New Forest Website Is Up

Forest is people. People is you. You is us.
Post Reply
chombee
Posts: 1327
Joined: Thu Apr 20, 2006 3:01 pm

New Forest Website Is Up

Post by chombee » Sun Jan 16, 2011 7:50 pm

Just went live. Take a look, and donate or buy something for the Save The Forest campaign!

We are still waiting for a few pieces of art and some writing and editing to come in, these will be added to the site soon.

Let us know if you find any mistakes: email website@theforest.org.uk.

If you would like to help out with creating content (art, writing, editing) or with technical help for the site. email website@theforest.org.uk.

I am particularly interested in finding people to create more interesting articles for the site. Currently it is all events and workshops posters. I want to do more interesting content such as: streaming/downloading audio from Forest Records, more things like CIA Nights zines, reviews of events at the Forest, interviews with volunteers or people who run events or workshops, there are many ideas.

This site has about 200 unique visitors a day and we're hoping to increase that and to keep people's attention for longer when they do visit the site. If you are interested in creating interesting content to go on the site: text, image, audio or video, email website@theforest.org.uk.

Thanks
I've had it with you. If I had an image of a laser gun I would absolutely position it right here in my hand...
Ha! I have a real laser absolutely positioned in my hand!

User avatar
thehemulen
Posts: 428
Joined: Fri Aug 27, 2004 3:26 pm
Location: cyberspace. Berlin
Contact:

Re: New Forest Website Is Up

Post by thehemulen » Sun Jan 16, 2011 10:52 pm

looks awesome. good job! love the logo and the layout seems nice and clear.

one thing i would say is theres no obvious link to the bb... in general is there any plan to lose the tumblr and divert everything to the domain http://theforest.org.uk? would be cooler (than dot com)?
"If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all." --John Cage.

User avatar
boletes
Posts: 112
Joined: Sat Oct 09, 2010 11:26 am
Location: Livingston
Contact:

Re: New Forest Website Is Up

Post by boletes » Sun Jan 16, 2011 11:07 pm

really well layed out and packed with information, love it.

chombee
Posts: 1327
Joined: Thu Apr 20, 2006 3:01 pm

Re: New Forest Website Is Up

Post by chombee » Mon Jan 17, 2011 12:11 pm

The banner logo is actually just a temporary placeholder, something better is in the works.

bb link is on the contact page.

Swithun is looking into using theforest.org.uk instead of forestcafe.tumblr.com. I agree that it sucks, but I'm not sure if it's going to be possible or not. Mike has looked into before as well and couldn't find a way. The problem is that because we run other stuff (the bb, the cave booking system) on theforest.org.uk, we can't simply point that domain name to our tumblr blog. I'd be in favour of moving the bb etc. to a subdomain or a different domain in order to use theforest.org.uk for the website, but we have a lot of @theforest.org.uk email addresses that we wouldn't want to change, and I don't know if pointing the domain name at tumblr will affect those. Well, people are looking into it.

Couple of edits to the About page text today

Thanks
I've had it with you. If I had an image of a laser gun I would absolutely position it right here in my hand...
Ha! I have a real laser absolutely positioned in my hand!

ChaoticReality
Posts: 1113
Joined: Sun Nov 23, 2008 10:16 am
Location: Edinburgh!
Contact:

Re: New Forest Website Is Up

Post by ChaoticReality » Mon Jan 17, 2011 4:40 pm

chombee wrote:I'd be in favour of moving the bb etc. to a subdomain or a different domain in order to use theforest.org.uk for the website, but we have a lot of @theforest.org.uk email addresses that we wouldn't want to change, and I don't know if pointing the domain name at tumblr will affect those. Well, people are looking into it.
Moving the domain would break @theforest.org.uk emails.

The subdomain/redirect main was considered back when we made the switch but not only would it mess up all the email, there's actually a whole myriad of stuff other than the bb hosted under the forest domain.

I personally think the best idea is to try and recreate the functionality that people like from tumblr using open source software and host it ourselves, then we can use the domain properly.

A quick google reveals there is already an OS clone of tumblr, GelatoCMS (http://techie-buzz.com/microblog/openso ... tocms.html) so I will have a go at installing it in the next day or two and we can investigate if it's any good.
Mike

Dawnsio 'mlaen i'r gwres prynhawn a rwy'n addo erbyn yfori byddai wedi mynd, hwyl fawr i pawb, hwyl fawr i pawb...

chombee
Posts: 1327
Joined: Thu Apr 20, 2006 3:01 pm

Re: New Forest Website Is Up

Post by chombee » Mon Jan 17, 2011 5:16 pm

It's good to know about Gelato for the future, I mean, it's good to know that the option exists, but I imagine it would be quite a big job to move from tumblr to gelato and I wouldn't have time to work on it anytime soon. I've put in a lot of time on the website over the last month and am planning to settle down into moderation/maintenance mode on it for at least a few months now! Also, one of the main reasons that we switched to tumblr was because we wanted to use a hosted service where there is a professional support team keeping it running smoothly, rather than having to maintain something ourselves. Tumblr will just keep working indefinitely by itself without requiring any effort or expertise from us, and we can just keep using it. Hosting gelato ourselves would defeat that and make unnecessary technical work for us, and introduce the possibility of the gelato software breaking or just not being kept up to date and nobody being available who knows how to fix it.

In short, I'm against it right now, but it's good to know that the option exists if we ever need it.

What would have been an ideal would be a hosting service running an free software tumblr equivalent, like how wordpress.com is a hosting service for the free software wordpress platform. Such a service did not exist, so we chose tumblr.
I've had it with you. If I had an image of a laser gun I would absolutely position it right here in my hand...
Ha! I have a real laser absolutely positioned in my hand!

brittonie
Posts: 424
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2010 11:03 pm
Location: the clouds
Contact:

Re: New Forest Website Is Up

Post by brittonie » Tue Jan 18, 2011 2:39 am

new website lookin' good so far... i second that the BB is hard to find. :(
wet, dirty and dangerous.

chombee
Posts: 1327
Joined: Thu Apr 20, 2006 3:01 pm

Re: New Forest Website Is Up

Post by chombee » Tue Jan 18, 2011 12:32 pm

Thanks to Swithun, Duncan and Mike it's now blog.theforest.org.uk.

theforest.org.uk and forestcafe.tumblr.com redirect to it. We couldn't get it showing up directly at theforest.org.uk without breaking our @theforest.org.uk email addresses.
I've had it with you. If I had an image of a laser gun I would absolutely position it right here in my hand...
Ha! I have a real laser absolutely positioned in my hand!

Post Reply