IN THE OLD DAYS, getting involved
in the hobby meant a leisurely stop by
the local hobby shop. There people
would find helpful experts, beautiful
models hanging from the ceiling, and all
the latest hot gadgets under the display
counter. It was the local hotbed of
activity where anyone could join in the
fun and find out how to get more
involved.
Today the aeromodeling community
is adapting to the new information age.
Thanks to the Internet, people are used
to surfing the information superhighway
because it’s fast and convenient.
Everything a hobbyist needs to know is
just a click away.
To get these people out to the flying
site, they need to know about the clubs
in their area. A club Web site is a means
of distributing information about the
organization to the membership and to
the public. Newsletters, club rosters,
photo albums, plans, movies, and other
information are made readily available
on a Web page.
I have talked to other clubs’
members who receive their club
newsletters and other correspondence
solely via the Internet. That helps save
the cost of postage and paper. Of course
that distribution system only works if
the club’s members have an Internet
connection.
In some cases this may mean a trip
to the local library or to a fellow club
member’s house if you don’t have
Internet access at home. The Internet is
also available at many public libraries.
This article will describe some
options for how to structure a club Web
site. It will include information about
how to have your newly created site
appear on the Internet for the world to
see.
I belong to the Checkerboard Field
R/C Club in Maywood, Illinois, and
maintain the club Web page in addition
to editing the club newsletter: The
Checkerboard Flyer. Our site is
www.checkerboardrc.org. Please visit us
soon.
Site Content: One of the first
challenges in designing a Web site is to
determine what will be posted to it.
Some information will be there for club
members and other information will be
for the public. We have had new
members join the Checkerboard club
after visiting our page to learn about us.
The following are pages on our Web
site. I will explain their purpose. As you
read about them you may find that you
would like to have similar information
on your site or you may want to make
different information available.
Home: This is the page where visitors
arrive when they type your club’s Web
site address into a browser. Create a
site-address name that is as close to your
club’s name as possible; that will help
those who are looking for your Web
page find it more easily via most
Internet search engines. This address is
known as a Uniform Resource Locator,
or URL.
Your home page is your opportunity
to make a good first impression. As the
saying goes, you only get one chance to
do that.
I use the Checkerboard club’s home
page to disseminate important
information to club members. The home
page should contain the most important
headlines. The home page also features
links to other pages on our site that
visitors might be interested in viewing,
as follows.
• “About Us”: For visitors who want to
learn about your club, this section is the
first place they should look. It could
contain club contact information,
directions to the field, and the history of
your club. Checkerboard Field was once
a US Post Office airmail field, and it has
been established that Charles Lindbergh
landed on or near it.
We also include information about
how many members we have, what
special activities are scheduled, and the
fact that we have flight trainers
available. This information is important
to someone who is looking to join a
club. We have found that flight
instruction is usually a high priority for
newcomers.
• “AMA”: We provide a link to the
AMA Web site, and in turn AMA
provides a link to our Web site. You
will need to contact AMA Club
Secretary Lois Pierce (loisp@modelair
craft.org) to notify her that your site is
up and running and request a link. She
will check to make sure your site
contains an AMA link and will post a
link on the AMA Web page to your club
site.
AMA provides a mechanism on its
site to help people find clubs in their
area (at http://modelaircraft.org/
clubsearch.aspx). It works well and
provides another way for people to link
to your site to learn about you.
• “AMA District VI”: We provide a link
to the District VI Web site. All AMA
districts have their own Web pages.
If you haven’t visited your district
site, you really should. It will probably
contain good information about events
and news in your area.
• “Calendar”: We print our club
calendar in each issue of the club
newsletter, but people misplace their
newsletters and it is nice to view the
calendar online. It is also easier to make
changes to a Web-based calendar
because there is no printing or postage
involved and the changes take place
immediately.
• “Club Roster”: Club members like to
call one another or mail cards to fellow
members, so it is nice for each member
to have a current copy of the
membership roster. Making this
information available on the Internet
presents a problem; you have probably
heard about identity theft. No one wants
to be a victim, so we make the
Checkerboard club roster available only
to club members.
