Which do you prefer?

[Forumadmin]

As an intro to the club can we discuss what you would like to see?

Peter Holden says he prefers
http://www.jowettjupiter.co.uk/

to

http://jowett.org/

Do not hold back: please say what you think either publicly here or via email to webmaster/forumadmin.

All comments will be appreciated and used to improve the attractiveness of the website.

[Keith Andrews]

jowettjupiter.co.uk with all due respect , out dated, cluttered not user freindly and made 15 yrs ago

jowett.org outdated, but easy to negoiate, requires compatablity mode in IE
Of the 2 jowett.org/
It also needs the NZ web site links updated to jowettnz.net

[Forumadmin]

Keith A.
Please advise which pages require compatibility view. They are created and checked against W3C DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict and passed by W3C for HTML and CSS as indicated by logos.

In future pages will be checked against WCAG Priority 2 and Access Board Section 508 for accessibility. Previously coding standards were employed but these checks are now part of Visual Studio.

[Keith Clements]

'Out of date' actually is a virtue as can be seen by the cars we prefer. Ed's site has many followers, and you are right it has not changed for 15 years. It was also created by a marque enthusiast not a web programmer and so is in tune with the thoughts of many of its readers.

As I said in the other thread, frequent change and updating has its downside. This is why we are discussing the next iteration of the Jowett web presence very carefully. I am aware of the pitfalls when designing by committee; but my team experience should hopefully allow all the ideas to be properly discussed and for us to acheive most of our objectives.

We need to consider the intended audience of the homepage of the website. Some may say that is the College graduate looking for their first 'different' car. Some the classic car enthusiast looking for another marque. Some the journalist looking for a story. That is different to the club member who may need to find information or a service.

[Robin Fairservice]

I will say that I enjoyed the ramble through the Jupiter web site, particularly all of the photos and stories. That section could be improved with some organisation. The overall impression is inviting and suggesting that they are a lively bunch who are enjoying their cars. Jowett.org, in comparison is very dull and boring. The links tend to take you to more boring pages of text.

I think that today's web browser popu;ation wishes to be entertained as well as informed.

[msuemason]

As a web site designer, in a previous life, I understand the issues and problems surrounding GOOD website design. (you can't please all of the people all of the time)

May I make a few comments that relate to generic websites, and I have no particular website in mind:

The site has to be designed so that it remains up to date for at least a year. That means that the contact area; the what's on area; the stop press area; the links area must be able to be changed with relative ease, without it necessitating changing lots of links within the site.

The site has to be designed so that it reflects the users' capabilities. So although there is a temptation to use fancy cgi/flash/midi etc using 'backwards' software enables the least techie amongst the readership to access easily.

Speaking of which, the front page should be designed so that the user can clearly view the 'site map' and having chosen a page then it should be clear how to revert back to the front page. (using browsers back button isnt good enough).

'Forcing' the casual user to fill in a form in order to contact the web manager is helpful to the manager, BUT may put off the user who may not wish to join up. A separate e-mail address specifically for the web site is easier to manage and allows for a data base of addresses to be built up. Of course keeping 'time wasters away may well be an aim.

Having a form allows for 'members' to receive a notification when up-dates occur. That can be annoying to the user, so maybe an option to receive should be available.

Users dont like to plough through acres of text on a site. Any lenthy text should be filed for download (Adopbe options maybe need a link to where Adobe can be downloaded)

I favour the sort of 'buttons' that Alastair Gregg has used on the www.jowettnorthwest.co.uk site (with reservations) For the non website user, they present a clear option of what to do ie click on one of the pictures. Hvaing clicked, the same pictures appear so moving onwards is easier.

My reservations re www.jowettnorthwest.co.uk concern the actual layout of the page. There is too much space at the top And of course the picture on the buttons COULD relate more to the content of the page to which they direct. At the moment they 'show off' some lovely cars' but have no connection to the page where users are sent.

I've said enough.

Sue

[Keith Andrews]

Please advise which pages require compatibility view.

I had to hit the compatablity button to get all the txt to show correct

[Forumadmin]

Sue, you have not said enough! We value such comment and look forward to you helping designing the new site.

How about saying what you think should be on the home page and perhaps designing it. Then we can comment.

[Forumadmin]

Updating the image of the website is something with which everybody can be involved . This is the 'Image' project (unless someone comes up with a Jowett related name.

We should discuss the aims or objectives of the home page. These will include audience, impact, readability, multi-lingual, target browsers.

We should discuss the main links from the home page and then the aims of each of the main links.

Then we can have input on the design of the home page and then the content.

We should also design the theme or 'corporate identity' for the site.

Please post your ideas and pictures in this thread. This will be separate from the 'Legacy' project which is mainly about gathering content.

[Keith Andrews]

I would beconsidering something like Ravens php nuke, incorporating gallery/phpbb2 etc add a couple relivent blocks and mods usefull to members, useful in admin cp.
Then either use a complatable theme for it or customise the default theme as in www.kakariki.net and www.an-squad.net

Colours would be user freindly and compatable with the jowett logo as a starting point.

