This website has been upgraded
This upgrade adds 3 new pages giving extra capability and information, and adds extra buttons (see above) to each page to provide easier navigation to new and existing pages. It also provides easier and more consistent access to historical news articles back to March 1999.
"News / Blog" page (blog = web log)
The title of that page says it all: "Blog . . . keeping you informed of club news & website updates". The idea is:
The Blog says what happened in the last month. The Diary says what will happen in the next month.
The Blog itself, and the Blog archive linked to from the Blog, should be self-explanatory. The Blog might typically be the first page that regular viewers of the website look at. I suggest that regular viewers look at the Blog and the Diary at least once per week during the season, and at least once per month out of season.
It is the the Blog archive that now links to the familiar categories of "Notices and news", "Meeting and event reports", "Committee reports", "Members' competition results", "Interclub competition results", and "Awards and acceptances".
"A to Z & Search" page
This A to Z page lists topics, and so can cater for viewer requirements that don't map easily onto whole pages.
This will probably become increasingly important as buttons take on "higher level" meanings. For example, the page that was originally referenced from a "Subscriptions" button is now referenced from a "Join us" button, and subscription information is just part of the content. So the "A-Z & Search" page now provides a direct reference to that subscription information.
This page will evolve in the light of experience. (For example, every time someone asks "where the [expletive deleted] is information about XYZ?").
"Competitions" page
This page originated from queries directed at me and others over the last year and a half. Competitions are always a major part of our activities. Nearly all the information and resources that members require to enter competitions and view results is on the website somewhere, but it is a bit fragmented. This page provides a sort of "one stop shop", primarily for members entering our internal competitions, but also providing references for other clubs entering our inter-club competitions.
This page isn't intended to duplicate information elsewhere, but instead to link to it in a coherent way. It is still evolving to make it more effective before the start of the next season. It will also be the first place to look if/when rules change in future.
Extra buttons
The creation of the above new pages forced a re-analysis of what buttons we need on each page. We have various types of viewer, from members to prospective members to visitors, and so on. Each type has different requirements which need to be catered for. The analysis took into account research into the way people navigate websites, and surveys of what types of buttons, and with what names, other websites use.
One or two of the pages referenced from these buttons need more content over the coming months.
Access to historical news articles
News articles have been regularly published on this website since it was created in 2000, and there are even copies of Focus dating back to March 1999. These articles, (in the case of Focus, the individual articles within each Focus), can now be accessed via the familiar categories of "Notices and news", "Meeting and event reports", "Committee reports", "Members' competition results", "Interclub competition results", and "Awards and acceptances".
The Blog archive is intended to be a "master index" to all the news ever published on the website, right up to this particular notice itself. For someone like me who joined the society in 2004, some of those earlier articles are fascinating!