Little Kam, Kelvin and i have been thinking more about how to make this site more user friendly, as well as figure out a good way to display the work of others. we would like to see contributions from others, in the form of articles or at some point it would be nice to have a gallery that shows off skis made by others. anyway, we'd like to ask about ideas for improving this site and how best to handle showcasing the artwork of the community...
First of let me air the disclaimer that I have no knowledge of web site design, or these forums are structured. I can see that the forum is a standard template which various message boards & communities are using. I don't know how flexible it is, so that caveat having been stated, here's what I think.....
I think the site is great! The forum is easily navigated & efficient. As far as displaying the works of others, perhaps a teplated form could be available for the Garage Skis Forum that mirrors the pages in your gallery. Most especially the cross section of the ski with all components labeled. As well as a standard list of features, (just like you allready use)
I've never used a Blog (or even explored them really) but it occurred to me as I added to my journal thread that it really is a blog. Is a blog type formate flexible enough to do the Garage ski ghetto chronicles there? I have no idea! I like the idea of the forum format where others can post comments or questions visible to all, so maybe a view only blog is a bad idea..... brainstorming....
I think a small blog section could work well. There are a number of open source modular blog scripts out there that could probably work well for this purpose.
Gallery (http://gallery.menalto.com) is one of my favourite photo gallery scripts and could also work well for different users to showcase their pictures and supply commentary.
as far as the user friendliness of the site, I think it is great. well laid out, easy to navigate, and pleasing on the eye.
good work, i say!
Ever thought about using a wiki for the user submitted stuff? Would make it easy to upload articles I would think. Plus people could comment on them rather easy as well. Perhaps you are a aware of wikipedia?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
I think all you would need would be to have some wiki software running on your host server.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki is one such software package. (free - open soruce)
we're looking into wiki right now. it's a good idea. keep the ideas coming...
A section standardizing terminology with respect to ski construction would be nice. There are some terms that can be confusing. i.e. cord center, balance point, pin line, boot center, running length, side cut, etc...... Especially the Cord center. When documenting a core profile for sharing with others, the CC mark should be determined uniformly by everyone. That way we can all learn about how much full thickness platform to have underfoot relative to how we want the ski to flex. -J
good idea!
Over time I have noticed people want to get materials from other people. I was thinking there could be a posting where a pool of funds could be made for stuff nobody could use everything ex a firehose. Or an ebay like listing of scrap materials that others may want.
I think it would be great if you guys put up a section abought cap construction. It seems to me that this process would be much easier to do then making sidewalls. Other than that the site is amazing, keep it up.
there's a "for sale" section of the forum. you can also post wanted topics if you're looking for something in particular.
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i agree, but we have yet to experiment with cap construction. perhaps vacuum pressing will be in our futures. if/when that happens we'll be sure to post up our findings.
Hi,
do you see a chance to create an upload functionality for registered user so that they can add a movie or some pictures to this site? I think movies are a great thing to see how a ski really works and there are a lot of forum members testing there products right now and not everybody has webspace available....
Alex
To throw in my 2 cents...
A while back I was looking into blogging software. The only free package I found that easily supported multiple sub-blogs (ie allows for multiple authors to maintain blogs within the whole blog) was b2evolution. A couple of friends and me use it if you what to see what it looks like, http://nonplatonic.com . Though it looks like one of my firends has lost his mind, so just ignore what's actually on the page. There is a version of Movable Type that supports multiple blogs, but it's $100.
[As a completely irrelavent digression... I use Firefox, which crashed as I was writting this, but I recently installed the SessionSaver extension. So restarting Firefox brought up the 3 windows and 30 tabs I had open and what I had written for this post. Pretty spiffy.]
All that being said, I think that a wiki is a better fit structure-wise for what people want to do. Some one mentioned MediaWiki, which is the most full featured package. I was looking at the phpBB page and it says that you need some database for the backend. If you guys are using MySQL, which you need for MediaWiki, installing it should be pretty painless. If not, there is wiki software that doesn't need a database, eg PmWiki and DokuWiki. But MediaWiki would scale better in my opinion.
have you considered using adsense in your forums?
what is it? tell me more, please...
using google adsense, it places advertisements in your forum...usually to generate a some income.
oh.., but we're already rich with heart and soul..
Can't you see what's going on? You can't really believe in it, right?
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hi, I just noticed the link from the "howtobuildyouronwride/sidewalls" to the "profiling" page is not available.
thanks! it should work now...
Alex and Collin:
thanks for your thoughts and suggestions. i'm currently looking into the Wiki option.... i think it will be useful.
I was reading through the forum rules of the journal part of the forum and noticed you guys said you were working on a dedicated place to show off our builds. Somethig like you guys have in your gallery would be great. Possibly a gallery of user submitted skis.. I know you have something like this but maybe we have to figure out a way to get more people tp submit their finished skis with a breif diagram of construction layp and a few words/ dimensions etc.
Maybe a form we could essentially fill out would make it easier and less time consuming for you guys to post it up?
Any way just running through ideas.
schuss
SCHUSS: this is a good idea. implementing the idea will require some time. for now, we are very open to builders submitting their designs to be archived in our "contributors" section. so if you write up a description then send it my way including photos i'll be happy to make a page for you. i have the image files in Adobe Illustrator for the ski specs if you're interested in generating your own, otherwise send me the specs and i'll make a diagram that's similar to the ones we have posted.
I'm pretty new here but feel like I've already scoured the site and I'm now delving into the forums. I don't know if you already do this, but when there are updates in content on the rest of the site, it might be good to have a topic in the forums where you can post links in case we miss it. I don't think I saw a topic or forum for that yet, but I guess I don't know how you deal with that since I haven't been here that long yet.
Oh, and you'll get occasional spam in this specific forum because guest posting is turned on.
Thanks for the input. Usually when we update anything on the site we'll post it on left hand column on the home page. But mentioning our updates on the forum sounds like a good idea as well. Thanks!
Modern times call for so many home improvement ideas. But it would be much better if you can introduce the element of affordability in it. Low-cost improvements will not only improve our homes, but it also saves you money in the long run. And this is what really matters these days, given the hardships we are in.
I have a free trampoline for you.
