HORBA changes

[Top Banana]

Some changes at HORBA that we want to announce so that everyone knows we are still,here though inactive for a bit.

We have just completed a joint venture with a new waterside restaurant in Ft Myers Florida, to house our Museum. We are shipping 35 items out on Monday and those items will be displayed inside the restaurant for all to see. We will completely change the exhibit every six months.

We have trophies from the 60's, 70's and 80's that are from races in America, Europe and South America. We have keepsake bronzes from a lot of races like the Bahamas 500 and the Long Beach, California race. A couple from the Around Long Island Marathon also.

Original Ron Thibedeaux photos along with original George Bartell paintings will also be displayed. The restaurant owners want to make this restaurant a destination for the high performance boat crowd and we are working with them to help them do what is necessary. They have a nice dock situation now and they have in hand permits for another 150 docks in the near future.

WEBSITE......I have given up trying to work with the people we have been using. I am looking for some advice here from all of you. I want a site that We can post the photos and write the stories to go with the photos without having to pay someone to do that. I also want to be able to put a watermark or tag the photo with our HORBA logo. We see so many of our original photos all over the place with no credit given. We are not charging for the use, we just want credit to drive more people to the site.

We want to enlarge the site with many new categories. Racers who have passed their last finish line and a brief history of what they raced while they were alive. A full list of World Champs unto the present time. A breakdown by decade and all the boats and racers,of each decade up to the present time. A history of boat brands and how they evolved over the years. Posters made from the George Bartell paintings. These are the paintings used in SEARACE. We want to have a monthly magazine featuring old stories from long gone boating magazines. How poker runs have evolved out of the sport and a section to feature some of the top poker run boats of the past and present. Etc, etc, etc, etc,

We have tons of ideas but can't afford to do it if we have to pay for each and every addition to the site like we have had to do in the past.

So........we need advice on an easy to use website model and we want to hear any ideas from you on what else you would like to see on the site. Thanks and we appreciate your past support for helping us keep the history alive.

 

[Hellbent]

Ahhhhh.....the joys of site ownership. lol As you've already figured out...it's a pain in the ass. The level of pain increases exponentially as you have to rely on others to get something done. There are lots of packages out there to choose from. Many of them are pretty easy to use and offer lots of options for expansion. The package that we use here at Seriousoffshore is called vBulletin. It's essentially a forum package that has grown over the years to include content management. It's not free but it's a very solid platform with an endless amount of configuration options. The downside to it is that it's not novice friendly and you often find yourself in over your head and at the mercy of someone else to get problems resolved.

You could accomplish what you're looking to do with a much 'simpler' package. I'm a big fan of a package called SMF. You can find it here: http://www.simplemachines.org/ I've had installations of that package running for years with literally zero maintenance. These however are at the core, forum packages. Having things like articles often times requires adding additional 'modules' to those packages.

If you're not interested in having a forum, there are other packages you should look into that focus only on content. A couple of the best ones are Expression Engine , eZ Publish , and Vivvo. Those are not free but I'm sure a quick google for 'free CMS' would net you plenty of results.

Any of the major content management packages will have the ability to do all of the things you're looking for. Articles, picture galleries, etc. You can easily assign permissions to certain members to allow them to author and upload the content themselves. The watermarking of images is very easy to do, many packages have the ability built in or you can do it via an addon module.

 

[Top Banana]

Ahhhhh.....the joys of site ownership. lol As you've already figured out...it's a pain in the ass. The level of pain increases exponentially as you have to rely on others to get something done. There are lots of packages out there to choose from. Many of them are pretty easy to use and offer lots of options for expansion. The package that we use here at Seriousoffshore is called vBulletin. It's essentially a forum package that has grown over the years to include content management. It's not free but it's a very solid platform with an endless amount of configuration options. The downside to it is that it's not novice friendly and you often find yourself in over your head and at the mercy of someone else to get problems resolved.

You could accomplish what you're looking to do with a much 'simpler' package. I'm a big fan of a package called SMF. You can find it here: http://www.simplemachines.org/ I've had installations of that package running for years with literally zero maintenance. These however are at the core, forum packages. Having things like articles often times requires adding additional 'modules' to those packages.

If you're not interested in having a forum, there are other packages you should look into that focus only on content. A couple of the best ones are Expression Engine , eZ Publish , and Vivvo. Those are not free but I'm sure a quick google for 'free CMS' would net you plenty of results.

Any of the major content management packages will have the ability to do all of the things you're looking for. Articles, picture galleries, etc. You can easily assign permissions to certain members to allow them to author and upload the content themselves. The watermarking of images is very easy to do, many packages have the ability built in or you can do it via an addon module.

Thanks for the leads, we will surely look into those.

Now, what about ideas? Does anyone know of another historical site that we could look at and compare? It could be cars or sailboats or John Deere tractors, we are just trying to make this as appealing to every person in offshore.

 

[old377guy]

Thanks for keeping this part of our history alive Charlie.

 

[Ratickle]

Any chance you'll be in Biloxi?