Web Site Update

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Web Site Update
B

BT

Registrant
After months and months of talking and some failed attempts to deal with our website the board has made the decision to contract with a professional IT company to undertake this task.

While we are very excited about the long term plan and the features we hope to have as with all such things how far we are able to go depends on the amount of financial support we are able to develop.

We are experimenting with a couple of ideas to keep this need in front of our members and guests, the first being the "floating thermometor". I hope it is a fun reminder and if you have other ideas let me know.

As to the plans for the website we have a very aggressive calender for phase 1.

We have divided the overall plan into three phases.

Phase one will be a new site with a new chat room, a vastly improved discussion board, new site navigation, links that actually work, and an overall more efficient easier to use site. We are addressing the overall function of the site and the navigational flow. The information will be substantially the same as it is now with some new catagories and updated information.

We will also have a much nicer look to the site and changes and updates will be easy to make and we will be able to make them look much better as well.

We will be adding things such as current news items and more information about events such as the weekends of recovery program.

Behind the scenes this involves significant rewriting of code, new security features, a new database, and some other rather extensive updates.

While I realize delays are likely, our target launch date is Jan 15, 2007. We have developed the plan and have officially began.

Phase 2 will introduce organizational management features and enhance communication accross the board. We will have better internal reporting, and improve the flow of tasks and responsibilities, improve volonteer training and expand volonteer opportunities.

Phase 3 is all about site features such as the possibility of email, custom member homepages, etc...

We have made every attempt that we could reasonably make to deal with site problems without incurring additional cost and without asking you for additional funding to support this effort.

However as I think you are all aware the results have simply not been acceptable and too many little things much less some big things are just not working.

We have an amazing community and without this sort of investment we will continue to have problems.

This site has been around for a number of years and has been developed by a number of volonteers using a variety of web techniques, tools, and code. The size and usage of the site has grown to a point where there are simply so many variables that no single person or even group of people have been able to incorporate improvements or figure out why some piece of code will not work with the rest of the site.

I believe this is the most crucial component of MaleSurvivor and believe the investment we make will pay huge dividends for everyone.

I personally invite you to join with me and the other board members who are making personal contributions to this cause and invest in the future of this site.

Whether this happens is largely up to you. We have the commitments to start, but we need your help to finish.

To complete Phase one we will need to raise close to $15,000, Phase two will be from $6000 to $10,000 and Phase three which is still in the planning stage will be around $10,000 as it stands now.

You may contribute online or you may mail any donations to MaleSurvivor C/O Brent Turpin, P.O. Box 1306, Stillwater Ok, 74076.

And any donations you set up as a regular monthly donation prior to December 31 2006 will be part of the $1000 per month matching grant.

Thanks to everyone here for all you do for this organization and each other. Lets do what we can and work together to make this place all we need and want it to be.

all my best,
brent turpin
treasuer
MaleSurvivor
 
If you contacted UBB forums, some of the guys would do the job pretty much for the doing of it.
I guess that you are going to drop the UBB format and go for a built site.

Those guys would do anything for MS for virtually nothing, and I know by the dealings I had with them.

I am not anticipating the problems at the moment, but guess you dont have a webmaster any more.
You have made the choice on the boards recommendations and I am not going beyond the technicalities,

ste
 
There are certainly an abundunce of cheaper options and we have for the past 15+ years lived with those options.

While the grand total certainly seems expensive it is important to realize that our web site has over 145,000 pages written in several different codes and supported by software that ranges from freeware to non supported programs.

In order to purchase the software we need to support this website we would be paying in excess of $30,000 but fortunately we are able to get much of the software donated and the IT company that is doing the work is giving us a significant discount off their usual pricing.

They have already donated over 250 hours that they would usually bill at $80 per hour. And that has simply been the work needed to evaluate what we need to do to move forward.

I know from first hand experience in just getting the current payment and donation page done the days we spent just getting most of the links to work and function site wide.