When someone clicks on the “Club
Roster” link on our site, a box pops up
and the visitor is directed to enter a
password. Only club members have the
password.
If visitors do not enter the correct
password, they go no further and will
not be able to view or download the club
roster. When club members type in the
correct password, they are taken to
another page where they are able to
download the member list.
• “Fly Market”: Club members
occasionally have items they would like
to sell. The Fly Market is the place to
post ads about hobby-related items that
are for sale privately. Anyone who visits
the club Web site is able to access this
section.
• “Join”: Our membership application
can be downloaded from our Web site. It
includes information about the
membership dues structure. After a
certain point in the year the fees go
down. We also have a greatly reduced
fee for junior members. The application
includes the address where the
completed form is sent. We have had
several new members join this way
because it’s quick and convenient.
• “Map”: Our site features a
downloadable map to the flying field. I
am still amazed by the number of people
who join the club and say that even
though they live nearby, they never
knew there was a model-airplane flying
field so close. We have also had people
visiting relatives in the area who found
the field using our map.
• “Members E-mail”: This list is
available to visitors to our site, with an
important exception. There are things
called “spambots” which are software
applications that travel the Internet to
“harvest” legitimate E-mail addresses.
Their purpose is to develop mailing lists
of people to which to send spam
(unwanted E-mail.)
Some Web site-creation software
allows authors to encrypt E-mail
addresses to make them unreadable to
spambots. This is in the realm of identity
security. We want our club members’ Email
addresses available to other club
Adobe DreamWeaver software was used to create the Checkerboard Field R/C Club
Web site. This software can be used as a drag-and-drop or command-line application.
One of many Web-hosting services is homestead.com. Its “one-stop shopping” in
mind, this site allows you to create, register, and host from one place.
members and to the public, excluding
spambots.
If you visit our site and move your
mouse over any of the E-mail addresses
on the members’ E-mail page, you will
notice gibberish at the bottom of the
page. This is what the E-mail addresses
look like after being encrypted.
• “Movies”: In the past few years highspeed
Internet connections have been
made available to home users. Services
such as DSL (Digital Subscriber Line)
and Cable Internet are fast, affordable,
and widely available. Although you may
never have thought of downloading a
10-megabyte file using a dial-up
connection, with a high-speed
connection it is no longer a problem.
The movies available on the
Checkerboard site are of club events. A
special gathering is the January 1
breakfast/first flight of the year. We have
movies posted of these flights for the past
three years.
At each club meeting we have time
devoted to Show & Tell, when modelers
stand in front of the membership with
their latest creations and talk about the
experience of building and flying the
models. We have movies of these
sessions. We recently posted a movie of
our Ribbon Cut Fun Fly. We also have a
few movies under the topic of “Safety”
that share serious problems members have
had.
The topic of how to format movies for
distribution on the Internet is the subject
for a separate article. The process involves
using a digital camcorder to capture video,
importing the video onto a computer’s
hard drive with appropriate cables, and
using software to edit the video.
That type of software is referred to as
NLE, or Non-Linear Editing. That means
you can move clips into a different order,
trim them, change their characteristics
(sound levels, speed, etc.), add titles and
special effects, and do many more things
to make a good movie.
Then you change the movie into a file
that can be uploaded to a Web server and
viewed by those who visit your site.
Movies add a dimension to your club
page; they make it more interesting than
simply posting static information.
• “Newsletters”: Our club still mails out
the monthly hard-copy newsletter; many
of our members do not use the Internet. As
I mentioned, receiving a club’s publication
via E-mail or downloading it from the club
Web site is a way to save money.
The other benefit of having newsletters
available on the club Web page is that
members, or anyone else, can go years
back to look for a particular article or
issue. In addition to having links to
previous newsletters, our club lists topics
covered in each issue. That way it is easier
to find the issue for which you are
looking.
• “Photo Albums”: We have thousands of
club pictures on our Web site. They are of
club events, pilot projects, fun-flys, etc.
The pictures capture model airplanes,
hamburgers cooking, and new engines,
but, more important, they capture fun
times, good friends, and great memories.
