This year saw a major change to our website as we switched parts of the site to be hosted by Teamopolis. The purpose of the switch was:
o To provide a more interactive site where our members could post comments on topics of interest or concern
o To more easily allow designated administrators to add important notices if required without the need to involve the webmaster
o To allow for easier bulk communication to members (e-mail, SMS) when the need arises
We have transferred a number of the ‘old’ pages over to the new format and we will continue to convert pages as appropriate. We have raised some enhancement requests with Teamopolis, particularly around sending out surveys to subsets of the membership and improving the security of pages and files. Until the latter is resolved, we will continue to keep things like the swim times and gala results hosted by Lycos; unfortunately this leaves us in the position of users having 2 separate logins for different restricted areas which is a little confusing but currently unavoidable.
This time last year I reported that we had removed the guestbook from the site due to misuse; I am pleased that the switch to Teamopolis and the forums available therein has effectively re-instated the capability for people to leave messages for other members to see.
Looking ahead to 2008, aside from the items mentioned above that we are discussing with Teamopolis, we would like to try and implement some kind of electronic notification for gala selection and the ability for those selected to indicate their availability via the website. These won’t happen overnight and initially at least would operate alongside the current methods of gala slips and phone calls. I would be more than happy to hear from anyone who has the relevant skills and time to help us develop and implement such a system.
The switch to Teamopolis makes the site statistics a little more difficult to follow and understand. The figures from Lycos look very strange and unexplainable for November where it says we had nearly 29,000 hits. However, discounting that month, there is still evidence of a growing use of the site with an average of around 1800 visits per month. We also have figures for the Teamopolis hits each month. Both sets of figures are shown below.
The club website continues to be an important (and often the primary) means of communicating information to all our members on a variety of topics. We would encourage you to visit it on a regular basis to keep abreast of what is going on. If you don’t already have access to the members areas, fill in the form on the website by following the ‘Password’ link on the left hand side of the page.
We are always happy to hear your ideas on what you would like to see on the site and how we can improve it to suit the needs of Club members. Send an email to webmaster@busheyasc.org or talk to me at any of the club sessions if you would like to make a suggestion.
Kevin Binns
Webmaster
Lycos Statistics for 2007
Teamopolis Statistics for 2007
