Updating The Classic Speaker Pages

[administrator]

It has come time to start some dialogue on updating and improving this website. I have a significant amount of material to add and hope to get it all online my next free weekend.

If you have ideas, go ahead and add to this thread. I may or may not implement them, but I appreciate the suggestions.

The first couple things I will clean up will be the focus (more tightly define the scope of the website to New England area makes) and redesign (or just remove) the banners that don't do much anyway.

While I'm at it .. Steve, I got your brochures. They are great, and I did not have any of those pages. I'll scan them in our lab this week and then get them back to you. Anyone looking for more information on the Limited and Classic series will be very happy!

Mark

[administrator]

Another potential upgrade, which would be a relatively major one .. upgrade of the discussion forums from DCForum 6.2x to DCForum+. DCForum+ is a much more robust discussion forum platform. I think we've already hit the point where these discussion forum posts are becoming not only an informational resource but a historical one. Having a serious database backend will assist with speed, stability, and archival.

Anyone curious can check out DCForum+ at:

http://www.dcscripts.com/dcforump.shtml

Mark

[administrator]

Another item which should be discussed .. the logical layout of the pages. I could group speakers and electronics by date, model series, the type of document being searched for, etc. Right now things are roughly based on model series.

Which brings up the can of worms regarding converting the entire website into an online database, so YOU can decide how everything looks.

Mark

[Guest rickcee]

Hi You know me - pretty much zero computer skills

therefore KISS applies.

Rick

[ToastedAlmond]

I can say with a degree of certainty that Rick has incredible computer skills as compared to mine. I'm REALLY bad.

George

[Carlspeak]

>It has come time to start some dialogue on updating and

>improving this website. I have a significant amount of

>material to add and hope to get it all online my next free

>weekend.

>

>If you have ideas, go ahead and add to this thread. I may

>or may not implement them, but I appreciate the suggestions.

Though you may get some gripes from the KLH and Advent enthusiasts, you may want to consided a special dicussion area for AR speakers since the posts and response rate is running about 10:1 over the others.

Carl

>

>The first couple things I will clean up will be the focus

>(more tightly define the scope of the website to New England

>area makes) and redesign (or just remove) the banners that

>don't do much anyway.

>

>While I'm at it .. Steve, I got your brochures. They are

>great, and I did not have any of those pages. I'll scan

>them in our lab this week and then get them back to you.

>Anyone looking for more information on the Limited and

>Classic series will be very happy!

>

>Mark

[administrator]

I appreciate your suggestion .. I thought of a way to integrate it into my design plans.

In each vendor area of the website, I will have a button which will take the visitor directly to the discussion forum regarding that particular vendor. This will "integrate" the discussion forums more tightly into the overall website.

People will still be able to get to the main discussion forum area as things are now, but I think things will flow nicely integrating the particular forum with the corresponding area of the website.

For anyone holding back on suggestions .. make sure to add them to this thread or email me. I am in the planning process already for the database and have my basic fields mapped out. This week I'll begin working with MySQL and the Apache web server to see how things will work.

Here's a "real-world" example of how you will benefit from a database driven site .. if you select the brand and model of speaker you are interested in from a drop-down, you will get a custom built (on the fly) webpage with each and every piece of information I have on that specific model.

I'm pretty excited about it. We'll see how excited I am when I actually have to start coding.

Mark