In no way is this thread suggesting that Steve's work on our website is not appreciated, and to clarify, he has done a excellent job thus far on the Midcal MINI website. Thanks for your continued hard work SRTech!

After talking to a couple people from this week's meeting, I have put up a simple design for the website. It is a quick simple design, but as some people suggested we needed a more up-to-date site, and I know how busy Steve is, so I decided to help out a little. What I DO NEED is all of your past pictures from drives and GTG's! take a look and click on all the links. There are a few HTML errors, I know, so please just focus on suggestions and what maybe you would like to see.

http://www.sfbavw.net/MidcalMINI

We will STILL continue to host it where Steve has placed it but maybe I can gain fTP access to the site and make general changes.

We will be adding a disclaimer and copyright to the site as well.

Let me know what you think.

 

I like it. I do, however, think we need to do a photoshoot specificly for the header of the page, or have a rotating set of images.... That would be sweet

 

Yes, but for those of us that went to Morro Bay, the header picture IS a photoshoot of our members

As discussed in this last week's meeting the next couple of weeks we are going to travel around the Fresno Area and take some night shots and day shots for the website.... You are included as well

 

Lol, i was at the Morro Bay photo shoot :P Its just that we didn't line the cars up very well... That in combination with the wide angle lense, the cars on the right lok like ants. If we had a semicircle or something, it would be perfect

 

Just giving you a hard time, I also used the low res versions of the photos instead of the high res just to get things up, but we will be hopefully making some great website photos very, very soon...

 

Ya. You asked if Tuesday was fine. Its OK for me. Is it still good for you?

 

Still planning on it if all goes well Most likely about the time the sun is going down, as I want to do some straight night shots, if the rain holds out, and then maybe Thursday or next week some Dusk shots..

 

Well, just post on here when you want to do it... As long as you tell me by 3 or so, I wil be able to make it to fresno.

 

 

Not in your club (orig. from the bay area) but checked out the site. Just one word of very friendly advice....make sure to compress that background image...it is 528k right now. It is called "backgroundimage_1.png". Sorry, I am one of those nit picky web designers/developers. Good job!

 

Thanks! The high res version was used there, but the 128K version will be used on the final. Thanks for the heads up

 

It should even be smaller than that. Here is one that is 36k. No real visible loss of quality.

 

Rain on tuesday... Would wednesday work?

minihawk: I like it.

 

Nice job Lee. Good to see that no tables were used. Glad it's all CSS and that you're using a stylesheet.

-Juan

 

Thanks Juan. I need to seriously work on the stylesheets, as there are layers underneath from the master template I need to remove, as well as other little tweaks.

 

Looks good guys! Great work. I know how hard it is to keep a site updated and continue to run it. Let me know if you need any help. That background image does need to be replaced, slow loading! Of course, you'll work out the bugs. Great job!!!!

 

Lee and fellow club members.
I'm glad someone has finally stepped up to the plate. I have recently had no time to work on the site and have only kept the events updated. The only reason I built and maintained the current site is because we needed something on the web and I could run it for free; and nobody else stepped up. I am a network mechanic, not an artist. I can repair and maintain websites, but trying to be artistic hurts my brain. The club will need to find a place to host the site since it runs on my company network and I do not have time to deal with security and website mistakes that will kill bandwidth. I already have several highly graphical websites running and I am continually having to compress images that are sent to me for updates. A 128k image is outrageously large for a single image unless there is a real need and, if control isn't kept, the site will bog down. I will continue to maintain the current site until the new one is ready. May I also say that this is not the proper forum for this project and it should have been brought up at the club meeting on Friday. We need to discuss the ramifications of the move because it will affect the club directly.

Steve Tech

 

I have hosting if somebody wants to take care of the DNS...

 

Steve,

Sorry if I offended you. Michelle and I discussed this briefly as well as with Robert and Brian. It was a small discussion and wasnt in anyway trying to go behind your back. I took it upon myself to say, hey, maybe I can help out. Agreed, what you did was out of necessity, and much appreciated, as it put us on the map. The hosting and DNS will be paid out of dues, and we will definately find a place to host it and have the DNS pointer changed when appropriate. Thank you, and again please if you feel offended or upset, my apologies, this was not in any way inferring that you havent done an excellent job. PLEASE do not read it that way.

Lastly, about the big images. These are mearly test images that I had in my possesion using a higher end camera and format. These came from RAW photos of 5+ MB in size. Most standard shots will not be bigger than 30-40K in size and I know this. I do not have an issue with bandwith or space off my site, so that is why the file sizes didnt bother me. So if everyone could lay off that subject and focus more on what we need, want and would ike to see.

Blake thanks for the offer, please let me know the host and cost and I will see if it is appropriate for us, as I have been involved with big sites before and if the requirements may hinder us with future growth we need to make sure we have a host that will be with us throughout the whole growing cycle.

Steve once again, please accept my apologies with anything offending that may have transpired.

 

Well, I have hosting through 1and1.com. I have 20,000mb of webspace and 2000 gb or something transfer which I will never use. I could make an FTP directly to the site for you and you could have emails and stuff etc... All I would ask for is $5 a year to cover the DNS charge.

 

Lee, I have no problem with the change, just where the discussion is taking place. I can only afford so much upstream bandwidth and I can't sacrifice too much of it at the expense of my paying clients. DNS is no problem. I am primary DNS to about 30 domains and can point the midcalminis.com and midcalmini.com domains to any IP required.

Steve

 

Great! Who owns the Domain Name?

 

MidCal MINIs, but since it's not a legal entity, I do. Michelle and I have been looking into it.

Steve

 

So, how would you go about pointing it to a subfolder on my server?

 

We need to set up an independent web server at a web host that is not associated with anyone person, or within their paid service/sub folder. Midcal MINI needs to have its own account and server space on a host, for liability reasons as well as people come and go and to keep changing hosts/providers and contact info is too much work and may cause long term turmoil within the club. We will call a special meeting for those interested in web help/etc to get that hammered out, or address it at our regular meeting but that may bore everyone with the backroom details.

Lets stay focused on ideas and such