A forum site for a Camera Club

[ricktas]

Thanks for posting this stuff. Very interesting indeed, especially the Chinese factor. The PC vs Mac thing is a bit like the Canon vs Nikon thing!

Just on a vaguely related matter ... our club is looking to conduct more of its activities via an interface like yours, and is looking at on-line mechanisms. This is Joomla isn't it? How much knowledge does one have to have to set up a photo club using this software - is it purely a programmer's realm or could any reasonably computer aware person have a decent crack at it? (without meaning to suggest that this site was easy). We need to bring our club further into the 21st century.

Ausphotography runs on vbulletin. The package itself is fairly bland (visually), but the basics are reasonably easy to grasp. But the good parts are the customisations and flexibility of the base product. There is even an entire site setup specifically for add-ons. It can be daunting to get setup and running, but the vbulletin staff even offer installation for you if you need (at a $).

http://www.vbulletin.com/

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/portal.php

[bobt]

Ausphotography runs on vbulletin. The package itself is fairly bland (visually), but the basics are reasonably easy to grasp. But the good parts are the customisations, there is even an entire site setup specifically for add-ons.

Excellent! Thanks for that .... I have been entrusted with seeking solutions - that'll give me a good starting point!

[Kym]

For a Camera Club how about starting with a simple blog site?
Running a forum requires a critical mass of interaction to make it work.

Eg: My Club http://ttgcamera.blogspot.com.au/

[bobt]

For a Camera Club how about starting with a simple blog site?
Running a forum requires a critical mass of interaction to make it work.

The idea is that the critical mass will be the existing members because they'll have to interact with it to lodge comp entries etc. With up to 140 entries each month the paperwork is horrendous, as each one is manually entered and processed on a PC. If members lodge them on-line, and their entry interacts with a member database, then the workload (theoretically) passes to the individual member including keeping their own member details up-to-date etc. A unified, automated, system might let us produce all sorts of stats like you can - and even allow members to vote on-line in comps like you do.

It won't happen overnight, but hopefully if we take a few steps down that road we might end up with a much easier system. We've managed to get them on-line to vote on various things, so maybe they can be persuaded to migrate by degrees ( I hope.)

The one thing that seems to motivate them is comps ... so moving comps online could be the carrot!

[Kym]

There is no off the shelf photo comp a management system!!
You will need to write that for yourself, i.e. PHP and MySQL programming skills.

[bobt]

There is no off the shelf photo comp a management system!!
You will need to write that for yourself, i.e. PHP and MySQL programming skills.

Bugger! Oh well, our new el Presidente may have those skills. I gather you had to write the one you use from scratch?

There are some commercial programs I am told, but we won't be buying them given our paltry budget, but even if we can get members to lodge the details on-line it would be a start, because once you have that data in digital form it saves so much typing by one person. If we can start storing more stuff online it will also help with general administrative matters - like a central database for example.

Baby steps really ..... long term vision, short term knowledge as yet!

[Kym]

I wrote the comp software as an addon for vBulletin
You need the public facing part and a management part.

Details here: http://www.ausphotography.net.au/for...nical_Overview

[bobt]

I wrote the comp software as an addon for vBulletin
You need the public facing part and a management part.
Details here: http://www.ausphotography.net.au/for...nical_Overview

Thanks for that - much obliged. Probably way over my head, but someone else in the club may be better placed to understand it all. I'm basically just the webmaster now, but that's a whole lot easier, especially as I don't write code any more - just a wysiwyg version. Understanding what is needed is one thing - having the skills to implement it is something else entirely! Also frustrating mind you ..... having a concept without the capacity to implement it.