I remember many years of taking
pictures at the field, having them
developed, looking at them, and then
putting them away, not to be seen again
for a long time. The Internet allows you to
post all those pictures for your friends and
everyone else to see.
The new digital cameras make the
process easier. You can take pictures with
film cameras, scan them, and then post
them to the Internet, but it is a
cumbersome process. Digital cameras
allow you to quickly import pictures to
your computer and then upload them to
your Web site. Almost any modern
computer will feature a high-quality
display that will show all the beautiful
detail and color that digital cameras
provide.
• “Site Update History”: In time your club
Web site will grow. Changes will be
made; new sections will be added and
others will be deleted.
As the person who maintains the
Checkerboard club’s Web page, I like to
have a history of what I have done with
the site throughout the years and I like to
view such history when I visit other sites.
It is nice to see how a site was expanded
and what the priorities were in the process.
• “Weather”: Before leaving for the field
for a flying session, what important thing
do you check? The weather. Many club
Web sites have direct links from their
home pages to weather sites with their
geographic area preselected. I have just
added a weather link to our site, and it is a
great feature for my money.
I found the link in MA several months
Editors’ Picks: Club Web Sites We Liked
We did some clicking around the Internet to find some club Web sites that met the author’s criteria for a functioning
site. Perhaps the following will help spark your creativity.
For all you would-be Web masters out there, the following sites can help get you on your way.
The Checkerboard Field R/C Club site
loads fast whether you have high-speed
access or not. Its black-and-white
home page isn’t flashy, but the
information is detailed and well
organized. Give it a look at
www.checkerboardrc.org.
Most people who are looking for a club in
their area are new to the hobby and are
seeking instruction. The Miniature
Aircraft Association of Westchester in
New York highlights its training services
on its home page. Check it out at
www.maaw.com.
A club Web site is where many people
get their first impression of your club.
The Sky Ranch Flyers RC Flying Club
in Wisconsin shows off one of its
member’s beautiful creations and its
state-of-the-art flying facility on the
home page. Pay the club a visit at
www.skyranchflyers.com.
• http://websitetips.com
• www.accd.edu/spc/iic/webmaster/
tutorials
• www.webdesignfromscratch.com
• www.w3schools.com/site/default.asp
• www.davidweston.com/quotes.htm
• www.webdevelopersjournal.com/
columns/abcs_of_building_web
_sites.html MA
—MA staff
ago; it is the AirVista site. The forecast is
presented in a graph covering a period of
several days. For me the important
feature is the wind-speed chart, which
shows the time of day and predicted wind
speed.
Site Creation: I assure you that if you
are reading this article and you have
basic computer skills, you will be able to
create and maintain a Web site on the
Internet. It is really not difficult.
Many Web-hosting services, or
Internet Service Providers (ISPs), walk
you through the process of getting a site
up and running. A company that
impresses me is Homestead (www.home
stead.com). It is an all-in-one solution
and can provide you with everything you
need to get a Web site online.
Homestead offers a gallery of
professionally designed Web sites you
can modify to suit your needs. It offers
SiteBuilder software as part of the service
you use to update text, images, logos, and
more.
You upload your site with a simple
mouse click on the upload button. (There
is no need for knowledge of FTP [File
Transfer Protocol] software.) Homestead
offers prompt technical support (I
checked), and the company offers more
sophisticated options to meet your needs
after you have mastered the basics.
Homestead will also help with your
domain name, which is the address where
people reach your Web site. Our club
domain name is checkerboardrc.org.
If you visit the Homestead site, you
have an option to view the design gallery
and take a free trial, and it is actually a
free trial. It won’t cost you anything. I
advise you to visit this site and get
familiar with options and terminology.
You can even begin building your site to
get a feel for the process.
If you would like to learn what else is
available, do a Google search for “Web
site creation software” or “Web site
wizard” and that will bring up plenty of
options. Keep searching until you find a
hosting service that meets your needs.
After you have located an ISP you
feel comfortable with, you need to create
the Web site. You don’t have to be a
designer to make an attractive,
functional site. Following are several
rules I use to ensure a good visitor
experience.
