Have I done the right thing ?

[Graham Walters]

Next June our club loses it's hosting on the local county councils site.

At present it is being administered by a bloke who is well into his sixties, and he is using software called "Serif Webplus" and over the last six on so years this is what he has manage to produce usig that software

http://www.amrc.hampshire.org.uk/

To me as a web administrator and site builder, that looks about as good as a five year old could produce.

At a recent meeting I was asked to get find some hosts ( cheap) and try to get a domain name ( cheap), I managed to convince Hawkhost to give me two years free hosting, and a free domain in return for any affilation commission I may get over the next two years.

I offered to build them a site from scratch, writing the code etc, but this bloke said he wanted to use this Serif Webplus, to tell you the truth I couldn't get on with it, it is just not flexible  enough for what the club needs.

So I raided Wordpress ( Free), tweaked the code a bit, to get a better look, added some plugins, tweaked those to suit the club, tweaked a bit more to add some decent gradients, and an easier back end for anyone to work with.
This is what I came up with :

http://andovermodelrailwayclub.co.uk/

His reply was "thats not what I wanted, ... I wanted webhosting"

How do you deal with someone who hasn't a clue what he is talking about !

EDIT: Please excuse the logo, the club insisted I keep that, yes I know it's  but they insisted, and it took me over an hour to clean it up using photoshop.

[Ditape]

If he is still using serif software he needs dragging kicking and screaming into the 21st century. 

[Graham Walters]

If he is still using serif software he needs dragging kicking and screaming into the 21st century. 

Exactly, when I was learning HTML all those moons ago, I asked if Serif was good to practise with, the lecturer looked at me and said and I quote :

Yes if you want to create websites that look like they were produced by a kid in primary scchool, that is who Serif is aimed at.

[austinbob]

Next June our club loses it's hosting on the local county councils site.

At present it is being administered by a bloke who is well into his sixties, and he is using software called "Serif Webplus" and over the last six on so years this is what he has manage to produce usig that software

http://www.amrc.hampshire.org.uk/

To me as a web administrator and site builder, that looks about as good as a five year old could produce.

At a recent meeting I was asked to get find some hosts ( cheap) and try to get a domain name ( cheap), I managed to convince Hawkhost to give me two years free hosting, and a free domain in return for any affilation commission I may get over the next two years.

I offered to build them a site from scratch, writing the code etc, but this bloke said he wanted to use this Serif Webplus, to tell you the truth I couldn't get on with it, it is just not flexible  enough for what the club needs.

So I raided Wordpress ( Free), tweaked the code a bit, to get a better look, added some plugins, tweaked those to suit the club, tweaked a bit more to add some decent gradients, and an easier back end for anyone to work with.
This is what I came up with :

http://www.amrc.hampshire.org.uk/

His reply was "thats not what I wanted, ... I wanted webhosting"

How do you deal with someone who hasn't a clue what he is talking about !

EDIT: Please excuse the logo, the club insisted I keep that, yes I know it's  but they insisted, and it took me over an hour to clean it up using photoshop.

Those two web page links appear to be the same!! Or am I missing something?

[Malc]

As Bob says, they point to the same place. Also the links within the page need to be clicked several times and the layout videos don't work on an iPad.

[Graham Walters]

Sorry I've fixed the OP now

[zwilnik]

Style wise it's basic but I prefer the original page layout for clarity. Especially as the welcome page for the club. Apart from being simpler and much less text heavy the buttons for navigation are obvious and it works well on my iPhone (your navigation pull down isn't too obvious and doesn't pull down on Safari on the iPhone). That's just a case of bug fixing though. I think my main is how text heavy it is.

So the old site does look pretty basic and unprofessional but then again it's functional and people aren't expecting a professional looking business site.

[Graham Walters]

Style wise it's basic but I prefer the original page layout for clarity. Especially as the welcome page for the club. Apart from being simpler and much less text heavy the buttons for navigation are obvious and it works well on my iPhone (your navigation pull down isn't too obvious and doesn't pull down on Safari on the iPhone). That's just a case of bug fixing though. I think my main is how text heavy it is.

