see the fun things our club gets up to

If anyone has photos from recent club trips that they are happy to put in the Gallery section, you can get the photos to me somehow, and I will sort out the rest with the webmaster. Possibly giving a CD a club might be easiest.

IMPORTANT – You will need to make sure the people in the photos are happy having their photos published

[harry]

The old website had a much larger selection of photos in the gallery, from a whole range of trips and places. It also had a section of trip reports. Could they be added back in? They presumably still exist somewhere.

Personally I liked the “look” of the old website (designed by Steve Patience, a prominent club member about 10 years ago) more than the current one – it seemed a bit “friendlier” to me (and it won an award one year for best website). I personally don’t really understand why it was changed (though doubtless there was a good reason, and this is obviously not meant to be critical of the current website).

[SteveSK]

Hi Harry,

It was changed in part because the WCN server was changed along with much of the software. A number of the old scripts that held the old website together broke or were dubious in terms of security. It was a miracle that the members directory got resuscitated.

The photos were getting on toward 10 years old, were quite old and the scripts driving them were long ago unsupported and the photos were pretty low resolution.
I still have them but I’m sure we could do better today.

( e.g. I am sure there are some lodge photos, transport photos, trip photos, course photos, club night photos,photo competition photos that could be posted.)

The stories section was also getting a bit dated too.
Interestingly, we now have the newsletter on the website that also contains trip reports. They may not be so visible to “new visitors” though??

I’m interested in your observation about the site being friendlier. Was that in the “look and feel” or in the navigation?

cheers,
Shane

P.S. No photos of ‘the Duchess’ will be posted on the web-site!

[harry]

Gidday Shane,

as I said, I was sure there must have been a good reason for the change and I wasn’t intending to be critical. Writing and maintaining a website is obviously a lot of work.

Basically the old site just somehow looked and felt a little bit friendlier to me, or at least that’s how I remember it. I don’t really know why, and since the old site no longer exists I can’t go back and compare it with the current one and see. Maybe it’s just my faulty memory and nostalgia for the past. But as an example, the home page had photos and colour on it, whereas the current home page is just bland text. It’s functional, it conveys information, but it doesn’t really make me go “Wow, this is great, this is for me, I must read further!”. Or, for another example, when I click on Frequently Asked Questions I get a page with a list of two options, General and Membership, and when I click on one of those I get a list of one item, either General or Membership, and when I then click on that I finally get what I want. This is a pretty minor and unimportant point, but again this somehow feels “functional” rather than “friendly” to me.

Regarding the photo galleries, sure they were getting a bit old but they did give a good idea of where we go and what we get up to, e.g. there was a nice slideshow of the Tararuas by John Rhodes. Similarly with the stories – maybe they were getting a bit old but there were some classic bits of writing there (e.g. some of the stories by John Rhodes or Jim Kimber or Ann Kendon) and they gave a good idea of what we do and what club trips are like.

– Harry

[Darren Hammond]

Hi Harry

We need to get some new photos on the website, the ones on the old site were already very dated.

As per my post above, if you have photos you would like to see on the website, you can give me a CD of those photos. If you know of others who have photos, please pass on the same message

Thanks

Darren

[sharron]

The web development people are doing a great job and deserve a medal.

I agree with Harry’s comments about user friendliness although I assumed this was mostly because the project is not yet complete and more stuff is going to be put on the site.Some of the categories you can click on now have very little material or material that has been transported across from the old site without being updated and is therefore out of date.

I think the club policies should all be accessible on the site, along with the many forms we use for trips or for courses. (Perhaps they already are and I just havent found them, at one stage the alpine course forms were on the site somewhere).

Photos will really make the site and it is great that Darren is soliticing them as there are some brilliant photos out there that would look amazing on the site. Perhaps it is just my lack of tech savvyness but the photos that are on the gallery seem to float about when I go to look at them and they are so small you can hardly tell what they are.