• Three-Links Rule: A visitor to your site
should be able to get to any information
by clicking on three links or less. If a
visitor wants to see the October 2004
club newsletter, he or she should not
need to click more than three times to
get there. This rule serves to make sure
that visitors are quickly able to access
the information they want from your
site.
• Fifteen-Second Rule: Web pages need
to load in 15 seconds or less. Years ago
many of us connected to the Internet
using modems. Compared to today’s
DSL and cable connections, modems are
slow.
If your pages contain only text, the
15-Second Rule is usually easy to
adhere to; type tends to load quickly.
Pages take longer to load when
photographs and other graphics are
added.
I chose 15 seconds as an arbitrary
number when I was visiting sites using a
modem connection. I began noticing
how long pages took to load and decided
that 15 seconds was my threshold of
patience. After 15 seconds I decided it
was not worth the wait (no matter what
the content was) and clicked to another
site. The first site lost one visitor.
You can make a 10-Second Rule or a
30-Second Rule; the point is that you
need to have a design goal in mind. Test
every page in your site to see if some
take an extremely long time to load. If
so, do something about it to improve
your visitor’s experience.
It is important to remember that even
with DSL and cable connections, it is
possible to create Web pages that load
slowly. I’ll discuss a solution to that
problem a bit later, under the Optimize
Images Rule.
• Navigation Rule: Create a simple,
consistent navigation system.
Navigation in a Web site is simply a list
of links you provide to take a visitor to
other pages within your site. The device
used to do this is usually called a
Navigation Bar or Navigation Menu. It
typically takes the shape of a column of
links along one side of the page or a row
of links along the top of the page.
A visitor may enter your site on your
home page and then click the calendar
link to arrive at that page. There the
visitor has the option of seeing other
pages on your site. The Navigation Rule
is that no matter what page a visitor
views on your site, the same navigation
choices are available.
You may have visited a Web site
where after clicking a link to be taken to
another page, you arrive at a page that
has no links or a different set of links
from those on the previous page. It may
result in one of those “You can’t get
there from here!” moments.
You want your visitors to always
have the option of quickly viewing any
page in your site. A simple, consistent
navigation system provides that. (It is
true that the visitor can click the “Back”
button in the browser, but its intent is
not for use in site navigation.)
• Optimize Images Rule: Make images
load quickly by optimizing them. Digital
cameras are wonderful things. They
have the ability to produce fabulous
images with deep, rich colors. And on a
Web site dedicated to model airplanes,
photographs of these often fascinating
creations should be plentiful.
In Web design the problem with
those beautiful photographs is that they
may take longer to load. Photographs
that come straight from the camera
typically have much more detail than
can be presented on a computer screen.
The secret of photographs on Web
pages is that most of them are made to
load more quickly through a process
called “optimization.” This lets an
image load on a Web page more
quickly, but it still appears to be of high
quality.
The benefit to you as a Web site
designer is that since each optimized
photograph will load faster, you will be
able to put more pictures on the page.
Homestead has a button on its
SiteBuilder software that you simply
click to optimize your photos and other
images.
• Site-Update Rule: Update your site
content regularly. Once a month is a
good beginning goal.
Suppose your club newsletter editor
sent out the January issue and then sent
out the exact same newsletter in
February except for changing the
month? Club members would be
unhappy because they would believe
that they deserve some new content. The
same belief holds with the club Web
site.
You may update more or less often
than once a month, but do it regularly,
whatever that means to you and your
club. And put a note on the home page
indicating when the site was last
updated. That way club members and
visitors know you have been busy and
that the content is current.
• Content-Organization Rule: Find a
way to organize the content for your
site. It will make your job as Web
designer easier.
Our club Web site has thousands of
photographs on various pages. When I
began taking pictures for the site I
would name each image to include the
person (or people) in the photograph. If
it were a photograph of a model, the
name would include the builder’s name in
shorthand form (jsmith_aero
master.jpg). That organizational
technique lasted roughly a year. It was
extremely labor intensive.
For organizing pictures it is much
easier to purchase photo-album software.
