Joliet Area Reef Club Site Now Up And Running!!!

[Gluestick]

We are proud to announce that the Joliet Area Reef Club now has it's own official site!
Please visit us at jolietreef.com OR jolietreef.org (both will take you to the same place). Registration is free, but you will have premium membership after dues are collected.
Enjoy the site! Please feel free to make comments, ask questions, voice concerns. We are always looking for suggestions to improve!!!
Thanks to Mark Henderson (mhender) for setting us up!!!

[little_squid]

sweet

[little_squid]

im a tard
i put in the code 4 times and said it was wrong everytime lol

[brad23]

Sweet, another forum for me to post on.

[tanked001]

Great that we're moving forward and thank you guys for your work... Trust me I know it's not easy but I'm feeling abit disappointed about the new club site. I'm not trying to burst anyones bubble here but I have already seen many problems with it...

First it's a free PHPBB based site sitting on a free server. PHPBB is an open source script witch highly susceptible to being hacked and also isn't very user friendly IMO...

The site is sitting on a free server (createphpbb.com) That's why when you goto jolietreef.com you get redirected to http://s8.createphpbb.com/jarc/. Now you have to ask yourself how can it be free, they have to get paid some how.... createphpbb make there money back on advertisers. Notice those banners that show up (goggle ads) that you have no control over.

Also I noticed when you do register and get your confirmation email it comes from mark@stamaraquaculture.com Why aren't we using our own email app. Also in that email you will see your password.. that means your password was never encrypted.... not good. In fact you should never trust any site that ever emails you your password.

There are other alternatives that would serve us much better.
I was thinking we could use a vBulletin site, not free but not expensive.. (we don't even have to pay for it right away) it comes with support, pretty easy to use and very secure, most large forums use vBulletin (like reefcentral, 3reef and not so big thepiratesreef... lol)
Pay for hosting, again not free but not expensive, but have full control of the site... control of banners (then maybe we could get a sponsor, give them banner space and off set the costs of running the site) and also have a Real JARC email client where admins/mods can have a @jarc email addy. I confident we can make happen. What do you guys think?

[skearse]

I do tend to agree with tanked about eventually getting to a 'pay' site with a registered domain; that's what we ended up doing at hvreef.org, and I think that it's a goal to work towards. We use part of the membershihp dues to pay for the domain registration and anything else that may incur a cost associated with the wbesite. BUT, since we are still fledgling here, and dues haven't been collected as of yet, I have to say I'm thrilled to see the initiative put into getting the site off the ground-big kudos to Mark & Valerie (and anyone else that helped)!

[Gluestick]

tanked001, we appreciate your input. Please keep in mind that dues have not been collected and we are still in the process of getting everything off the ground. Please bear with us while we work out the kinks, and hopefully we will get a more user-friendly site soon.
tanked001, do you have experience with setting up such websites/forums? Would you be interested in taking the initiative to do so after dues are collected - we can vote on whether or not to go ahead with this. We are still needing to elect board members; as you know there is a meeting scheduled for prospective DOBs. Maybe you could come and help us with that.
skearse, thank you for your enthusiasm and appreciation.
Hope to see you all at the meeting, we will be voting on this and other issues there.
Valerie

[tanked001]

My first concern was that the site would be secure and most free open source sites/forums are not.

We (my wife and I) has built several forums/sites... she does the hard stuff.. upload the site, updates, installing hacks and customized skins... I have organized and set up the forum sections. We have both admin'd at several boards before. We still own 2 boards now MaddHouse.net hers, changes as much as she changes careers..lol Mine ThePiratesReef.com has been on the back burner for while... forums are not easy to promote but fun to run... since my wife has gone back too work full time they haven't gotten the attention they should. So when I saw you wanted jarc to have it's own site/forum I thought that would be great opportunity to create a really cool n safe site and promoting wouldn't be an issue since it would be for club members and I'm sure few people would step up help moderate.

Now costs, vBulletin (Owned License) $160 and then $30 a year to obtain updates. We own 2 Licenses now and it wouldn't be a big deal to temporarily transfer one to get this going... Then when dues are collected and/or some kind of fund raiser we can get JARC it's own license.
Hosting will be about $50 a year from godaddy (best to pay it yearly) I'd be happy to put that up and I can be reimbursed later or just take it out our dues...
We already have a domain name.. thanks mhender! and the dns transfer can be easily done.

We will be at the next meet Oct.10 and everyone can decided then... there are a few more details but I think we get it up running over a weekend....

[mhender]

Go for it. I'm out of town and don't have the time right now to get it a new forum running. I figured this wold do until we have the funds. I can manage it if you wish. Sounds good, but i figured we could get something up for now.

Thanks
Mark

[Gluestick]

http://jolietareareefclub.com/
New site up and running