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Atlanta Reef Club
Board of Directors Meeting
July 24, 2018
On the above date at 7:00 PM the ARC BOD met at the Mad Italian Restaurant. Members present at this meeting were: Dave Ball, Nathan Wilder, Adam Nitschke, Leo Maguire, Austin Trizzino and Douglas Lockett.
The immediate business was the appointment of a Vice President and discussion as to what to do, if anything with the web site. Due to the resignation of our past President, The Vice President, Dave Ball assumed that position. Following prescribed procedures (Article VII, Section 3 of the Arc Constitution) Dave Ball appointed Austin Trizzino to fill the office of Vice President for the remainder of this term.
Dave opened a discussion about the web site. He asked Adam for the results of the recent survey about the web site. Adam reported that 25% said it was better. 50% said it was the same or no better. 25% said it plainly sucks. He also pointed out that the survey did not go to all members. There were approximately 100 responses from 987 surveys sent out. A response of 10.13%. The response is an indicator that site usage is clearly not of interest to some members/users.
Dave asked for opinions of what we thought we needed to do to improve the site. All agreed that the site is not intuitive, it takes too long to post a message, Tapatalk does not work on our current configuration. There were previously a lot of users who relied on Tapatalk. Austin said on a forum, we should be able to see the poster and who last responded to a thread. One can’t discern these things on our site in it’s current configuration.
Nathan said that we need to concentrate on what we can do to serve our local membership. Recognize that we are not a national site and won’t have the breadth of knowledge available that those sites have access to. Adam said that once we get the site up and running, we can work on the nuances that tweak the site for local usage.
Doug added that we should allow non-members to sell up to 2 items a month. The idea being this will drive more traffic to the site. The feedback was that it would be labor intensive and require someone to monitor the site closely. However, if we allowed non-members to sell openly, we could drive more Facebook traffic to our forum. This discussion was tabled in favor of getting work done to correct the site as our priority. Leo added that 80% of the sites out there allow non-members to sell. It’s how they draw people. He suggested we allow them to sell.
The floor was turned over to Adam and Leo. Leo has been working for the past week on developing a test site for our club. He and Adam have been talking for several weeks about a platform that would better serve our forum. They agreed that using Xenforo would bring functionality to the forum. Leo purchased a license to use Xenforo and built a test site. He demonstrated this site for us on his laptop. Adam said that our forum will pretty much operate like Reef2Reef. It won’t be in that format, but the functionality will be the same. Adam said that at this point they don’t know what they can keep and what has to be archived.
The home page would remain as a Word Press program. However, the forum would be run by Xenforo. Leo provided us the URL of the test site and encouraged us to go out and put it through some testing. The BOD agreed after the demo that this was what we wanted to pursue. Leo agreed to continue working towards getting the site to a position where we can switch over to it. He generously donated his time to do this. Doug suggested that the club repay Leo for the fee he spent on the Xenforo license purchase. All agreed that once we know this is the program that will do what we want, we will vote to reimburse him.
Dave motioned to move ahead with what we have termed “The web site reboot.” The motion was second by Adam. Motion carried. In doing so, Leo will continue to work on and import data from our current site into the test site. At this point there are too many unknowns for him to say if the data transfer will work as he thinks it should. In the meantime, the board will use the test site to upload files, pictures and use it as much as we can while trying to find or cause errors.
The next meeting date was set for the club as August 25, 2018. Dave will post a message on the ARC site addressing the meeting. The place is yet to be determined.
There being no further business, Dave moved that the meeting be adjourned. Second by Doug.
Board of Directors Meeting
July 24, 2018
On the above date at 7:00 PM the ARC BOD met at the Mad Italian Restaurant. Members present at this meeting were: Dave Ball, Nathan Wilder, Adam Nitschke, Leo Maguire, Austin Trizzino and Douglas Lockett.
The immediate business was the appointment of a Vice President and discussion as to what to do, if anything with the web site. Due to the resignation of our past President, The Vice President, Dave Ball assumed that position. Following prescribed procedures (Article VII, Section 3 of the Arc Constitution) Dave Ball appointed Austin Trizzino to fill the office of Vice President for the remainder of this term.
Dave opened a discussion about the web site. He asked Adam for the results of the recent survey about the web site. Adam reported that 25% said it was better. 50% said it was the same or no better. 25% said it plainly sucks. He also pointed out that the survey did not go to all members. There were approximately 100 responses from 987 surveys sent out. A response of 10.13%. The response is an indicator that site usage is clearly not of interest to some members/users.
Dave asked for opinions of what we thought we needed to do to improve the site. All agreed that the site is not intuitive, it takes too long to post a message, Tapatalk does not work on our current configuration. There were previously a lot of users who relied on Tapatalk. Austin said on a forum, we should be able to see the poster and who last responded to a thread. One can’t discern these things on our site in it’s current configuration.
Nathan said that we need to concentrate on what we can do to serve our local membership. Recognize that we are not a national site and won’t have the breadth of knowledge available that those sites have access to. Adam said that once we get the site up and running, we can work on the nuances that tweak the site for local usage.
Doug added that we should allow non-members to sell up to 2 items a month. The idea being this will drive more traffic to the site. The feedback was that it would be labor intensive and require someone to monitor the site closely. However, if we allowed non-members to sell openly, we could drive more Facebook traffic to our forum. This discussion was tabled in favor of getting work done to correct the site as our priority. Leo added that 80% of the sites out there allow non-members to sell. It’s how they draw people. He suggested we allow them to sell.
The floor was turned over to Adam and Leo. Leo has been working for the past week on developing a test site for our club. He and Adam have been talking for several weeks about a platform that would better serve our forum. They agreed that using Xenforo would bring functionality to the forum. Leo purchased a license to use Xenforo and built a test site. He demonstrated this site for us on his laptop. Adam said that our forum will pretty much operate like Reef2Reef. It won’t be in that format, but the functionality will be the same. Adam said that at this point they don’t know what they can keep and what has to be archived.
The home page would remain as a Word Press program. However, the forum would be run by Xenforo. Leo provided us the URL of the test site and encouraged us to go out and put it through some testing. The BOD agreed after the demo that this was what we wanted to pursue. Leo agreed to continue working towards getting the site to a position where we can switch over to it. He generously donated his time to do this. Doug suggested that the club repay Leo for the fee he spent on the Xenforo license purchase. All agreed that once we know this is the program that will do what we want, we will vote to reimburse him.
Dave motioned to move ahead with what we have termed “The web site reboot.” The motion was second by Adam. Motion carried. In doing so, Leo will continue to work on and import data from our current site into the test site. At this point there are too many unknowns for him to say if the data transfer will work as he thinks it should. In the meantime, the board will use the test site to upload files, pictures and use it as much as we can while trying to find or cause errors.
The next meeting date was set for the club as August 25, 2018. Dave will post a message on the ARC site addressing the meeting. The place is yet to be determined.
There being no further business, Dave moved that the meeting be adjourned. Second by Doug.
.
