York RC Club website.
 

As some of you may have noticed, the website for the club is in dire need of being made useful.

I can make this happen. I've designed and created one or 2 websites in my time, no i cant link to them, if you catch my drift.

I see no reason why the system used for results, which i've seen and is an access database, heavily modified, cannot produce an output which could be turned into a database entry on a website. People at the venue, should they be remotely technically minded and have a smart phone, could then access the website and view times etc away from the rather crowded area behind race control. It would also mean that all meetings times etc would be saved and could be used by utter noobs like me to plot progress, be it forwards or backwards, and also used by the more experienced to see what different car setups have done over the course of a nights racing.

This really isnt a difficult task, only a few days part time coding and would be very useful...

Should the peeps in charge of the club wish to speak to me about this, please, come find me, I'll be pitting next to Mossy and will be wearing a weirdfish tshirt, driving a B4, or a Madrat, havent decided which yet...

Also, before this question is asked, no, i wouldnt want cash for this, i'm happy to do my bit for the club. But if you fancy turning those bloody heaters off in the main hall, i'd be greatly appreciative.... :P

Anways, gimme a shout if you'd like this done.

AC199

No grip without the heaters.

As for the site, there as mention of this at the AGM, but I wasn't really listening. Someone was going to do something, but I can't remember who it was or what they were going to do.

As far as I'm concerned every bit of help is welcome.

I believe there was a problem with the thermostat on saturday, yes it was a little warm.

The guy who paints the body shells and races the sweet 1991 Yokomo YZ-10 currently works on the website, he said at the AGM he had half done a revamp on the website.

Gerry also volenteered his services in this area.

It would be superb to have access to the race results, then I can spend the next week staring in tearful silent disbelief at how badly I drove. :cry:

It was indeed me who suggested taking this on at the AGM. My idea was to go to a Wordpress based site, as I've set-up / run a few using WP:

www.mediamill.co.uk
www.yorkparents.co.uk
www.auditiontraining.co.uk

Nothing that exciting but the idea is to make the YORCC site clearer and easier to update on a regular basis. Wordpress doesn't offer the ultimate 'shinyness' of a tailor-made site but WP sites can still look very good and it's easy to add extra features like embedded video and a picture gallery at zero cost.

I'm happy to do this or hand over to someone else

Having talked to Simon Major, who runs the current site, and Mike Cockerill it was decided that there should be some kind of get-together to talk about what's needed. It's also something to be discussed on here.


Jerry

The overall look of the site is neither here nor there for me, as a very general rule, i couldnt care less how bad things look, i have a fiancee who sorts that out, i only really care how things work. Right now the website doesnt, put very bluntly and IMO that needs rectifying. Admittedly most of the reason why i think it should be done, is that i won my final in my first race and didnt get any internets kudos for my troubles. Yes it was the B Final for 540, so not a huge achievement for many of you, but it was my first race and i wanted it to be immortalised on a website and i wanted hosannahs sang in my name, and a Mount Dubzmore... you get my drift i'm sure. But then after i stopped being a self obsessed douchbag, i thought, what about everyone else in my shoes, how do they keep a record of their average laps, see what the changes they have made do to affect their average lap, and generally have that little bit of pride that comes from winning, or doing well at something? Right now they dont, and i can change that.

Wordpress is a great way to publish your blog. For what i'm thinking is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard, and the guy i'm bringing with me this weekend is a godamn genius when it comes to coding. I know it can be done, he'll just tell me which way is the best to do it. Once we get our teeth into it, it'll happen very quickly.

I'm not trying to disregard your ideas bud, but this type of situation SCREAMS database backend, and thats just something that WP cannot give you, its not difficult to do, but its quite difficult to do well.

If you want to carry on and sort it, then be my guest, i'll code up a site for myself for the results etc, i just think it would be nice for everyone to have access to what i'm going to have, it'll be a massive help to everyone.

AC199

I'm not that arsed about the website either way..... but.....

York is not a great place to test "changes", the track changes grip wise so much throughout the night that the last round is almost always the fastest. Just something to keep in mind.

Sounds like with all the passion for a good site between AC199 and Jerry, if you two get your heads together it'll be great. :thumbsup:

Love the "be my guest"... bit. Thanks for that.

