Thread: New Wooden Boat Association web-site

Originally Posted by onthebeachalone

Introducing a revised web-site for Australian Wooden Boat Associations. The main reason for the revision, rather than becoming more technical and sophisticated, was to become simpler and easier for any willing volunteer to learn how to fill the role of web-master.

John,

will the links section be on the new site? I just had a look and it isn't there.

AD

Originally Posted by bloggs1968

John,

will the links section be on the new site? I just had a look and it isn't there.

AD

I didn't attempt to replicate everything that was on the original site. The main objective was to get it so that we can have it easily maintained by volunteers who have limited time, and technical skills. That way it can evolve dynamically, be kept more relevant, and avoid accumulating a lot of out-of-date information.

I presume you had a link on the old site, and would like to have one on the new site. We are certainly planning to have a links page on the Queensland site, but I imagine you would prefer to be on a 'National' links page.

Can you let me have any thoughts about how you would like it to be, and I will pass them on to our new web-master. I'll be handing over and training him on 11 February.

Yes mate, I did have a link on the site and so did a lot of others. Is there any way they can be re-instated? I am not up with the technology so I don't know if it is difficult to do or not.

AD

Howdy,

A link page is a very important resource for something like a Wooden Boat Association. Otherwise it is just another website for insiders (which won't catch you many new members).

Also some sort of listing of what is on ... or people to contact to find out is a huge priority.

Best wishes
MIK

Just had a prowl through a couple of the State WBAs linked from the national site.
Seems to me that each State's web-site maintains its own links page.

Maintaining sizeable links pages is probably the most time-consuming part of running any web-site, and from John's comments, the national site is being structured to avoid
needing that sort of investment of time.

Might be more better for the national site to only run with links to the state links
pages. And state members get their links onto their own state WBA's links page.

cheers
AJ
ex WBSA member & extremely-ex web-site owner

It is certainly the case that quite a few state associations maintain their own web-sites. There are others who appear not to (probably more interested in boats than computers).

The issue is that there is no such thing as a 'national' site. Despite several initiatives in the past, there is also no national body. The most obvious benefit of such a body would be to negotiate better deals on insurance for our unique style of boating.

The web-site that has apparently become regarded as a national site is actually hosted at the expense of the Wooden Boat Association of Queensland who also own the domain name www.woodenboat.org.au It doesn't seem unreasonable that we would like to be able to develop our web-site according to the wishes of our members.

As the owner of the domain name we are conscientious about continuing to provide a national 'umbrella' page, links to other association's web-sites, or a basic contacts page for those associations with no web site.

In response top Andrew's post I have now added a links page. Rather than re-populate this with all the old links, many of which were probably 'dead', I would prefer to respond to requests so that we have only meaningful and active links. It will be intersting to discover who actually wants to be there.

The way the site is now structured it is easy to add or change links as they are requested.

Thanks for the feedback guys.