[Forumadmin]

Further to Keith A. noticing a problem on the back up site, I corrected the Style Sheet there as I had forgotten to copy across the update on jowett.org.

I have this process whereby they are slightly out of step. My development machine publishes corrections first to jowett.org, then later to the backup site. This offers some degree of protection from change.

The systems is slightly complex as the two sites are slightly different: one being Linux, the other Windows, one having no indexing and the other indexing.

In addition back ups are stored off line. So there should always be at least 4 copies within a few weeks of each other. I hope to get some replication sorted so that the databases on both sites can be kept in sync and thus one can back up the other with very little loss of data.

I now have ODBC working between MySQL and MSSQL so we are half way there. I will try to replicate between the MySQl databases on each site first and then into the MS SQL.

But for those just interested in cars, rest assured your favourite site should be fairly stable. It survived the Buncefield Oil refinery explosion after some manual changes when the network servers were hit, and the floods in Cheltenham where jowett.org now sits, albeit support was non-existent as people could not get to the computer room!

[Forumadmin]

Further to Keith A's post above. Raven's Nuke was considered when JowettTalk and Gallery were set up. But I decided to go for what I thought were more stable systems.

However, Gallery is starting to get some bad press for its 'clunkiness' and really caused the move from the host that is hosting jowett.org. I did try moving onto another system as I discussed last year.

Advances in technology may mean that we choose something new. Alternatively the existing systems could be given a facelift.

But Keith A, could you present the case for using it in more detail, please, bearing in mind all the requirements we are building up?

How can it be hosted?
How can we move users and content from existing Gallery and Forum?
Does it offer collaborative working?
Can information be rearranged for better presentation?
What search engines are available?
How do we manage access and security?

[Keith Andrews]

How can it be hosted?
kakariki.net I host locally on an old gaming machine..windows, apache, php peril, etc..you will notice it has old versios of nuke and galery, phpbb2. with attachments and quite a few moew mods
an-squad has just been updated to ravens nuke (old nuke 7.6) and still under construction..the host ir is on we have been with them since 1998 and reliable.
I still prefer hosting myself.

How can we move users and content from existing Gallery and Forum?
If goi8ng to Raven, post up at his web site...not he also hosts...the guys and devalapores there are really good..
Does it offer collaborative working?
Can information be rearranged for better presentation?
yes all done in admin cp....
What search engines are available?
Dont know what you mean, ..on kakariki the quick search block and phpbb2 search are all internal....I run site maps for google, yahoo, rub "kakariki on any search engine in the world..its top 3 on all
How do we manage access and security?
Raven has updated security patchs, the most secure of all the flavours ..hence why still verson 7.6....I also use .htaccess blocking rogue counytries and isps....hosting local .htaccess and access logs are freely avalible
kakariki.net has been on the net for over 5 yrs now.

Go back to our old emails from when you where 1st setting up.
As I mentioned back then, the sooner u settup under nuke the less hassles transfering info dbs etc...once things grow it becomes a huge mission

In retrospect, I would be doing the same again
Note: kakariki.net I have customised everything from links to last post since visired to hiding member details/links right thru out unless logged in.
Spam script kiddies etc has never been an issue..althu logs certainly show many attempts every day.
note coming upto 5mil hits not including search engines and rogue countries and isps etc.
Run a google and at raven for Steptoe phpnuke...or Steptoe SEO..you will see I have been very involved with nuke.

[Forumadmin]

Yes I remember those old posts; but Nuke proved to be very insecure, and although Raven is now better it is only with the latest release that it is probably acceptably secure.

I have looked at http://www.vwgolfmk1.org.uk/
as an example of a car club site using Raven. I still have reservations whether it delivers all we require and will try to work through all of them.

Nuke for instance went commercial soon after I was making the choice. Raven could go the same way. You then get locked into a support contract or you end up with out of date, insecure code.

There is a balance between what you get in Open Source and what you get with commercial. I do not want to spend time patching software for the next 10 years. On the other hand I do not want to be forced to update the website every time the commercial org brings out a new release.

Last time I chose open source, but since then the same functionality has become available in free Microsoft products and we now have Cloud computing facilities as well.

[Forumadmin]

Raven Search capabilities.
Seem to be the same as available on JowettTalk. We want the search to also look through all attachments in the JowettGallery including pdf text image files.

Access control
Need to be able to control what editors can do at various levels. Exact requirements yet to be fully defined. But at a very granular level users should only be able to edit their own data, or data to which they have been given explicit permission by the owner. Groups of users should also be able to be defined and added to access control lists. Access control lists should be able to be defined by department admins as well.
Access control also needs to flow from Forum to Gallery and to other applications such as register update, stock control.

Edit capabilities
Now this is where requirements really start to get complex.

I would like auto spell check at least in English, if not other languages.

Also we should have two levels of capabilities. The simple annotation demonstrated on acrobat .com through the Microsoft Office or Google docs capabilities. It could be argued that we devolve those to the user's own tools but we may then end up with some issues.

Hiding details

It is not good if the out of the box solution requires mods to prevent showing any member's details. I hope the latest release has all the mods that you put in, now as default settings.