I piped up because it was something that was raised at the last AGM and as a new committee member and driver's rep I thought sorting the site out would be a good idea.

The way it's done isn't crucial, WP was just one possible way forward because it negates the need for lots of design and can be easily updated by just about anyone.

I started using it for my own company site because it meant I didn't have to wait for the designer to implement changes, I could do them myself.

Overall: the site isn't just for results, it's for news, information about the club, directions etc. One of its key roles is to allow potential new members to find out a bit more about what YORCC offers.

If we can achieve all that and set it up so that any of the content can be easily updated then it doesn't matter how it works behind the scenes.

Here's an idea (after chatting to Robin):

How about having the results on separate site, database driven, linked-to from the main club site? Perhaps the best of both worlds...

Combining the 2 separate parts, news info etc into one site seems to be the logical way to do it, and at the risk of sounding like a twat, if you could code asp or PHP you would have the vision I have also.

The program used for capturing times etc is a heavily modified access database, the output from which would import directly into a database from a website, meaning updates would take virtually no time and could be done from almost anywhere. As far as the news and other stuff goes, the website I wold use as a template has that already built in, so that's already taken care of.

I wasn't trying to be a knob when I said be my guest, the use of colloquialisms and slang often doesn't translate well via the medium of text, if you have already decided to go ahead and do the site your way, then I don't want to steal your thunder, it's hard enough to get anything past a committee at the best of times... there is a phrase that goes here, but I shall leave it out for fear of someone else taking this the wrong way...

AC

Hi

Can we have a peek at the template site?

Hey - at least the site's being discussed on here. That can only be a good thing!

Why don't we have a quick meeting on Saturday with anyone who's interested in helping get it sorted? I know Jamie and Robert Pearce were quite keen to be involved too. I'm sure we can get something sorted that pleases everyone.

I may even bring buns.

mmmm cakes,

A selection perhaps?

I'm turning up late.

Save some cakes or I'll race 540

After seeing the program used for the results and timing, the gentleman who does the vast majority of the race control, who's name escapes me, didnt seem convinced that the program could output as .csv or .txt so the chances of me being able to input it directly into the database is looking less and less likely but, to be fair, let me sit down and give me 10 minutes with the program and i'll see if it can or not.

Last night it dawned on me that I really dont feel the effort of trying to get a website design past a comittee is worth the bother its going to cause. Nothing good has ever been designed by committee, so unless "the committee" will nominate 1 person to sit next to me for 20 minutes and tell me what you guys want, I cant see this idea getting off the ground at all. If you can leave me alone to do the design and coding, and leave the input i'm given as "we want a news section, an image gallery and a forum" then this will work.

I'm not trying to be disrespectful when i say what i'm about to say, so please dont take it that way, but the vast majority of people at the club and on the committee arent PC geeks like me, so while you will probably understand 10% of what i say, the other 90% will go straight over your head (disclaimer - everyone has their forte, mine happens to be PC's) while i could sit down and explain everything, unless you see it you probably wont get it, again, not being disrespectful, just stating fact, the most important thing to know after all, is what you dont know.

After speaking to Farmboy for a very short period of time, apologies for not getting back to you after your heat, had a few car issues that needed dealing with, it seems that the results part isnt something that has been thought of previously, well certainly not to the extent i'm planning on doing it. If this is something that you dont see as being important, then we may as well end this conversation now, and go with the hideous POS that Wordpress is. If however, you can see a results database as being useful, which i certainly can, for many reasons, then this is obviously where i would come in and help.

Other that that being said, it was pleasant to meet some of you guys last night, and i had a great deal of fun, even if the design of the jump was "suboptimal" IMO. But thats okay, we can blame Vince and it is the same for everyone...

AC

Personally...

Not bothered with round by round results. I can get them on the night from the printout, but I would like champ night end of final results and times on the website.

I think the BBK race software http://www.bbksoftware.com/ just spits out a standard file.

To back this up, there seems a very standard format to these results which looks the same on these two sites which are independant of each other.

http://www.racing-cars.com/Worksop%2...%202/index.htm

and

www.results.trcc.org.uk

Most clubs have chosen the solution of a separate results site, I guess for simplicity. Also it means one person can own maintaining the results, and the other person can own maintaining a club site.

