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.