Well! This is it! Since Bodvar has mentioned that the old site will have to come down due to a webspace limitation, Solomon and I took it upon ourselves to create this site for the benifit of our clan. This is a wiki site, which means that all members may edit any page of the site which means it has the potential to improve as we go along. Only memebrs of our Clan, and invited guests may join, and while the site is publicly viewable, only memebrs may edit the site. Have a look around, tell Phil and I what you think and what you would like to see, and if you have a great page idea, add it to the site.
Thanks for putting the new site together guys.
I had a couple questions: how much space are we limited to for posting pictures? Is there a way to group multiple posts into a gallery by event?
If we are limited we should be mindful in reducing the size of our photo files to a few hundred k.
My first reaction is that there may be too many forum sections; just based off of the old site, my gut feeling is that with the 30-40 ppl range that we will have using the forum, we could pool some of the forums together. I am sure most of us have spent years participating in message boards, and this is just my opinion.
I will look at colors and pictures and crap like that in the next few days. (although a huge benefit to leaving a site template as the baseline scheme is that it tends to be more work-safe!!)
Thanks again guys
We are currently using the free version of this service. Paid versions of this service offer more storage but we don't want to ask people to pay for anything that can be done for free.
We currently have 300 MB of storage space. That's not a lot, and I am already using a small bit for the two images I have posted. I think that the solution to the problem is we create a flickr or photobucket account that we all know the password to, or all of us can create our own accounts and post public pictures there that we can link to by URL. I am also talking to a friend of mine about some web hosting space that he may have available. In the case of videos, Youtube is our best bet because the videos can be embedded into pages. Again, like I said, any of our site members can edit any page, but admins have other cool functions that they can do.
At the end of the day I just want this site to be awesome. I have seen other SCA house sites and they are way cool with smaller numbers of people.
As far as the number of forum catagories. Maybe we see how it goes? Dave, if you want, you are an admin, you can correct the structure if you feel it is better another way. I am not sure that anyone has issue with that. Phil created most of it as suggested content. There is something to be said for organizing things and the clan seems to ever grow larger.
Its fine as is, brotha.
I had a couple more comments. We will probably need to have guest (forum) membership for some non-members. This will be handled case by case. Just a heads up, so that the appropriate person is called for permission.
You guys rock.
I assume you mead other heads of house, etc. We can create user groups I believe. Phil may know more about that. We can create a general GA, non-member-of-our-house user group if necessary and they will have some access. Let me know who you want when you want and I can look into it. That shouldn't be a problem.
hmm, well not just other HoH. We were in the habit of providing forum access to prospective members, so that they could get acquainted with everyone via the boards, not just at events. I guess we can figure it out as we go on this new system :)
Hey, Bodvar, I didn't address one of your questions. With regard to galleries, I was thinking of creating more pages on the site as a gallary. Things don't have to be posted to the message forum. Pictures that are intended to be forever should be posted to a photobucket or some such service and then linked.
Shelly is making a clan blazingbeard youtube account and a photo service account with public photos for us to use going forward. I will send an e-mail to the admins with the user name and password for those accounts. People may also link their own accounts to this site as they see fit.
I hear ya Bodvar. I think that can be accomidated. I think we can allow guest access to the forums I'm sure.
By the way, Phil and I kinda stole web admin duties from you, but only because the site is going away. If you want to take over managing the site, say the word. We're all on computers all day, and now that we have a way for more people to post, the site can grow ever larger and cooler going forward.
Hello,
I organized the forums the way I did for longevity reasons. Trying to go back and find info on a 2 category forum is a pain in butt. This way we can easily bring up info from the previous related event and build from there.
I can unlock the "Hanging out" forum to allow for anonymous postings.
Done.
Solomon
Evil spelled backward is "live," and we all want to live, don't we?
I understand too by the way that we own www.clanblazingbeard.com domain name, and it is also my understanding that we can have that domain work for this site. Phil, and thoughts on that?
All for it but who ever the admin for that url is will need to point it at this one.
Solomon
Evil spelled backward is "live," and we all want to live, don't we?
Hey, saw the change to the charter pic. It looks better then the old one, but it is Blazingbeard, one word.
Fixed it
Evil spelled backward is "live," and we all want to live, don't we?
Okay, so I seem to have gotten all of the content off the old site and now linked to this one. I don't like how I did the photos. Blazingbeard now has an e-mail address, a picassa, and a youtube account. Username is Clanblazingbeard. E-mail me if you want the password. It is the same for all of the services.
What we can do now is upload photos and videos and we don't have to store them here. We can just link to them.
Please everyone, feel free to change this page as you see fit. Everyone can edit and it is really easy. If you don't know how to do something feel free to ask me and I will be more then happy to show you how. I am sure that Phil will as well.
I hope everyone likes how this is coming so far. Please also thank my wife for setting up all of the account and getting that going.