To set up a simple results site like the links above doesn't have to go through committee, come armed with a memory stick and go for it, is what I say.

So thats what the software is called!

Okay, in that case, i'm on it like sonic! The software does CSV outputs, just need to sort that, importing into the DB is going to be pretty straightforwards, can do that through a standard asp page with no problems, and can have the whole thing automated, so its a question of uploading the CSV through an upload page, and the code will do the rest.

Having a look at the site linked above, i'm gonna be honest, that looks far too basic for me and has virtually no functionality, the functionality that I think is needed. While its nice to have links and stuff there, I wouldnt want to try finding some results when you've been running for 3 years and you're looking for the results of 1 specific driver... needle in a haystack comes to mind. The site I envisage will have the functionality of the site linked, but so very much more.

Gimme a week or so to throw something together that doesnt look like ass, and 10 mins with the software prior to the race starting, and i'll get back to y'all with something you might like...

AC

I'm not sure I see the point of any of this...

It'd be good to have the results there for people who found it useful, Col. It can't do any harm if someone is passionate about setting this up.

In reply to AC199,
To be honest I don't think many people are all that bothered about their club night results. Not all of us are so anal that we feel the need to plot graphs of our yearly progress and things! lol I feel it would unnecessarily overcomplicate the site, just to add functions that would be very rarely used. As for adding a forum, that too would be unnecessary as the majority of our members know and use oople as their chosen forum for rc related things.

As a long standing club member and new committee member of our friendly local club, I feel that the enjoyment of the club is our welcoming attitude to new racers and our friendly, helpful nature towards each other. I feel this is what our website should be about, to welcome in new racers, which is a lot more important than club night race results, which as Col previously mentioned are pretty meaningless to compare week on week as they vary a lot anyway due to the traction, which varies a lot depending on the heaters and the layout of the track which is changed every week. The champ night results are how we check our progress and they are already posted on the site.

Jerry and myself raised the issue of the website at our agm and proposed only minor functionality changes, content regarding our club (not results!) and a new layout. Anything else would be wasted.

I'm sure you're probably capable of creating a site with all sorts of bells and whistles attached as you've explained by tooting your own horn in previous posts. But it's simply unnecessary!

Also as you seem to have barged in trying to take over our website and also insulted a few of our members, I feel your input is now unwelcome to Jerry and myself say the least!

As you previously said "If you want to carry on and sort it, then be my guest" and I think Jerry (farmboy) and myself can put our heads together and handle it ourselves, thanks.
Rob.

It has nothing to do with anality, it has everything to do with wanting to improve. I'm new, and i want to see how the changes that i make to my driving style, car setup, parts etc all make to my average laptime. I realise that the track changes every week, data can still be gleaned from this, you may not use it, but if 1 other person wants to use it, then its worthwhile. Just throwing this info in here as well... If you dont want to use it, dont use it. No one is trying to force you to use it...

I'm not disputing that, but its literally a 2 second job to add a forum, it adds virtually nothing to the size of the site and if nothing else, i can add a link to oople, which i was planning on doing anyways...



Really? Want to show me a link to them, the last results i can see are from 2010... also, why does everyone who is, seem to like advertising the fact that they are committee members? Arent we all equal in the eyes of the club, or does being a committee member mean your ideas and abilities are more important than mine? Should you as a committee member be allowed to continue and do a job that someone else wants to do and could probably do better, just because of your status? I'm just asking here, dont take this as me being disrespectful to you, as a committee member...

I cant comment due to not being there, but since no one appears to have done anything, I figured that you either couldnt, or didnt have the time. Both of which i can help with.

That very insulting paragraph is missing a small statement, "in my opinion" Clearly i feel its necessary, otherwise i wouldnt have suggested it... Also, please dont take such a disrespectful tone about my abilities, you dont know me at all.

Would you like to show me where I've been insulting? Also show me where i've been trying to take over your website? I have skills which can be useful to new members progression, and also give the website a fresh new look. All i was trying to do was help, now you seem to be losing your cool, and over the internet no less.