There are two I recommend; which one
you choose will depend on which
computer platform you use.
If you use a Windows computer,
Adobe Premiere Elements is a good, lowcost
choice. If you use a newer Macintosh
computer, the system will come with a
program called iPhoto. Both are digital
photo albums that allow you to sort and
arrange photos in various ways. They
even provide basic photo-editing
capability.
Now I organize by events. All pictures
taken at the November club meeting will
go into a digital album named “November
2006 Club Meeting.” This system has
worked well for me in spite of the fact
that I need to manage thousands of
photographs.
• Focus Rule: A Web site should have
one clear purpose. Once I visited a site
whose designer was involved in RC and
was a plumber by trade. There was
information about both topics scattered
throughout the site. It was confusing;
don’t do this. Instead there should have
been two separate sites: one for modeling
and another for plumbing.
This idea extends to individual Web
pages. If a page were called “Calendar,” a
visitor wouldn’t expect to find items for
sale there. Additional Web pages in your
site typically don’t cost more, so create as
many as you need to allow each to have a
clear reason for being there.
• Visit Other Sites Rule: You can’t think
of everything. Visit other club Web sites
to see what they are doing. If you do this
you will get valuable ideas.
I live in AMA District VI. The district
Web site (www.csam.iit.edu/~ama
dist6/index.htm) has links to all other
club sites in the district. The AMA Web
site (www.modelaircraft.org) has a link
to the Charter Club Locator, which
allows you to visit sites belonging to
clubs in other AMA districts. Doing
this research will be worth the effort.
• Visit Your Site Rule: What? That’s
right. You will likely spend some time
building and refining your club Web
site, and you will believe you know it
inside and out. However, it is a good
experience to visit your site on the
Internet, preferably from a different
computer, perhaps at a different
location. Check your local library.
The point is to give you an
opportunity to see your site as others
do. I visit my club’s site often, and I
usually find things that need to be
adjusted.
View your site on a different
platform. If you use a Macintosh
computer to build the site, look at it on
a Windows computer.
Use different browsers. Windows
Internet Explorer is one of the most
popular, but others such as Firefox
have a large following. You may not be
able to design your site so it displays
perfectly in every browser, but you
should make sure it displays properly
in the most popular ones.
People take pride in the model
airplanes they build and fly, which is
why they are involved in this hobby.
Building an attractive club Web site
that offers current information that is of
use to people is an accomplishment to
be proud of as well.
Once you get past some of the
technical hurdles and have your new
site online, you will find that it is a
rewarding accomplishment. Please feel
free to contact me with questions or
comments. MA
Bill Bitautas
[email protected]
Edition: Model Aviation - 2007/01
Page Numbers: 46,47,48,50,52
Edition: Model Aviation - 2007/01
Page Numbers: 46,47,48,50,52
IN THE OLD DAYS, getting involved
in the hobby meant a leisurely stop by
the local hobby shop. There people
would find helpful experts, beautiful
models hanging from the ceiling, and all
the latest hot gadgets under the display
counter. It was the local hotbed of
activity where anyone could join in the
fun and find out how to get more
involved.
Today the aeromodeling community
is adapting to the new information age.
Thanks to the Internet, people are used
to surfing the information superhighway
because it’s fast and convenient.
Everything a hobbyist needs to know is
just a click away.
To get these people out to the flying
site, they need to know about the clubs
in their area. A club Web site is a means
of distributing information about the
organization to the membership and to
the public. Newsletters, club rosters,
photo albums, plans, movies, and other
information are made readily available
on a Web page.
I have talked to other clubs’
members who receive their club
newsletters and other correspondence
solely via the Internet. That helps save
the cost of postage and paper. Of course
that distribution system only works if
the club’s members have an Internet
connection.
In some cases this may mean a trip
to the local library or to a fellow club
member’s house if you don’t have
Internet access at home. The Internet is
also available at many public libraries.
This article will describe some
options for how to structure a club Web
site. It will include information about
how to have your newly created site
appear on the Internet for the world to
see.
