Did you know we launched a new version of the fleet’s web site in April? Since then we’ve had at least 1,035 visitors for a total of almost 1,364 sessions and 4,276 page views, including about 250 folks using smartphones and tablets. That’s a huge improvement over the previous site, which served the fleet well for many years. The fleet owes Rick Berliner a huge thank you for building and maintaining the site for many years.
The new site has many new features including:
- New Navigation and Fresh Content The site’s navigation links at the top, which leverage dropdowns, are intended to increase the exposure of content, like the tuning info, that used to be a bit buried behind several clicks. There’s also a search feature built in, to look for certain words or something very specific. In addition, all of the content is tagged so that over time we can aggregate everything that involves “main trim” for example into a single listing, much like an index.
- Tons of Photos We took special care to feature photos prominently all over the site. From the header, to the homepage, to the galleries to every piece of news, we included the ability to display a big, bright photo in the hopes of keeping folks coming back and reminding them (though how could they forget) how much fun this fleet has. If you have any photos you’d like to see on the site, please contact webmaster@r19fleet5.org.
- Supports All Devices The new site should look great from the couch on your tablet, on the go from your smartphone and from work on your computer screen, since we leveraged an emerging technology called “responsive design.” Every page automatically adjusts to the screen size, moving and resizing things so that headlines are always front and center with content below, and extra things like sidebars are hidden if they don’t fit (e.g. on small screens.) Since its automatic, there’s no need to have a special mobile or tablet version, which would require updates in two different places.
- Browser-Based Updating Anyone on the executive committee can log in to the site right from their browser and make changes, with an editor that resembles Microsoft Word and doesn’t require any knowledge of HTML. That means that ideas for new pages or sections should come to life quickly, and overall the site should stay more up to date.
- News Section The dedicated news section allows us to catalog and date all of the awesome stuff the fleet does during the year. In particular, we’ve begun posting the “Road to the Cup” weekly summary and back-posting previous newsletter content, so that it’s easy to find and reread, all from the same place. ? Technical Stuff The new site is hosted a BlueHost.com which is an inexpensive “shared” host that will give us room to grow and add additional applications that the fleet might need. The site runs on a free open-source application called WordPress which is based on PHP & MySQL, and includes a browserbased administration section. We applied a custom theme to make it look great, and a few plug-ins (addons) to improve photo support.
- Feedback, Questions, Comments & Requests Our intent is that the site can be an asset for all fleet members, so if you have any ideas to make it better, please send ’em over to webmaster@r19fleet5.org.
If you haven’t done so already, check out https://r19fleet5.org/!
Send your Fleet 5 photos and favorite weather web sites to webmaster@r19fleet5.org