If thats the way you wish to play it, then i have no choice but to simply go ahead and create the site anyways. You carry on and do what you were going to do before, even if i'm the only one who uses the site i'll create, i'll get the information I want, in the format I want. I just figured that if i have a skill and a desire to help out the other newer members, i should offer to help, since you appear to feel threatened by this, for some inexplicable reason, I'll leave you to do whatever it is that you have cooking.

AC

I was making a point that your proposed changes would take the site away from it's goal, to provide plain and simple info on what we do and where we are. You can do what you like, and I don't have anything else to say to you. Lets leave it at that, I don't intend to get into a slagging match or anything over a little website.
Rob.

Ah, i see now. I tell you what, lets have a chat at the next meeting. I have some information for you, you may or may not find it interesting, since you're trying to nuke me on an internet forum, i figured that the least i could do was explain to you in person what it is that i WAS planning on doing.

I'm not going to continue this discussion, you clearly feel threatened that someone wants to do a task you've said you'll do, you crack on fella, have at it, and i really hope you do an awesome job.

Our man from the YORCC Diplomatic Service writes:

This is all getting quite heated so shall we leave the matter alone for a while? I would suggest that we all have a very quick chat about it at the next opportunity, where anyone can put forward suggestions for the club website.

Then we can get a consensus on what direction to take the site in and how to achieve that.

No-one's ideas are going to be dismissed out of hand but there has to be a better way of discussing them than on this current thread.


Jerry

I agree wholeheartedly Jerry. Lets get our heads together at the next meeting guys and see if we can't put this whole debacle to bed once and for all.

Yes that sounds much better to me too. I guess I was rightly or wrongly, just abit annoyed that you seemed to want to do it all yourself, when we were already planning to work on it as a team and put all our ideas together. Sorry.

Group hug.

Gay.

FIGHT!!

Awww, I feel sorry for Col now....

Ok ok I see the site is getting into a bit of a problem....

I actually do websites (Senior Web Designer) for a living and can do a new site for us in about a week or so.

I will come up with some designs for us and we can have a look at maybe putting in a vote for the best design and if Mike, Simon and Derek are happy for me to make the big change to the new design we have chosen then I will do so.

Forums: Well as stated the club peeps use oople and that is not a problem...We just have a button that says Forum and links to Oople YORCC page : http://www.oople.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=63

Race Results: BBK Software (after some research) can actually export .html files and that in non technical terms is a web page file. The problem you have is that yes they look like the rest of the clubs results pages as it looks to export it in a set way. If you happy with the results looking like that, then its very easy to add a link to the new site and that link goes to the results page.

I think this is the 2 biggest requests at the moment?

I know we have a facebook page setup by someone and we can add that onto the new site as well.

I have created a YORCC media (youtube) Account and if people have video they want to upload they can give it to me and I can upload it through the account and have a video blog running that I can update as soon as the video goes live it will show up on the website.

I can honestly say it will not take me long to setup the entire site but i will need some information from the people of YORCC...

What do you want on the site and what do you want the site to do?

I do agree we need information for new peeps like myself and thats the main reason for the site being there but what more do you want from the site?

Also can I get some YORCC Logo suggestions?

I can find out about T-Shirt and hodie prints using the logo as we work with allot of print companies with my work and might be able to get a good deal if we get high numbers on print volume...

I can add some advertisment space as well and see if we can get some advertisment from modelsport (as they around the corner from us) and other rc companies.... This might pay for the hosting and will mean the site runs for free and means the club does not have to pay for the site hosting (currently payed by Mike I think) and so on.

Vince

/me grabs the popcorn.

Haha no popcorn needed... Im just saying that the stuff you want to do is possible and I can do it without loosing the main aim of the site which is to inform people of the club and what and where we do it.

The rest is just extra...

The site does need to have a much cleaner and modern update and all is im saying is I do this day in and out and will do it if Mike, Simon and Derek are happy with what i come up with.

Vince

Dam you AC199 now im hungry and want popcorn

The stuff I want to do isnt possible the way you're going to do it. Not that it matters, I've already built my site, it sits on my home server and will never see a webserver.

I'll bring you some popcorn tomorrow :)