I belong to the Checkerboard Field
R/C Club in Maywood, Illinois, and
maintain the club Web page in addition
to editing the club newsletter: The
Checkerboard Flyer. Our site is
www.checkerboardrc.org. Please visit us
soon.
Site Content: One of the first
challenges in designing a Web site is to
determine what will be posted to it.
Some information will be there for club
members and other information will be
for the public. We have had new
members join the Checkerboard club
after visiting our page to learn about us.
The following are pages on our Web
site. I will explain their purpose. As you
read about them you may find that you
would like to have similar information
on your site or you may want to make
different information available.
Home: This is the page where visitors
arrive when they type your club’s Web
site address into a browser. Create a
site-address name that is as close to your
club’s name as possible; that will help
those who are looking for your Web
page find it more easily via most
Internet search engines. This address is
known as a Uniform Resource Locator,
or URL.
Your home page is your opportunity
to make a good first impression. As the
saying goes, you only get one chance to
do that.
I use the Checkerboard club’s home
page to disseminate important
information to club members. The home
page should contain the most important
headlines. The home page also features
links to other pages on our site that
visitors might be interested in viewing,
as follows.
• “About Us”: For visitors who want to
learn about your club, this section is the
first place they should look. It could
contain club contact information,
directions to the field, and the history of
your club. Checkerboard Field was once
a US Post Office airmail field, and it has
been established that Charles Lindbergh
landed on or near it.
We also include information about
how many members we have, what
special activities are scheduled, and the
fact that we have flight trainers
available. This information is important
to someone who is looking to join a
club. We have found that flight
instruction is usually a high priority for
newcomers.
• “AMA”: We provide a link to the
AMA Web site, and in turn AMA
provides a link to our Web site. You
will need to contact AMA Club
Secretary Lois Pierce (loisp@modelair
craft.org) to notify her that your site is
up and running and request a link. She
will check to make sure your site
contains an AMA link and will post a
link on the AMA Web page to your club
site.
AMA provides a mechanism on its
site to help people find clubs in their
area (at http://modelaircraft.org/
clubsearch.aspx). It works well and
provides another way for people to link
to your site to learn about you.
• “AMA District VI”: We provide a link
to the District VI Web site. All AMA
districts have their own Web pages.
If you haven’t visited your district
site, you really should. It will probably
contain good information about events
and news in your area.
• “Calendar”: We print our club
calendar in each issue of the club
newsletter, but people misplace their
newsletters and it is nice to view the
calendar online. It is also easier to make
changes to a Web-based calendar
because there is no printing or postage
involved and the changes take place
immediately.
• “Club Roster”: Club members like to
call one another or mail cards to fellow
members, so it is nice for each member
to have a current copy of the
membership roster. Making this
information available on the Internet
presents a problem; you have probably
heard about identity theft. No one wants
to be a victim, so we make the
Checkerboard club roster available only
to club members.
When someone clicks on the “Club
Roster” link on our site, a box pops up
and the visitor is directed to enter a
password. Only club members have the
password.
If visitors do not enter the correct
password, they go no further and will
not be able to view or download the club
roster. When club members type in the
correct password, they are taken to
another page where they are able to
download the member list.
• “Fly Market”: Club members
occasionally have items they would like
to sell. The Fly Market is the place to
post ads about hobby-related items that
are for sale privately. Anyone who visits
the club Web site is able to access this
section.
• “Join”: Our membership application
can be downloaded from our Web site. It
includes information about the
membership dues structure. After a
certain point in the year the fees go
down. We also have a greatly reduced
fee for junior members. The application
includes the address where the
completed form is sent. We have had
several new members join this way
because it’s quick and convenient.
• “Map”: Our site features a
downloadable map to the flying field. I
am still amazed by the number of people
who join the club and say that even
though they live nearby, they never
knew there was a model-airplane flying
field so close. We have also had people
visiting relatives in the area who found
the field using our map.
• “Members E-mail”: This list is
available to visitors to our site, with an
important exception. There are things
called “spambots” which are software
applications that travel the Internet to
“harvest” legitimate E-mail addresses.
Their purpose is to develop mailing lists
of people to which to send spam
(unwanted E-mail.)
