I must have missed some discussion about the web site. I have some questions: - Why are we considering changing the site design? To reduce SPAM on the forums? To make the content management easier? - Why is anyone paying for web hosting (bluedomino) when we currently have a computer specifically for hosting our web site for free? If someone will bring it to me I'll install an operating system and put it on the internet. Content is more important than eye-candy. My $0.02. <Converted>
Currently our website is based on html and php that was pieced together to create what we have now. It is very difficult to make changes because I was learning as the sight was created and did not have knowledge of how to best organize data to make the site very efficient. From what I have read and learned about Joomla! it will allow the management of the content that we add to the site and is user friendly enough for someone to make changes despite little knowledge of website design. Joomla! has pluggins that allow for members to manage there own data along with calenders, galleries and shopping carts. The look of Joomla! can be changed without much effort in the future. As to the creation of the bluedomino account, our discussion about a month ago I thought concluded with a plan to develop the new sight independent of IOCC so as not to interfere or cause problems as we develop the sight. Roger volunteered to pay for the account space with Bluedominio while we develop the sight. It will definitely have to be moved IOCC servers in order to operate as RRMAS primary website as it is quite slow. The computer that was taken to Roger is running Windows XP operating system and the RAM was upgraded by Roger as much as was possible for the older motherboard. It is very true that content is more important than eye candy but how much content is going to be added to our sight if it is to difficult and time consuming to do. In the future our website will need a shopping cart (tshirts, koozies, ect.), member management of there information, ability to display video and hopefully more. If Razorback Reef is going to continue to grow then we can not expect to have a static website and attract new members not to mention keep the ones that we have.
I didn't know Joomla was part of the plan. That makes sense. I guess I'm not paying attention or wasn't around for the discussion. If I host the new RRMAS server on my network, it will not affect my servers. That's why I suggested it. If you want to bring it to me, I'll install Linux and Joomla on it and we can use it right away for developing the new site.
I have hopes that Roger will come through with what we have talked about. But I am still skeptical and it is difficult to get in touch with him. I have emailed and called him about questions that I had and he has not gotten back to me which is frustrating. If I haven't heard from him by this weekend and gotten phpBB3 installed I will look at getting the computer from him and bringing it to you. I am reading an ebook on Joomla! and the program is very exciting and I really think will do a lot of what we want. A lot of criticism about the templates was that they were to dark and difficult to read so I am looking for more to present to the board for scrutiny.