Stories that relate to club activities in modern times would be good, I used to like reading the stories on the old site but more recent material would be better. I dont think having the newsletter on the site compensates for this.

I would like to see the Committee minutes posted on the site in the members only section as used to be the case because I think those members who have an interest in the running of the club should be able to find out in broad terms what is going on.

Keep up the great work webmeisters!

[Darren Hammond]

Hi Sharron

Thanks for your ideas

I can answer most of your questions

Yes the website is still being improved. Shane and Dave Bergin are working together on making some of the changes that committee have suggested, and I have started this thread and created the Wiki page to get constructive suggestions from members.

Club Policies and Forms are available under Downloads on the left hand side

Under Gallery, if you click on the photo, it does come up to a reasonable size

We are working on publishing minutes of the committee meetings, watch this space…

In terms of a possible Stories section, would these be just some of the better newsletter and journal articles, or separate pieces of writing?

[Mike McGavin]

Well I think it’s looking great so far.

If there’s any concern about administration bottle-necking and getting new things updated without having to wait for certain people to update things when they’re not available, there may be ways to reduce some of the maintenance needed for things like photo galleries by using various services around the web that specialise in making maintenance of certain kinds of stuff more easy.

eg, for photos, Flickr ( http://www.flickr.com/ ) lets you hook websites into its databases of photos fairly easily, and Google probably does something similar. If people with photos uploaded and posted them to a group on a service (which would probably be restricted and moderated but without as much effort), then the website could just include a widget to display photos from that group on that service on a club website page.

But yeah, anyone who wanted to post photos under that kind of system would probably have to sell their soul (or at least name and email address) to Yahoo which owns Flickr, or to another of the 5 or so giant American mega-corps that own virtually every service and all the information on the web these days. But lots of people have done so already.

That’s just an idea. Perhaps the administration thing is unlikely to ever be an issue with the way the CMS is designed.

[Mike McGavin]

Hi again.

While I think of it, the part of the website I probably like the most is the forum system. I was really impressed that the old forum wasn’t lost during the changeover. There’s so much information which I sometimes search for ideas, and people in this club actually *use* the forum unlike some other groups.

Joomla seems to have several forum/discussion extensions ( http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/communication/forum ), even though I don’t know if they’re any good. Are there any eventual plans to import the current forum conversations into something that fits more naturally with the Content Management software? I’m just curious really — for me at least the presentation is secondary to functionality and the forum’s working well, but I guess it could look more fluid.

Also on a related topic, the forum goes back 9 years, and there must be some important archives and history regarding things the club’s been up to during that time. Has there ever been any consideration about a regular archiving process? Or is that already done? Even if it’s just a case of exporting the forum database every so often into a format that’s easily read, backing it up somewhere under the club’s control, then checking every so often that the backup hasn’t degraded in storage. Otherwise it could potentially all be lost if the plug’s pulled on the WCN hosting service, which might always occur at an unexpected time between web admins where nobody has the skills to extract the data, or if a tsunami sweeps over the North Island without much notice, or if aliens invade and swipe all of the world’s web & database servers, etc etc.

Thanks to those involved for all the amazing time and effort that’s been put in to get this up and running, in any case.

Mike.

[SteveSK]

Hi Mike,

That is a good suggestion.
The forum was a simple port using a joomla wrapper ( mind the iframe) so isn’t well integrated.

I am also looking at getting a list of the latest messages on the front-page too.
A more integrated package might make that easier.

I take backups of the website and databases on a regular basis (albeit a manual process). Perhaps the aliens might nab me!

Also I’m keen on things that people think are cool about other outdoors websites….
e.g. Mike – I like the banners that you use on your site.

cheers,
Shane

[jon]

Hi folks,
firstly, good website – it’s how i found the club, so its successful. And I’m sure same story for many other people. I don’t want to be critical, but heres my comments.
technically seems a good solid site. however, lacks a bit of ‘friendliness’ list someone else said – seems quite cooperate. It sometimes takes my a while to find which links take me to the trip info – and that’s a pdf so takes a while to load up.

