I need some help with a photo club website

[MarkBarbieri]

The person who has been the informal (and sometimes formal) leader of our local photography club has decided to step down from the board and enjoy life as a regular member. One of the many aspects of this amazing person's role was maintaining our club website. I have volunteered to take over that responsibility. Of course, I want it to work well, so I am asking for some help.

If you were a member of a photography club, what would you want in a website? Can you point me to any club (photography or otherwise) sites that you think are really useful?

Our club has close to 200 members (which is a huge increase over a few years ago). Roughly 50 attend a typical monthly meeting. We take about 1-3 field trips each month with anywhere from a couple of people to a dozens attending any given field trip. In addition to the field trips we conduct workshops. We also have a monthly mini-contest and a bi-annual major contest. Our existing club site is at http://www.woodlandsphoto.org/. We also have a relatively new club discussion forum on the TexasPhotoForum site.

So what helpful suggestions can you give me? How should I organize the site? What information should (or shouldn't) be on there?

 

[MHolleman]

I don't belong to a photo club, but I love the way this photo club has their website laid out http://www.capcitycameraclub.com/ The biggest thing I would change on your clubs website is how the opening page looks. It is just a bit to cluttered for my liking. Wish I knew some programing to help you, but I have used the Microsoft Frontpage editor in the past, and unfortunatly it is no longer available.

 

[jann1033]

i think overall the info seems fine but i'd keep the coming events and the photo of the month on the first page but link to most of the other stuff from the front page. it is pretty crowded . like a link to the highlighted member but not her whole story. and i guess it might be different if i knew the people but why not have some good photos of the field trip rather than of who was there..that is kind of boring to me since if i know the people, why do i really want to see a maybe not so flattering snapshot of them( ie the butt shot of china town, not the best ) and if i don't know them i care even less

i would just like it cleaner looking

the other pages, i think the content is ok, it's just kind of boring looking. you might want to include a private ( ie password or something) members only page/area with a members list and contact info for anyone who wants to do that. maybe even a little bio each member could write.

oh and i'd elect a new hospitality family....from what i have seen, they seemto have some "odd" ideas of fun ie i know they canoe in their swimming pool and the guy has this weird brown short outfit, 'nough said,

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Thanks! I really appreciate the feedback.

 

[saturndb]

I think the current layout for the homepage is way to busy and should be cleaned up some.

I would think a photography club website should have its homepage clean and simple. It should show some great pictures taken by club members and try to draw visitors in.


these are some I have seen doing a quick search that I like the layout of.

http://www.lightandtime.ca/clearfocus/

http://www.ubcps.bc.ca/

http://flpc.orgfree.com/

 

[DisneySuiteFreak]

i think overall the info seems fine but i'd keep the coming events and the photo of the month on the first page but link to most of the other stuff from the front page. it is pretty crowded . like a link to the highlighted member but not her whole story. and i guess it might be different if i knew the people but why not have some good photos of the field trip rather than of who was there..that is kind of boring to me since if i know the people, why do i really want to see a maybe not so flattering snapshot of them( ie the butt shot of china town, not the best ) and if i don't know them i care even less
i would just like it cleaner looking

the other pages, i think the content is ok, it's just kind of boring looking. you might want to include a private ( ie password or something) members only page/area with a members list and contact info for anyone who wants to do that. maybe even a little bio each member could write.

oh and i'd elect a new hospitality family....from what i have seen, they seemto have some "odd" ideas of fun ie i know they canoe in their swimming pool and the guy has this weird brown short outfit, 'nough said,

Iagree w/Jann! Makes sense!
I have a question for Mark or any of you, how do you find a camera club to join? That sounds like something I would enjoy as a hobbyist, and something I could learn from. How do you find the clubs? And what web editing software do you all use to create your pages?

 

[boBQuincy]

After recently completing two college courses in web site creation I can offer some of the key points we learned.

The first is that visitors to a web site return not for the fancy graphics but for information. Keep it up to date and add new items as much as possible.

Keep it simple and clean, make it easy to find what visitors are looking for.

Minimize the fancy (and bandwidth hogging) media items. Cute music and animations are only cute the first time.

Minimize the levels, most users will give up looking for something after about three clicks. I am not sure what this says about our attention span...

Stay away from acronyms, or at least spell them out the first time they are used on a page.

Watch the colors, some combinations are just annoying, others have subconscious or cultural meanings (more applicable to international web sites).

Stick with common fonts or at least have a font hierarchy that defaults to the common ones if the specified one is not found on a visitor's system. Flash text or gifs can get around this with some success.

That's a start...