So the old site does look pretty basic and unprofessional but then again it's functional and people aren't expecting a professional looking business site.

Thanks for the comments.

I find the term " text heavy" a bit confusing, as the new one isn't quite in the finished state, and there are a lot more images and pages to add, layouts of menu's, and the GUI can adjusted quite easily.
The main thing is that the backend has better usability for more people than the back end of the old site, the editing controls are almost the same as a wordprocesser, and the GUI icons are indentical.
As for the usability on a mobile phone, as the old site isn't at all responsive I wonder how you even got it to work with safari, let alone on an i-phone, the new site ( On Android) works perfectly.

Whichever source you look at, Safari comes 4th in the top four browsers for usage, the big three are Chrome almost more than the other four added together, IE and Firefox.
Safari accounts for under 10% of users on tablets and computers, and even less on mobiles, so we are not upsetting a large audience, especially as most of our users will be UK based, and probably only visiting the site for exhibition details.

I would have preferred a different colour to green, but the club is obsessed with the SR, it's hard to get them to like anything else, they will only see it as one of the other big four ! 

[NinOz]

Prefer the original.
Easy to navigate, clear purposeful layout.

New site looks messy, bit all over the place.  Looks like someone let loose with a page layout program and a handful of cool code features.

CFJ

[Graham Walters]

I can't believe what I am reading !!

The orginal site has an unco-ordinated colour scheme,  terrible pixelish gradients, some of the headers are blurred, the pictures are too.

The menu is disjointed and all over the place, yet you think it's better !

This would be the type of site that would be displayed as  "what not to do! nowadays !

[MalcolmInN]

The second site (http://andovermodelrailwayclub.co.uk/) is not working well in my Firefox either,
If I Zoom-down to get everything on screen (central panel, pictures etc plus background) the text is too small to read, if I Zoom-up to read it everything goes off screen to the side including half the text
I was about to ask what is the purpose of the background, , , till I Zoomed down so far that the text became silly-small then I realised there was a calender and other unreadable stuff even further off to the right.

Sorry not good for me, I would suggest dump wordpress and back to HTML in Notepad !

[Graham Walters]

The second site (andovermodelrailwayclub.) is not working well in my Firefox either,
If I Zoom-down to get everything on screen (central panel, pictures etc plus background) the text is too small to read, if I Zoom-up to read it everything goes of screen to the side including half the text
I was about to ask what is the purpose of the background, , , till I Zoomed down so far that the text became silly-small then I realised the was a calander and other unreadable stuff even further off to the right.

Sorry not good for me, I would suggest dump wordpress and back to HTML in Notepad !

What are you using to browse it ? Tablet, PC, Phone ?

[MalcolmInN]

What are you using to browse it ? Tablet, PC, Phone ?

Laptop

PS some silly typos corrected in my previous.

[Graham Walters]

What are you using to browse it ? Tablet, PC, Phone ?

Laptop

PS some silly typos corrected in my previous.

Thats weird because I'm viewing it through Firefox on a laptop as well, and it all looks good to me.
You should have a left sidebar, and the whole theme shoud be repsonsive, except for the background, I've goo that set as "fixed" not fluid.

I've checked it out on my android phone,  it works OK on there too, and that is using IE 11

If it's not too much trouble, can you send a couple of screenshots to gnwalters@gmail.com  so that I can exactly whats happening.
Anyone else is welcome to send me screen shots as well.

I'm off to bed now, work at 7am.

thanks for the input guys

TIA Graham

[NinOz]

I can't believe what I am reading !!

The orginal site has an unco-ordinated colour scheme,  terrible pixelish gradients, some of the headers are blurred, the pictures are too.

The menu is disjointed and all over the place, yet you think it's better !

This would be the type of site that would be displayed as  "what not to do! nowadays !

1. Well duuh.  Wouldn't expect otherwise.  I assume all are supposed to praise the new and dump on the old.

2. Don't see the dis-coordination, the rest minor, easily fixed.

3. Yes, I think it is better.  Can't see the claimed disjointed menu.  Goes where it is supposed to, displays what is expected.

4.  New one; seen much much better, needs a graphic artist to fix design and layout.  This looks more like the 5 year old version.