In the end the IT company had to write special code because there was simply no software available that would incorporate into our site.

We have had problems with everything from membership renewals to retreat registration to simple searches and the hours spent to fix problems are in the long run much more expensive than developing a new site.

We are going to be working extensively with the current software providers for the discussion board and have no plans to change providers, but the upgrades will be costly even with staying with the same providers.

Our webmaster, Nathan, does an amazing job keeping this site going, but we have reached a point where we are asking for him to provide full time hours on a volonteer basis.

We have numerous people that put in over 40 hours per week on various components of this site and we simply can't continue to operate this way.

While the amount seems high, when we compare the cost to do something that seems as simple as adding some features to our data base to help overall site administration, and learn we have to write code in several different formats and create our own software to intigrate 145,000 pages of content, and learn this alone will cost as much as building a new site the decision to build a new site becomes very clear.

We have had countless people familier with this site approach us to do site work. But when they realized the size of our site and the enormous amount of work the job would entail everyone has elected to say it is more than they are capable of doing.

We experienced this with the attempt to improve the chat side of the site. The one person that knows more about this site than anyone, the person that has helped various people build this site, the person that has trained Nathan, our webmaster, the resident expert along with a team of people from the site spent over a year developing a new chat room that when all was said and done simply would not work.

That time was certainly not wasted and the countless hours that they spent can never be repaid, but we did learn that we have reached a point where we have to get professional assistance if we are going to keep this site going and meeting the needs of survivors.

With that said, we will certainly welcome any input from anyone that is interested in working on this project or doing anything that would help reduce our cost.

We would need people able to write in various codes, technical writers, developers, programers, and be willing to commit the time needed to develop a new framework with one uniform http code. We need people that have the ability to take commercial software, an example being chat software, and customizing it to our needs. We need people with expertise in internet security, firwalls, and all that goes into building a secure site.

The company we are working with will be able to easily delegate tasks to qualified people, and as such would reduce our overall cost.

I would ask that everyone be pro active in giving suggestions and work to offer alternatives or to volonteer their time and expertise. There are a lot of people giving a ton of time and energy to this and simply saying you are doing something wrong does not help much. If we are doing something wrong suggest some alternatives...

I will do my best to explain any decisions we are making and why we are making them.

We are responding as best we have been able to a constant stream of problems and complaints with our site. The solution that seems most likely to succeed given a long history of trial and error is to use professional assistance.

Again, if anyone has better ideas or better solutions, now is the time to bring them forward.

you may contact me here, by email at [email protected] or even call me at 405-612-4455.

All we want to accomplish is to have the best organization and the best programs and services we can have in order to help meet the needs of survivors.

all my best and thanks for all the input...even if it sounds otherwise...i want and appreciate your input...i wouldn't ask for it otherwise....

brent turpin
 
Thanks for the honesty, Brent. I know from the experience my employer has had with our company website that getting something professionally done is not a cheap venture and what we did was nothing on the scale of what MS is attempting.

Your work on this is appreciated. Never doubt that.

Lots of love,

John
 
I am an ICT postgrad, 31'000dollars is TOO much, full stop.

They must be laughing all the way to the bank.

I told you what the best thing to do was, approach a local university and get a postgrad student to develop the site for you.

Both you(MS) and they(student) get something good out of the deal.
 
Brent,

Its a little late, but if you look at this link,

https://sourceforge.net/projects/dnfbb/

These guys build forums in open source code.
You may be able to contact them and see what they can offer if anything.

What I am saying is that you can spend loads of money and waste it without specific guarantee that you will get what you pay for.

I have not downloaded this forum, but these guys know how to program because they are a pool of the best programmers in the World with one common thing, they do it for free.

Cant do harm to mail them,

ste
 
Found this,

https://donationbooster.com/donation-links.php

A better thermometer,

https://donationbooster.com/features.php
 
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