As a more general comment, I find it hard to get down on Wednesdays (usually busy) and i’ve tried emailing for info, but replies took weeks, and i’ve missed trips.
I usually want to ask some details about a trip before signing my name on the list. Maybe a system where you could list the trips, and submit a question which gets sent direct to the organiser of that trip

Anyway, just thought i’d show you a site I rebuilt for a club I used to be in – http://www.invernessmc.com/. The old site was very much like this one actually. What i changed was to have a calendar of events very apparent, easy to update, easy to read, some basic club info, and nice enticing photos. THat’s about it! Oh, and the photo gallery there links direct to a flickr group, so it’s always fresh with people uploading images into that group.

that’s it!

[SteveSK]

>Perhaps it is just my lack of tech savvyness but the photos that are on the
>gallery seem to float about when I go to look at them and they are so small you
>can hardly tell what they are.

To see in almost full glory, just try clicking on the the photo.
( click on the “?” for help.)

The photos don’t have much in the way of text right now… to describe them.

Cheers,
shane

[sharron]

Thanks Shane. I have now mastered the art of viewing photos in the gallery. I even managed to locate the club policies and forms and loads of other useful stuff.

[Glynne Lloyd]

I have a problem reading messages in the forum. I suspect it is my browser,but would be interested to know whether others are having the same problem.

The problem is I do not get scroll bars at the edge of the Internet Explorer window. Hence to read down i have to select text with my mouse and then pull it down, a bit at a time. This makes the text highlighted and so i must then click in to the text again to unhighlight it. i then read a bit and repeat the process. Some peoples posts go too far to the right for some reason and I can not read the right most word(s). I haven’t found a solution to that one (maybe I should try selcting text and pulling the mouse to the right – I will try that after completing this post).

This makes reading the forum a bit of an effort for me especially long threads like this one.

In fact I now find I can not get to the post message button because of this problem. If you see this message on the forum it will mean I have found a work around.

Cheers,
Glynne

[SteveSK]

Hi Glynn,

Can you email a screenshot to the webmaster address and let me know what version of ie you are using?

It sounds like a rendering issue compounded by the inline frame representation of the forum content. ( A problem that Mike alluded to earlier.) To make things look tidier I had disabled the scrollbars from within the iframe.

If others have similar issues I’ll try some other changes.

In the mean-time, if it helps you can use this url as well:

https://www.wtmc.org.nz/forum/list.php?5

Cheers,
Shane

[Ruth]

there is my pennys worth…

The new site looks really slick but does lack the friendly feel – we are a club afterall & not corporate.

Would be great to see new photos & written material along side older material.

I also think we give too much away to non members/general public thru the club web site – a problem with the old one too. I think it would be an improvement if stuff like club forms, trip leaders info, trip planning info etc was accessed via a member only area. otherwise why would anyone want to become a member when they can access all this stuff. Sure people can get general trip planning stuff from bushcraft books etc but there is alot of knowledge that we are just giving away.

Great to be putting the newsletter on the web site but I feel that it should only be published on the public part of the web site once the next months one is posted. eg newsletter in a members only section till the next one comes out? I feel that receiving a newsletter is one of the ‘benefits’ of being a member? Other clubs etc get copies but the readership of these would not be as wide as when it is published on a public part of a website.

Having a member log in does not have to be difficult (at present we enter our email address & a password, entering an email address can be a bit of a hassle but this could be simplified by having a log in name (not email) & password)

We should be using the website as a great tool & resource for club members and to give non members a taste to make them want to come along to club and find out more about us/join the club.

Ruth

[Mike]

Hello.

