HaveBlue

I agree except for the price. Like I said earlier, I am willing to foot the bill for the Colorado chapter website, but I don't want to pay huge amounts of money.
I suppose fees would be okay, but I'd like to see this be as simple as possible. If you begin incorporating fees, you have to keep track of them, budget, etc. Maybe we should incorporate donations instead.
I like the idea off having a centralized website (www.4ROC.com) with each chapter denoted in the corresponding site (www.colorado.4ROC.com). But, again, it's probably going to cost some money to do this. And since we are just starting up, I think we should keep this as simple as possible. Each chapter can have it's own website, but each chapter should have an index listing all the other chapters. In addition, it would be nice to have an index of chapters here in YotaTech.

denverbikeguy

For what it's worth ... I own a web hosting company here in Colorado. I'm sure we can all work something out, and I don't have a problem with the subdomains under it.

You can't have periods in a top-level domain, i.e. 4roc.colorado.com would really be colorado.com (already taken I am sure) with 4roc tagged on as a subdomain.

The way this would work best I think is to have a main domain of 4roc.com or .org. Then from the main page, link to the chapters as they form (i.e. co.4roc.com, wa.4roc.com, etc). This will allow for complete separation of the sites so each chapter can maintain their own stuff independent of the others, but they can all benefit from whatever might want to be shared site-wide.

EDIT: This also simplifies things from a billing standpoint. My suggestion is that each chapter kicks a certain amount of $$ to the national organization under which the chapters branch off, which actually pays for the site. This would work since the space and bandwidth used would increase proportionally with the number of chapters (and I can work it out even on a per-chapter cost schedule or something), and that way my company would only have to deal with one person for billing instead of a zillion.

My servers are all Unix-based (BSD to be specific), which is good. I also support PHP and CGI (pending our approval of the script - we take data security very seriously) types of things, message boards with use of the MySQL DB server, etc.

Since my (small) company does have to pay for the connectivity I can't do this for free, especially if it starts to really take off, but we're pretty reasonable price-wise. If you all are interested, then whoever is going to act as head of this thing from a national standpoint and I should start to talk...

Comments? Thoughts?

Mad Chemist

Wow, sounds like this thing is going to happen! Okay, this is what I suggest- people who are interested, plan on chatting Tuesday (June 17th), 6:00 PM, Pacific Time. There are a ton of details that need to be worked out. As was mentioned, good organization early will save us alot of headaches down the road. One association per state, larger states may want to set up districts due to the area thats covered. For the websites, initially, I'd suggest individual sites for each state, although we may want to make them generic (each state would have similar set-ups), making it easier to combine them into one unifying website later on. But, there are alot of things that need to be worked out before worrying about websites.

Can everyone agree on the time to chat- other suggestions?

rwmorrisonjr

This sounds like a great idea. I'm willing to help out with the CO chapter as well. I'll try to be in group live chat next week.

Roadrunner

For those of us who can't participate in the Live Chat, could you please post some sort of summary or details of what is discussed on getting the 4ROC up and running? Thanks.

TDiddy

I will be MIA next tuesday through the following Monday. If someone else from Cali wants to attend the chat, please do! Otherwise I'm open to times from now till Sunday afternoon.

HaveBlue

I will keep track of everything that is discussed. One of us could even "copy & paste" the whole discussion into a thread.

I'll be there!

denverbikeguy

Well, that is sort of what I was thinking too, but not. For the sites, it would actually be easier from the start to put them all under a common head like 4roc.com or whatever - they're still individual sites, but keeping central themes or sharing info among them becomes a lot easier that way.

I'm cool with that time for a chat, see you all there!

Mad Chemist

Denver,

I'm definitely not a web guy, so whatever you guys think would be best would work for me.

It sounds like some nominal fee would need to be charged to become a member, which give you the club charter, sticker(s), etc., and the money would go to upkeep of the website. Other get-togethers (club meetings, etc) would need to be funded on a as-needed basis from the members attending.

I would like to see some type of uniformity among the different state chapters- ie., the logo would essentially be the same for all the states, with the exception of the text (4ROC- Washington) and maybe some area that could be specialized to contain the state symbol, outline, whatever. I'm afraid of this turning into a loosely associated bunch of 4-runner clubs. We'll have to accept submissions for logos, then have a vote what the official logo(s) will be.

Darren

The logo ("4ROC" in the TRD font) had been finalized by Gene quite awhile back. No turning back now as it was the clear victor.

Mad Chemist

I thought so- anybody have this logo available for re-post?

denverbikeguy

I'd also suggest that things like stickers be available from the national level. If clubs then want to make customized ones that could be done, but the cost will decrease the more centralized things become.

As for organization ... how loose do you want it? It can be anything from "this guy runs it" to a full blown structure like TLCA has with each charter club beneath it having a representative that handles keeping the two together. This should probably be talked about on Tuesday but be thinking about it in the meantime...

Sounds like WA and CO have enough people to get this party started, how about other states?

Darren

The original thread: https://www.yotatech.com/forums/show...&threadid=3202

HaveBlue

I wonder if we could get Street Graphics to turn a few of those out just for members?

Mad Chemist

I think Mertzr wanted to head up California, and someone mentioned Virginia as well. Definitely enough to get things started.

Mad Chemist

As far as the structure of the organization, I think that things at the state level will need to be pretty organized (ie. pres, vice pres, etc). However, if there are only 3-4 states who initially get started, its probably not enough to have some type of elected board at the national level, but individual state presidents would need to keep some type of organization btween states, some mechanism for making decisions would need to be formalized.

HaveBlue

I agree.
There are a few threads that have been started for each state chapter here. I would encourage everyone who is interested to sign in and state what they would like to do (website, event planning, etc.). If you don't see your state, start a new thread

KevyWevy

i think i'll be at the chat since i'll be working at that time and theres nothing to do at work so yeah!

KevyWevy

oh yeah. the sticker looks sweet!!! would we really need to have different ones for each state? i think that decal would be fine and have a central 4ROC site that would be linked to the separate state ones.

TDiddy

How about this for a state-specific sticker: We use the same 4ROC logo, but the sticker is cut in the shape of the individual state.

i see stickers like that all the time, should be a standard template for most big sticker outfits.