Some Web site-creation software
allows authors to encrypt E-mail
addresses to make them unreadable to
spambots. This is in the realm of identity
security. We want our club members’ Email
addresses available to other club
Adobe DreamWeaver software was used to create the Checkerboard Field R/C Club
Web site. This software can be used as a drag-and-drop or command-line application.
One of many Web-hosting services is homestead.com. Its “one-stop shopping” in
mind, this site allows you to create, register, and host from one place.
members and to the public, excluding
spambots.
If you visit our site and move your
mouse over any of the E-mail addresses
on the members’ E-mail page, you will
notice gibberish at the bottom of the
page. This is what the E-mail addresses
look like after being encrypted.
• “Movies”: In the past few years highspeed
Internet connections have been
made available to home users. Services
such as DSL (Digital Subscriber Line)
and Cable Internet are fast, affordable,
and widely available. Although you may
never have thought of downloading a
10-megabyte file using a dial-up
connection, with a high-speed
connection it is no longer a problem.
The movies available on the
Checkerboard site are of club events. A
special gathering is the January 1
breakfast/first flight of the year. We have
movies posted of these flights for the past
three years.
At each club meeting we have time
devoted to Show & Tell, when modelers
stand in front of the membership with
their latest creations and talk about the
experience of building and flying the
models. We have movies of these
sessions. We recently posted a movie of
our Ribbon Cut Fun Fly. We also have a
few movies under the topic of “Safety”
that share serious problems members have
had.
The topic of how to format movies for
distribution on the Internet is the subject
for a separate article. The process involves
using a digital camcorder to capture video,
importing the video onto a computer’s
hard drive with appropriate cables, and
using software to edit the video.
That type of software is referred to as
NLE, or Non-Linear Editing. That means
you can move clips into a different order,
trim them, change their characteristics
(sound levels, speed, etc.), add titles and
special effects, and do many more things
to make a good movie.
Then you change the movie into a file
that can be uploaded to a Web server and
viewed by those who visit your site.
Movies add a dimension to your club
page; they make it more interesting than
simply posting static information.
• “Newsletters”: Our club still mails out
the monthly hard-copy newsletter; many
of our members do not use the Internet. As
I mentioned, receiving a club’s publication
via E-mail or downloading it from the club
Web site is a way to save money.
The other benefit of having newsletters
available on the club Web page is that
members, or anyone else, can go years
back to look for a particular article or
issue. In addition to having links to
previous newsletters, our club lists topics
covered in each issue. That way it is easier
to find the issue for which you are
looking.
• “Photo Albums”: We have thousands of
club pictures on our Web site. They are of
club events, pilot projects, fun-flys, etc.
The pictures capture model airplanes,
hamburgers cooking, and new engines,
but, more important, they capture fun
times, good friends, and great memories.
I remember many years of taking
pictures at the field, having them
developed, looking at them, and then
putting them away, not to be seen again
for a long time. The Internet allows you to
post all those pictures for your friends and
everyone else to see.
The new digital cameras make the
process easier. You can take pictures with
film cameras, scan them, and then post
them to the Internet, but it is a
cumbersome process. Digital cameras
allow you to quickly import pictures to
your computer and then upload them to
your Web site. Almost any modern
computer will feature a high-quality
display that will show all the beautiful
detail and color that digital cameras
provide.
• “Site Update History”: In time your club
Web site will grow. Changes will be
made; new sections will be added and
others will be deleted.
As the person who maintains the
Checkerboard club’s Web page, I like to
have a history of what I have done with
the site throughout the years and I like to
view such history when I visit other sites.
It is nice to see how a site was expanded
and what the priorities were in the process.
• “Weather”: Before leaving for the field
for a flying session, what important thing
do you check? The weather. Many club
Web sites have direct links from their
home pages to weather sites with their
geographic area preselected. I have just
added a weather link to our site, and it is a
great feature for my money.
I found the link in MA several months
Editors’ Picks: Club Web Sites We Liked
We did some clicking around the Internet to find some club Web sites that met the author’s criteria for a functioning
site. Perhaps the following will help spark your creativity.