I think there are at least a few reasons to have more information available publicly when it’s feasible to do so, although there are arguments both ways. One practical reason, at least, is that anything behind a membership wall will never be found by a search engine, so the website as a whole is less likely to show up. (Chances are it’ll always pop up high in a list for a search like “wellington tramping”, though.) It also makes it harder for other websites to link directly into interesting parts of our website, if there are good articles, etc, that attract attention, which would give the club’s website more publicity yet again.

In general I *do* think the club should be careful about officially treating the website and newsletter as membership benefits. It doesn’t mean it couldn’t be done and it probably happens to some informal extent already, but I think there are a few risks that’d need to be taken into account. Everything that follows is completely introspective, and other people’s experiences will probably vary.

I didn’t personally join the club for its website material or the newsletter. I think they’re great and useful communication mechanisms. If anything, maybe the website (especially browsing the forum) gave me a better idea of what to expect from the club that was very positive, but I don’t see either as an incentive that keeps me wanting to be a member. For me at least, group-arranged transport, and being able to meet people from whom I can learn and to build up more confidence were a major reason that caused me to walk through the door of the club meeting at all. Those were things I was struggling with at the time. A combination of wanting to support the club as well as an underlying feeling of guilt (if I didn’t) were the main reasons I joined once I was allowed to.

As far as I know we don’t have stats about how many people keep going on trips without joining, but my gut feeling is that it’s not many. I’d guess it’s because people like the idea of supporting the club if they’re going to keep showing up. (I was trying to think about how to collect stats on this a while ago, but the information’s not well collated and it got too messy.) I haven’t yet been in a position of someone who’s less able to attend meetings and regularly go on trips (eg. people who get families or want to focus on other interests), so I can’t really comment from experience about those incentives. I’d guess it’s things like the lodge, wanting to stay associated with the club, being able to still show up and be part of it when there’s time between other commitments, etc, and probably the newsletter falls in there somewhere too. But I’m just guessing.

I think a possible risk of more things are closed off from non-members is that some members’ expectations might start to increase for certain things because they’re “paying for the benefit” (or whatever), even though in reality, those things are only kept going by other members exactly like themselves, and completely voluntarily. I’ve been on a committee in a club where I think this started to happen with at least several members openly asking why they should keep paying subs when they could get all the material information stuff elsewhere for free. (This was also when the Internet was a new fandangled thing.) At the time there was a lot of stress for those on the committee to put in lots and lots of work for no pay, not to mention paying their own subs. In hindsight I think it might have been better to just suggest that those people didn’t renew their subs.

I suppose if someone’s attitude is “I want to be a member because your newsletter’s great” as opposed to “I’d like to join because I want to support what you do and maybe even help out”, it’s worth questioning whether it’s useful to try and attract them to joining or keeping them as members… at least if they’ll only stay for as long as the newsletter’s in a good state. I know this isn’t a completely fair way to look at it, though.

But yeah, these are just thoughts. As I said earlier, other people’s experiences will certainly be different and might also be more valid. I’m sure my own thoughts will change as time goes on. I natter too much.

Mike.

[Stan]

I would like to see detailed previews of trips as well as interesting write ups
of all trips so that people can keep up with club activities if they are
unable to attend meetings because of distance or other commitments.

Regards,
Stan

[Stan]

Regarding Ruth’s comments,

There should be maximum accessiblity to all info with the possible
exception of private contact details.
If not, people will not bother joining a club and form a private party with
all the risks asociated with lack of experience/local knowledge.

Financially, all trampers should have to bear the costs whether member or
visitor, similar to hut tickets vis a vis annual hut memberships.
Only members should have voting/ leading rights and should be screened for
suitability.

As far as menial tasks go, a job roster system could be investigated
and/or some financial reimbursement as an incentive.

Also maybe a meeting entry fee for non memebers such as $2?

Ultimately I would like the club to expand as much as possible

without just a handful of people shouldering the burden timewise
or financially.

Also a suggestion, for individual trips maybe one person could do
all the pre trip organising while another could lead the actual trip?
That way more leaders would put their names down for trips.

[Author]

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