New Website

TRC has its old / current website: old.therallyeclub.org and its wiki (on which this page sits): old.therallyeclub.org/wiki And now we have a new website, built on Google Sites so that each page can be permitted for multiple people to edit using "what you see is what you get" tools.

Current Website Content

• Home ("ad" for upcoming rallyes and points to recent results)
• Calendar (info on upcoming rallyes and meetings), with 1-page flyer for each upcoming rallye
• What's a Rallye?
• Results
• Membership (how to join)
• Resources (rallye guide, 1-pager tips, timed rallye resources, external links, equipment, multimedia, RM resources)
• About Us (officers, appointed positions, official documents, meeting minutes)
• Shopping (for items with TRC logo or images).

Note that the old website has minutes, old documents pointed to by Resources, and lots of old results that the new website does not.

New Website Content

• Home ("ad" for upcoming rallyes and brief intro to the club)
• Calendar (info on upcoming rallyes and meetings), with subpages for each rallye
• What's a Rallye? (expanded from the old site's version)
• Results (from the most recent very few rallyes)
• Resources (rallye guide, 1-pager tips, timed rallye resources, external links, equipment, multimedia, RM resources)
• About Us (officers, appointed positions, official documents; membership should be here, too)
• "Buy TRC Stuff"(shopping for items with TRC logo or images).

Note that the new website is missing meeting minutes (as required). The About Us page does not currently link to a membership form for joining or renewing by mail.

Why a new website?

The purpose of the new website is so that multiple people can update the information. The old website had a single webmaster. The new website allows any officer who wants to edit pages to be given permission to do so.

And if rallye masters wanted to create and update their rallye's announcement or results page, they can do so personally. For example, when the preliminary GIs exist, the rallye master could post them personally, rather than emailing to the webmaster and awaiting his attention to post them.

Other Advantages of the New Website

The new website also has a new look, with a site-wide "bar" advertising the upcoming rallyes. It also integrates with Google's calendar, which could allow people to easily add our events to their calendar.

The new website also unifies the site's look, so we don't have a "main site" with one look and a wiki with a completely different look.

Negative Comments about the New Website

Mel emailed 5/17/2014

Issues with new website:

1. Results link point to the flyers rather than the results.
2. Calendar is ugly: would rather see the postcard with area hyperlinks
3. Look and feel is default-ish; navigation muddied

Shall we Switch?

We should switch so that multiple officers--and potentially rallye masters, as well--can create and edit pages, keeping them current and helping to make them useful.

Conversion Plan

Preparations

1. Obtain and verify an address (such as old.therallyeclub.org) that can continue to reach the old website when www.therallyeclub.org is redirected to the new website. DONE
   1. The marketing part of me wants a title other than "old", but "legacy" ain't much better. old.therallyclub.org now exists, but some more server reconfig is needed to change the rewriting rules - currently it normalizes things to www.
2. Bring the new website up to date, so that it advertises 2 or more upcoming rallyes.
3. Ric: add to the old website a link to the new website
   1. This allows those who want to try it ("early adopters") to do so easily.
   2. Consider making a form by which people can give us feedback about the new site. This form may as well be on the new website. Then we can keep using it after the Big Switch.
4. Have the new website offer a membership form for by-mail renewal or link to old website's.
5. Change the new website's references to the old website to use its alternate name (e.g., old.therallyeclub.org).
6. Scoop up all the wiki pages, so they can be parts of the new website.
7. Make the old wiki read-only. Stop accepting changes to the old wiki.

The Big Switch

1. Redirect www.therallyeclub.org to the new website. Verify that browsing therallyeclub.org will find the new www.therallyeclub.org site. And verify that the top-level headings work.
   1. Looks like I (SteveW) don't quite have enough admin privs to change URLs on the sites pages, though. The DNS change is trivial, and can be done in seconds once someone makes the change.
   2. I trust it is the "old" website where you need to be permitted to change URLs. -- Dean
2. Move data from the old website to new website or to a shared Google Drive repository for display on the new website. In particular, old meeting minutes and old results need to be saved.
3. Store the wiki snapshot in the new website, clarifying that some of the data is unofficial advice. Try to segregate wiki information based on how "official" it is. Permit former wiki pages to any club member who wants access. (Consider if we also trust some people, like Steve Watt and Ric Goldman, whether they are members or not.)
   1. I wouldn't trust those guys. Never know what trouble they might cause.
   2. Wiki snapshots easily done.

Cleanup and Ongoing Tasks

1. Try to get rallye masters to help us maintain their information.
2. Also get (from the old website or from Bill Jonesi) the table of TRC events, so we know when we hit our 400th event. Put that somewhere public on our website.
3. Consider integrating our new website with our rallyist database, so officers can use it to obtain contact information for rallyists and rallye masters as needed. This information must not be public.
4. If we ever want to decommission our old website, we need to scour the new website for links back to old materials and move them to the new site or to our shared Google Drive repository.