prolax13

Well, I decided to go ahead and create a homepage for 4ROC-North Carolina.

NC.4ROC.com

Scottiac

Pretty cool!

One thing we need to watch for... the guy that has 4roc.com re-upped this year, so it's not available. I think we should secure 4roc.org first so we have something, then contact him to see if we can buy him out. Not that I'm a suspicious sort or anything, but I am.

Hopefully tomorrow night we can discuss whether we want one big happy website area (nc.4roc.org) or disparate sites that are part of the collective (nc4roc.org/com).

prolax13

Ok. One BIG question for all those of you who have knowledge of web creation/hosting: If we go with one large website www.4ROC.com or .org and we include sub-pages like NC.4ROC.com under that, then how would the state chapter pages be published? Would they be all published by a single user or could each state's web designer publish and edit his own state-chapter page?

Allthough it may be expensive, I say we seperate the pages and have each chapter own its own domain. Then, the costs will be split among each chapter's members/fundraising efforts/sponsorship. However, all the pages should have to follow guidelines set forth by 4ROC's leaders.

Scottiac

Complicated answer for ya...

Sol'n 1: One big beast, one core group of maintainers
(Suboptimal, I agree chapters should maintain their own.)

Sol'n 2: One big beast, each chapter can access own area through logins set up for that purpose
(probably cheaper, and share access to more resources, but a big pain for the central hosting folks)

Sol'n 3: We can set it up so that www.4roc.com goes to one place, and it manages redirecting things like 'nc.4roc.com' to a host that you (for instance) maintain yourself. It appears to be part of the whole beastie, but is truly a separate world.
(The reverse of everything in sol'n 2. )

For the people that have volunteered to help host this stuff, I don't know how much administrative load they want to accept, so I'm not sure what they are willing to go with.

Just to throw a bone to our international brethren, let's just say "state" is an amorphous term meaning state, province, country, or any other organizational entity that is put together as a single chapter.

My babbling aside, I agree with your idea of each chapter being responsible for their own space, but with guidelines and resources available from a common pool (graphics and the like).

I like the idea of creating (for instance) www.ca4roc.com as a standalone web site, with ca.4roc.com pointing to the same place.

But then, I'm one of those darn fool kalifornians, and this is a NC topic! Time for me to get back to the west coast.

prolax13

Yah yer damn fool. Yall and yer damn yankee frends best get yer arses off my thread. Gosh darn Democrats.

All kidding aside, could you explain option #2 a little more indepth.

After reading those, I think #1 would be the least convenient.

#3 sounds like the best option. Have all off the State Chapters, whether they be actual states, provinces, etc, publish and maintain their own pages. Then, have the 4ROC Central page, perferably www.4ROC.com, be run by the elected leaders of 4ROC. How then do the already hosted pages with their own domain names like www.4ROCNorthCarolina.com become sub-pages with the URL NC.4ROC.com? Whatever the case, I think this is the best solution.

Now Im hungry. Time to cook me up some of dem collard greens with that cornbread granmamma used to make.

denverbikeguy

Here's what I'm thinking (assuming you all want to go with me for your hosting, since I'm obviously biased I can't make that call ) for the site stuff:

First, this will be a big site, especially in the not too distant future. As I also host and help run the CSC site (link in my sig) I know how big this can go, and car clubs tend to spread like wildfire without you even seeing it coming. Since the web hosting thing is a professional venture for me, I'm certainly up to the administrative overhead - it also means I'm set up to handle it technically.

What I recommend is this: A main site (4roc.whatever, net, org, com if you can get it cheap), then the others under it as virtual hosts: co.4roc.org, wa.4roc.org, etc. This makes it very easy to segment them out, but share data and other things among them. What I'm proposing is to charge a nominal fee for the main site, DNS hosting, email if you want it, etc. Then as each chapter forms I would just add a small fee on top of that for each chapter's virtual host. That way they'd still contribute to the cost but it would be proportional to what was actually being used, and you guys can account for it any way you like (i.e. one central point, each to themselves, etc). This also makes the total cost per club less than if they procured a site on their own. The sites will have access to PHP, MySQL, whatever... We also provide forum software maintenence as an option.

In addition can break out who can admin what site-wise. I won't be participating in the content development, but you would be able to pick a group of site admins and divvy it up as you please.

Anyway that's what I can offer. Once this gets finalized, if you guys are interested, I will get some rates and such to whoever is deemed "the man". I'm sure more will be discussed on the inagural Tuesday chat session... Heck I'm just stoked this thing is coming together with the speed and enthusiasm it is! Should be a pretty sweet club in short order.

prolax13

DAlYlN DAlYlN DAlYlN!!!

Well, I guess I wont be taking part it tonights chat session seeing as I work from 6-9pm eastern. Well, if anyone would be willing to pass out some ideas for me, IM me at prolax013. I would greatly appreciate that. Will there be anyone saving the conversation for posting on Yotatech?

Dave

Corey

iTrader: (1)

Also look into .net or .org if those are not taken.
Then if .com becomes available, grab it up.

I used http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/default.asp?e=com to rereg my new doamin for my personal website, and it's a great service.

A little history.
My page host featureprice went under as you can see by my past posts in Off Topic.
They held my domain name of www.pnw4runners.net/tando captive, but I was able to get it back.

Before that, I went to godaddy.com and got .com for the end of my name.
I now own both again, and using either .com or .net will take you to my personal website.

You could do that also with 4roc.

jalaber

I hope we are not going to have a seperate forum on each xx.4Roc.xxx site. Dont make much sense. Why shouldnt we keep YotaTech as the main "one stop" place for Forums. For Example on the YotaTech main page we have a forum entitled "4ROC (4Runner Owner's Club) ". under that we should have sub-forums for all chapters of 4Roc.

Corey

iTrader: (1)

I agree with that Jalaber.
Once this gets rolling, I can easily setup sub forums under the main 4Roc section.

That will keep it all in one neat & tidy spot.
If that works for everyone, someone can send me a list later and I can set them all up for each chaptor if need be.

Stump1883

Yeah I'm with Corey and Jabblar on this one. I want to keep Yotatech as the epicenter of things. If Coey is willing thn lets mak a guideline to keep each Chapter page clear of forums, and just provide a link to Yotatech for any trip planning or group descusions.

I like the direction this is all going, lets just not let this become a HUGE out of control voting process like the whole Yotatech decal thing became.

prolax13

This forum was meant to be for NC 4ROC members only, just used as an announcement forum for future events instead of having a "News/Events Page."

Yotatech will always be the axis of all that is 4runner related.

Cebby

I like the idea of a central site with subs for the chapters. Since I'm an island in PA (no interest I guess) is it possible for me to setup the chapter so it's ready for those in PA who come on board? I think we might have 2-3 members to start.

We were chatting last night about a few of us that are scattered around without enough local interest to form out own chapter - appropriately called the "Misfits".