| This is NOT the club's "official" site but is a copy or 'clone' of that in development with additional material and these comments added by Trevor Bending who cannot believe we have waited over ten years to get this far and are still waiting. (See technical note suggesting our 'designers' may have ceased to exist at the foot of this page!)
I believe the present site in development is fundamentally flawed in TWO important respects.
Firstly, it has been conceived as an over-arching 'design' to be 'completed' at some point (who knows when) with everything you might want (that one or a few people can currently think of) included from the beginning.
This 'design centred approach' is NOT the appropriate way for a members' club to use a web-site which should instead be developed organically as a work which is always in progress and never completed. Don't just take my word for it - read the founder of the web Tim Berners-Lee on the subject between 1992 and 98.
(I wrote this about 1997: A website doesn't have to be some grandiose, 'all singing, all dancing' scheme of dozens of pages. Although there is an argument for an overall plan and structure as you might expect in a book or other publication, this may imply delay and a 'static' finished product (as in a book or even newspaper). This seems to undermine the essentially dynamic potential of the web. See Tim Berners-Lee, 'father' of the Web, on style in this connection.)
Secondly, the design involves a very pretty but complex javascript driven menu system which, as far as I can tell, needs not one but at least three versions of a complex javascript to function properly. (For the non-technically minded please bear with me and read this - it has far-reaching non-technical consequences!) This may be why almost all the internal links are given with absolute addresses rather than relative file addresses (itself a practice which is not recommended - by Berners-Lee for example). It also means the site is much more likely to mis-function now or in the future on some systems; much easier to damage; much more difficult to trouble-shoot or fix; and much more difficult for a number of trusted members to contribute to and amend on a regular (daily/weekly?) basis.
The last mentioned point is fundamental and explains why we have been waiting TEN YEARS and are still waiting for a website. For a number of non-technically minded committee members or other trusted members to be able to contribute to and amend the core of the web-site on a regular basis at any time should be the most basic requirement for any club site. Race results, news and important notices should be able to go up tonight! (Not next week, next month, maybe, in ten years, maybe never).
It will not be practical for too large a number of contributors to be able to amend the site at any one time but I would suggest 4 or 5 as a minimum. In addition, it would be ideal if any member could add comments at any time. This might be achieved by a forum or bulletin-board type program (as appears to be planned) or perhaps better through a 'blog' (see example) or online community or group linked from the site.
For example:
There are a number of other minor design issues, for example not changing the colour of visited links (now why would that be the default option?) - I've changed them here to dusky pink. There are no obvious provisions for news or 'what's new' pages, nor for putting important notices on the home page - all pretty basic requirements.
It might also be a matter of some concern that the domain 'pixel2web.net' 'designing and hosting' the club's 'official site' - see right below - was apparently deleted from the domain name servers on 17th May 2007 and so no longer exists, though this might have a perfectly ordinary explanation.
Putting up the first pages of the website, as soon as they are ready, is the procedure recommended by Tim Berners-Lee. Then, as you add new material and amend indefinitely, the site continues to be of interest as there is always news or something new. The best way to achieve this is by an open process to which all can contribute in some way.
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