Suggestions to fixing and organizing the 928oc site

Mike Frye;13106 wrote: We also have to come up with some way to generate new content on a regular basis. When I log in and see no new thread contributions day after day it just makes me not want to bother. Not sure what the solution is, but I think new members probably come here for a while, see that there isn't much going on and then let their membership lapse (like I did ).

Most 928 camaraderie happens locally, in my experience, so I think that providing a place on the site for each local region to communicate would make sense. If structures were set up to allow Local Representatives to maintain items like lists of local mechanics, local tool loan, announcements of local events, list of local OC members, etc. it might help membership growth and retention.

Is it possible to create a top-level forum that contains a sub-forum for each Region?

no offense but i think the layout of 928oc.org is horrible, it is way to outdated. I am not a professional web designer by any means. I started designing webpages back in 1999 in the 8th grade, stopped in 2004, have my own website that I got lazy and installed wordpress and bought a template. I have actually taken a few classes in college within a year ago. The look of the website is not good, their is no uniformity between pages. The main page is to dark and old non graphical images. I think this website has great content, but the layout and navigation of the content is horrible.

No offense taken
The site is a @10 years old now.
Any volunteers to re-develop it out there?
I am sure the board would be willing to listen!

what kind of hosting service do you use (company / package)?

We had talked about redoing the website about this time last year, then we began working on the 928 Registry. After a long hiatus due to crazy schedules, we are finally ready to launch the Registry, and were getting ready to re-propose our plan to redo the OC homepage. With some folks willing to make it happen, we can relaunch the OC homepage in a couple of weeks. If you'd like to be a part of the team to redo the site, please contact me and we will make a proposal to the Board and see what happens.

It will be a fairly sizable undertaking, as there are lots of intricate parts in the current OC site that would be imperative to preserve. But, after the revival of this post, we have talked about it, and think this is a project we can definitely do, and would like to have complete by the end of May. I'm going to begin a plan to propose to the Board, so let us know if you'd like to join in.

To answer your earlier question.... All OC services are hosted by Excell.net, which is owned by the past OC president, Stan Shaw. He can make available both Windows and Linux hosting solutions.

Any progress on registry?

That was an epic score, nice work.

Speaking generally...I don't know that it is an organizational issue rather than a use issue, but I suggest that the Officers use the contact capabilities to provide some coordination and services to the paid membership- ie trial balloons for group buys to leverage vendors, tool loaner program...maybe find Leeroy....(mostly kidding on that last).

Of COURSE a very simple opt-out should be provided for those that want no such traffic.