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New IT Guy, Nonstick

Not sure what happened to Nonstick, I'll just leave it at that, but I'm now in contact with a new website maintainer. I have a conversation planned for later this week with him and hopefully I'll get some good news.
I'm done looking for help with finances as the main criteria. This person is preparing a long term financial assessment which will be within reach of such a small site. Just for a comparison, the Wooden Canoe Heritage Assc. budgets $10,000 to it's site yearly. It's also a vBulletin site like this with many more members, with more activity, with a paid administrator who is no doubt a website savvy person, but I'm not sure what the actual arrangement is.
Anyway, that's the latest on the site and where it's headed.
 
I've been thinking that there may be too many canoe tripping sites. There's this one, Quiet Journey, and MNcanoeing, not to mention BWCA.com. I'd leave that last one alone but I could see merging the other three.
 
There are never enough canoe websites. I frequent a few, but am only really interested in this one now. Each site has a unique flavour that appeals to certain types of people, or certain geographical areas. Fewer is seldom better.
 
I agree, Mem. The flavor of this site is due to the personalities that participate and the common interest in tripping, whether it be in wood canvas or UL Kevlar or strip or skin on frame etc.
 
$10K is s steal considering the Canadian gov't just paid $100,000 for a single twitter account for one single department.

Well not really. It works out to about $100/year for 100 users. While we may have more than hundred members, is there 100 who would pay $10/month for this? I think the trick is to get activity up and then introduce advertising. We all hate ads but the alternative is pay site.

I have been a member of other sites too and this is my go to site.
 
This is the only site I frequent that has a campfire feel.. others seem to devolve into arguments rather than discussion over a beverage and a fire. It's nice for everyone to be a "winner".
 
I've been thinking that there may be too many canoe tripping sites. There's this one, Quiet Journey, and MNcanoeing, not to mention BWCA.com. I'd leave that last one alone but I could see merging the other three.


I disagree that there are too many canoeing sites, just too many for the BWCA. Those two sites you mention require you to pay to join and they run adds, and limit themselves to the midwest. They have tons of information on them, but not very active forums from what I see. BWCA.com pretty much dominates the BWCA area, but little else.

I like the way this site has developed, lots of interesting posts from all sorts of canoe folks, builders, trippers, designers, newer paddlers, old timers, craftsman with talent second to none. Sometimes we have a lull in activity, we all have outside interests, but sooner or later we get going again on a great topic and all is well.

Since Jan !st, 2014 I have vetted 80 new members. Each new member must answer 3 questions that pretty much proves they know a little about canoes and are not spammers. During that time I had maybe 6-10 not answer my emailed questions, I'm not sure if they where spammers or just lost interest, but I just deleted their applications to play it safe. Few new members become active posters, this I have come to learn is the norm. I appreciate the support a person shows by just joining, it sort of says I'm here and watching and I like what I see.
Some new members are active and it's nice to met new folks and see what their thoughts are on the topic of canoe tripping.

Unfortunatley, this alone will not keep out spammers. They look for weakness's in the site, like a site not performing the latest updates from the host or vBulliten. They do this with machines that constantly attack looking for a weakness (possibly what got Solotripping.com). I have absolutely no idea how to perform these updates or any other site maintenance, which has been pretty obvious when you think about how long the membership list has been down.
I liked what Mihun said earlier in this thread, I gave it alot of thought and I agree,
Mihun said: 'I personally would be happy to keep the site small and distinguished. It is more about quality than quantity."

So my meeting this week with the website guy will help me plan ahead. He is not cheap, I'm done with that route, although he seemed to be sympathetic to the situation. I prefer not to make any changes to help support the site, and if his estimate for a long term solution is not too painful I think things will be fine.
 
Well, I don't know much but in this last winter gone by (am I safe in saying that?) the times we had some fussing arguments that got mean, I really didn't like that. It seemed so alien to the spirit of the site. I've gone over to other sites, mainly when we lost solotripping, but none of them felt like home, like right here.

Now, haven't most of the problems related to running the site come from when someone bogus slipped in along with all the influx of new people? And all those new people: to my eyes it seems that the vast majority of post are from and between the old gang. What the heck was the point in joining if you're just going to sit on the side lines?
Frankly, I can't see as how it would hurt to close the membership. If someone who really wanted to join and was genuine, could apply to an address or be referred by a member who had established himself, then fine. But it seems silly to have Robin have to go though applications on a daily basis, from people who don't really mean to become members. Or members by my lights anyway.

About how the site is run: First off, the amount of pain in the backside to Robin ought to be cut back to the absolute minimum. The guy is giving of his time so we can have a place to gather, and we all know he'd rather be paddling or working on canoes. At some point he's going to say to heck with it and then where will we be? Well, we know because we've been there before.

There has to be some grown up computer business that offers routine maintenance to site like this one. As a member, I'd welcome a monthly subscription fee where I could feel that I wasn't such a free-loader on Robin's generosity. And I'd much rather be reading his trip reports instead of his struggles with Dim-Marcus and tribe. I'll bet he'd like that better too!

That's all I know and a little bit more,

Rob
 
I'd prefer not to close membership. Otherwise sooner or later we'd be all out of new stuff to talk about and the conversation would recycle. The time is near enough when I will be guilty of telling the same story the umpteenth time to a bunch of other old farts at the senior center lunch who also tell the same old stories!

It's nice to have new interesting blood..So all you lurkers out there go ahead and say something. Please. Us oldsters get boring. I like how we have canoe trippers from many backgrounds here. Some of the Midwest centric sites are simply too far away geographically for me to get involved anymore. The meetups just wont work for me and understandably there are circles of friends there who trip together.
 
Guilty!!!
I am a much better reader than talker/writer. I read this everyday. I don't think I had even one post on Solotripping. I will try to post more in the future.
 
The membership thing should remain open, the vetting process is simple and fast thanks to cut and paste, but I should think of some new easy questions. The problems this site really faces is the bad guys coming in thru the back door so to speak, this is where the site needs a professional and where it needs to be updated when new updates are released by the host and vBulliten.

If you look at the most ever on line, 173 on 12/19/2013, that was a hacker/spammer machine which registered 165 administrators at one time. It was left on somewhere on the site with a timed release by a spammer. The old IT guy, Jeremie removed them and I started vetting new members. That cost me quite a few hours of his time at $25 per. The new guy I'm talking to charges 3 times that, but will be around for the long term. Big week for this site.
 
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