I'm going to stick my neck out and say this site is just not working!
This website is not a good way of distributing UK hang gliding information.
The layout is complex and keeps changing, people are not contributing as was hoped. Its diffiult to navigate and often impossible to find what you want without it taking ages.

The previous website was superior. All that is needed is someone who can update a conventional site and that should be a job for a specific competitons panel post.

Everyone is saying this off the record so its about time the truth was stated.

Thank you for your comments Gordon. Its a shame you haven't spoke up earlier.

There have been one or two that have experienced difficulty. some from behind firewalls at there office of work, and some macs and weird stuff :-)

BUT…

I dont know what is good and what is wrong… so PLEASE, AS HAVE I REQUESTED ON MORE THAN ONE OCCASION…

All you guys that have an opinion on this…

Please advise.

The front page needs to be very much simpler with routes to the important stuff very much more obvious.
There needs to be a route back to the front page from every possible page you can reach.
Somehow it is very hard to find what you want on here - it seems its never in the same place as it was last time - its hard to describe why without somehow retaining website copies to refer to.

At the moment, at least on my screen with at least
two different browsers there are overlapping pictures covering up text.

We have a real problem with multiple places for information being published. Cross over between different websites. Such things as entry forms need to be in one place and one place only. One reason is the difficulty of navigating here means people are going elsewhere.

Most pilots are completely not interestefd in getting involved with how to puit stuff on a website themselves. They might send stuff to someone who's job it is to manage the website though. I just don't think it can ever work as a wiki that everyone is supposed to edit!

Oh good. now i have something to work to.
Keep it coming.

The front page needs to be very much simpler with routes to the important stuff very much more obvious.

Please can you give me a list of what you consider important.

At the moment, at least on my screen with at least
two different browsers there are overlapping pictures covering up text

where please? and what browsers

We have a real problem with multiple places for information being published.

with new techs available we try different things to see what sort of response we get.
the collective site is an attempt to get to more non comp pilots. yes a lot of stuff is duplicated to see if there are advantages/disadvantages. If we don't try we don't know.

Most pilots are completely not interestefd in getting involved with how to puit stuff on a website themselves

So we are discovering

I just don't think it can ever work as a wiki that everyone is supposed to edit!

Again, if we dont try, we don't know. But, that certainly seems to be the case.

I have two big problems.

1. a lack of constructive criticism (so i thank you for you comments)
2. Content. (i dont care how i get it. but without its pretty pointless.)

Hows was the comp in italy. wanna tell us about it (not just the guys on the mail list)?

I agree here:
my example is when I was trying to find out if I was on the list of BOS 2009 entered pilots.
Now is that '2009', or '2009 News', or 'Comp Calendar'?
It's not obvious that the things along the top are in fact drop-down menus / categories of links.

The structure of the site can be too complicated but as you say you need input !
I believe Graham Phipps has been tasked to specifically evaluate the website and propose changes

btw
I prefer this to the last website…. its an order of magnitude more professional.

BUT

I think the front page should not keep on changing and should be as simple as possible while still making it obvious how to get to the most used parts of the site.

Editing rights to the front page should be restricted to one or two people

We should achieve a consensus before changing it i.e. maybe we could have some hidden prototype front pages developed and tweeked and when were happy with it then freeze it at least for 1 season.

craig