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Thread: EAA Chapter Web Sites

  1. #1
    Nels_Anderson's Avatar
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    Angry EAA Chapter Web Sites

    It seems that EAA national has recently starting offering hosted web sites to chapters. A nice idea in theory, except that -- whether your chapter wants it or not -- they have already gone ahead and created a site for you. Like most chapters mine already has a web site and we do not need this additional one as it will only cause confusion if people find it. Worse, though, is that EAA's chapter finder now points to the bogus site instead of our real site, which will serve to prevent people from finding us. Thank you EAA national. If your chapter has its own web site you might want to check if this has happened to you also.
    --Nels Anderson
    www.flightsim.com

  2. #2
    EAA Staff / Moderator Hal Bryan's Avatar
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    Hi Nels -

    Yes, we launched the sites in June, and conscously built a basic placeholder site for every chapter. Contrary to your comment, it's only about a third of our EAA chapters worldwide that have a viable web site, so this project was, in our opinion, long overdue.

    The decision was made to use the new ones as the landing point when searching for a Chapter, instead of the old pages we linked to with minimal info.

    In other words, when looking for, say, Chapter 22 in the locator, this is where you ended up:

    http://www.eaa.org/chapters/locator/...apterNumber=22

    Now, you end up here:

    http://22.eaachapter.org

    On a page that includes contact info and upcoming events (and a separate page with all of that chapter's events) that is always up to date. And, for chapters that decide to use it, a number of other tools to grow the site. This is especially useful for those chapters that don’t have someone with the time and / or skillset to be a dedicated webmaster.

    Yes, the key difference is that we’re no longer automatically including the “real” web address for the relatively small number of chapters that have them. The thinking here was that it wouldn’t be unduly burdensome to ask those chapters to log in the new sites once, and post a link to their preferred site.

    And, yes, this also means that, under the current design, there is one additional click required to get to a chapter’s preferred site. When we made this choice, we did so consciously thinking it was a fair trade-off when weighed against the benefits of us providing the sites and the tools to every single EAA chapter worldwide.

    The rest of the feedback we've gotten has been overwhelmingly positive, but I'm eager to work with all of our chapters to address their concerns. The new sites are only meant to support our chapter network, and to solve a pretty glaring problem of communications. Like any one-size-fits-all solution, it's not perfect, so let's figure out ways to improve it.

    Thanks -

    Hal
    Last edited by Hal Bryan; 09-12-2011 at 07:17 AM. Reason: Formatting.

    Hal Bryan
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  3. #3
    Jeff Point's Avatar
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    Hal,

    For those chapters that already have websites that we plan to keep, how difficult would it be to have the chapter locator point right to those sites and avoid the extra click? Every extra step is one more person that might get lost in the process?
    Jeff Point
    RV-6 and RLU-1 built & flying
    Tech Counselor, Flight Advisor & President, EAA Chapter 18
    Milwaukee, WI
    "It All Started Here!"

  4. #4

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    Hal,
    Perhaps a link (if it exists) to the chapters own page right above the eaa chapter link. I dig the pages you have created for each chapter. I would also suggest that there be a simple way to upload news and events for the chapters. I would be happy to discuss with yourself or others methods to allow the chapters to easily update there pages.
    Thanks for you work

  5. #5
    Jeff Point's Avatar
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    Hal,

    I just spent a little time playing with the chapter locator. For my own chapter (18) there is not even a link to our existing website, just an email link. Also, I noticed that for some chapters (288 is one I noticed) the website address is listed but it is not a hyperlink, requiring one to scrape the address and open it in another page/ tab.

    I applaud the effort to bring websites to all chapters, but it is still a little rough around the edges. Think of it like a homebuilt project in it's final stages- "90% finished, only 70% to go."
    Jeff Point
    RV-6 and RLU-1 built & flying
    Tech Counselor, Flight Advisor & President, EAA Chapter 18
    Milwaukee, WI
    "It All Started Here!"

  6. #6
    EAA Staff / Moderator Hal Bryan's Avatar
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    Hi Jeff -

    Chapter 288 chose to edit their new site and delete the contact info and replace it with a link to their existing site, but, for some reason, it didn't show up as a hyperlink. I'll fix that for them shortly.

    As to your earlier post, you're absolutely right about wanting to minimize the number of steps, though we've really only partially increased them:

    Not to put too fine a point on it, but, in the "old" way, you'd search for a chapter and we'd potentially show two links for each one - one to take you to the landing page mentioned above, one to take you directly to the chapter's site if they had one. For those people that clicked through to the landing page, nothing has changed - to jump from there to another site, if applicable, requires another click.

    When we started this project, there were hundreds of chapters with sites that were, in may cases, years out of date - in my personal opinion, that's worse than not having a site at all. Linking directly to those, as well as the negative impact of listing a chapter with a blank space in the "website" column wasn't doing anyone any favors.

    Coming back around to your question, then, the challenge we face is in finding a way to manage the information on our end to guarantee that we can always provide up-to-date core information about each chapter to their prospective members.

    I know Steve Buss (our Chapter Manager) will have a look at this thread once he's caught up on email from last week's vacation - I'm sure he's glad to see the discussion around this as well.

    Cheers -

    Hal

    Hal Bryan
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  7. #7
    EAA Staff / Moderator Hal Bryan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by wyoranch View Post
    Hal,
    Perhaps a link (if it exists) to the chapters own page right above the eaa chapter link. I dig the pages you have created for each chapter. I would also suggest that there be a simple way to upload news and events for the chapters. I would be happy to discuss with yourself or others methods to allow the chapters to easily update there pages.
    Thanks for you work
    Thanks for the feedback!

    As far as a simple way to upload news and events - the new sites are meant to do just that for news, and events are covered here: http://www.eaa.org/calendar/submit.aspx

    There are some tweaks planned for the calendar, but if you've got ideas on how to improve / simplify it, we're all ears!

    Thanks -

    Hal

    Hal Bryan
    EAA Lifetime 638979
    Vintage 714005 | Warbirds 553527
    Managing Editor
    EAA—The Spirit of Aviation

  8. #8
    Rick Rademacher's Avatar
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    I attended the online presentation Chapter Web Sites - Let's Get Started! by Hal and Steve last Thursday. I believe that many of the issues addressed above can be resolved. I am going to use the www.webs.com editor for my wed site as it looks easy to use and has the features to fine tune things. I would encourage those with an interest in these kinds of things to look up this online presentation when it is up on the EAA site.

  9. #9
    EAA Staff / Moderator Hal Bryan's Avatar
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    Rick -

    Glad you could sit in on the Webinar. It's posted on our video site (www.eaavideo.org) and I've embedded it in the Tutorials section of the Chapter support site as well:

    http://www.support.eaachapter.org/we...ingstarted.htm

    Thanks -

    Hal

    Hal Bryan
    EAA Lifetime 638979
    Vintage 714005 | Warbirds 553527
    Managing Editor
    EAA—The Spirit of Aviation

  10. #10

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    Hal,
    Sorry about the suggestion on an easy way to upload. I was not aware that was available to the chapters. I will be quiet now and go away.
    Rick

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