Any Rotarians?
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I haven't been around here much in the weeks past. At my Rotary Club I had volunteered to look after the web site. No sooner had I volunteered when the company that freely hosted our site was aquired in a corporate takeover. The new owner said in a letter "we have a policy of not offering our services for free". It became clear we needed a new host and as I worked on arranging for someone willing to serve us for free I also realized I'd be better off rebuilding the site from the ground up. The old site used a content management system supported by the old host. Now with them out of the picture the content management system was a liability. So I've spent my spare time in the last few weeks building a 100+ page website for our club. Thankfully lots of the content pre-existed so much of the job was just reformatting.
Anyways here is the site: http://www.charlottetown.rotarypei.com/ Please feel free to look around. Hopefully you'll find something of interest.
Regards, Ross
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Very nice site Ross. You put a lot of work into it no doubt.
Thanks for sharing. -
Excellent job, Ross. Most of the clubs in RIBI (RI Britain and Ireland) use a standardised format under the umbrella of ribi.org. Not as stylish as your, but it takes much of the pain out of site buliding, as all the formating and cross-linking is largely taken care of.
This is ours.
http://www.rotary-ribi.org/clubs/homepage.asp?ClubID=1078 -
Thanks for the comments guys. It has been a lot of work but I did make it much easier by using a very good content management system called CustomBlox. I wrote a page about it here. It is oriented towards a much cleaner 'look' compared with most 'template' club websites that all seem to have 'busy' designs. If anyone is interested in building sites I'd highly recommend the CustomBlox system. It can be used by lay people or by professional site builders. For the lay people, they work with a graphic designer at CustomBlox to set up a custom template for you. Basically they setup the CSS and will work with the client & design the site, including the main graphics, leaving it to the client to add content. Pros on the otherhand can alter the css themselves. The system can be used by them to speed up building a site - and they have the option of letting the client add content or not. (The client doesn't even need to know that their site was put together with the blocks). It is unlike other 'template' systems in that you don't choose from a pre-designed set of templates, instead itis all custom and the template part just relates to how the content is added.
Modelhead -- no SketchUp has been used. The building in the header is a photo I took of our 'Province House' which is what we call our legislature building. It is the birthplace of the Canadian confederation.
Alan - I like the idea of your club's Beer Festival! Is it a successful fundraiser?
Regards, Ross
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It's our first Beer Festival, Ross, so I'll let you know. We have visited quite a few others in the local area and they all seem to make a ton of money, so we have been picking their brains. The first one is always a gamble, while you get the balance right (how many barrels etc.) but many of the established ones make over £10,000 / $20,000....usually run over 3 days.
The idea is to sponsor-out everything in sight. We get local businesses to sponsor the barrels at £80 a keg, then get extra sponsorship for the event itself and through all the advertising in the program.
All the beer festivals run the same way in that you pay about £4 entry fee then another £5 / $10 for a sheet of tokens that are used to try the samples. When they run out, you buy another sheet.
It will all be real ale...including some Belgian brews...so we won't have the transatlantic problem of having to keep everything chilled to within a couple of degrees of absolute zero...just hoist them onto scaffolding and bung a tap in. Of course you have to do that a couple of days before to allow them to settle...this is serious drinking.
A group of us went to one in Wigan a few weeks ago. There was an ale called Paradox which is brewed in Fraserburgh, near Aberdeen. It's aged in whisky casks and is a full 10% ABV. I saved that one till last.
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Sounds like a great event Alan! Yummm...
It sounds like it might be like a beer garten type thingie -- ie a big drinking hall with lots of beer and brew admirers. If that's what you are thinking then here's an add-on that might be another idea to consider. Many of the North American 'beer festivals' I've seen stories about on TV have what amounts to a trade show. Beer industry types all rent booths and a paying crowd come inside to see & talk with the vendors. The vendors can be everyone from brewers, beer nut makers, branded merchandise vendors, beer clubs, and anyone interested in the beer-drinking demographic. Such trade shows can in themselves be very big events with many visitors being lured by the free taste tests offered by some of the vendors.
Regards, Ross
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