For all you would-be Web masters out there, the following sites can help get you on your way.
The Checkerboard Field R/C Club site
loads fast whether you have high-speed
access or not. Its black-and-white
home page isn’t flashy, but the
information is detailed and well
organized. Give it a look at
www.checkerboardrc.org.
Most people who are looking for a club in
their area are new to the hobby and are
seeking instruction. The Miniature
Aircraft Association of Westchester in
New York highlights its training services
on its home page. Check it out at
www.maaw.com.
A club Web site is where many people
get their first impression of your club.
The Sky Ranch Flyers RC Flying Club
in Wisconsin shows off one of its
member’s beautiful creations and its
state-of-the-art flying facility on the
home page. Pay the club a visit at
www.skyranchflyers.com.
• http://websitetips.com
• www.accd.edu/spc/iic/webmaster/
tutorials
• www.webdesignfromscratch.com
• www.w3schools.com/site/default.asp
• www.davidweston.com/quotes.htm
• www.webdevelopersjournal.com/
columns/abcs_of_building_web
_sites.html MA
—MA staff
ago; it is the AirVista site. The forecast is
presented in a graph covering a period of
several days. For me the important
feature is the wind-speed chart, which
shows the time of day and predicted wind
speed.
Site Creation: I assure you that if you
are reading this article and you have
basic computer skills, you will be able to
create and maintain a Web site on the
Internet. It is really not difficult.
Many Web-hosting services, or
Internet Service Providers (ISPs), walk
you through the process of getting a site
up and running. A company that
impresses me is Homestead (www.home
stead.com). It is an all-in-one solution
and can provide you with everything you
need to get a Web site online.
Homestead offers a gallery of
professionally designed Web sites you
can modify to suit your needs. It offers
SiteBuilder software as part of the service
you use to update text, images, logos, and
more.
You upload your site with a simple
mouse click on the upload button. (There
is no need for knowledge of FTP [File
Transfer Protocol] software.) Homestead
offers prompt technical support (I
checked), and the company offers more
sophisticated options to meet your needs
after you have mastered the basics.
Homestead will also help with your
domain name, which is the address where
people reach your Web site. Our club
domain name is checkerboardrc.org.
If you visit the Homestead site, you
have an option to view the design gallery
and take a free trial, and it is actually a
free trial. It won’t cost you anything. I
advise you to visit this site and get
familiar with options and terminology.
You can even begin building your site to
get a feel for the process.
If you would like to learn what else is
available, do a Google search for “Web
site creation software” or “Web site
wizard” and that will bring up plenty of
options. Keep searching until you find a
hosting service that meets your needs.
After you have located an ISP you
feel comfortable with, you need to create
the Web site. You don’t have to be a
designer to make an attractive,
functional site. Following are several
rules I use to ensure a good visitor
experience.
• Three-Links Rule: A visitor to your site
should be able to get to any information
by clicking on three links or less. If a
visitor wants to see the October 2004
club newsletter, he or she should not
need to click more than three times to
get there. This rule serves to make sure
that visitors are quickly able to access
the information they want from your
site.
• Fifteen-Second Rule: Web pages need
to load in 15 seconds or less. Years ago
many of us connected to the Internet
using modems. Compared to today’s
DSL and cable connections, modems are
slow.
If your pages contain only text, the
15-Second Rule is usually easy to
adhere to; type tends to load quickly.
Pages take longer to load when
photographs and other graphics are
added.
I chose 15 seconds as an arbitrary
number when I was visiting sites using a
modem connection. I began noticing
how long pages took to load and decided
that 15 seconds was my threshold of
patience. After 15 seconds I decided it
was not worth the wait (no matter what
the content was) and clicked to another
site. The first site lost one visitor.
You can make a 10-Second Rule or a
30-Second Rule; the point is that you
need to have a design goal in mind. Test
every page in your site to see if some
take an extremely long time to load. If
so, do something about it to improve
your visitor’s experience.
It is important to remember that even
with DSL and cable connections, it is
possible to create Web pages that load
slowly. I’ll discuss a solution to that
problem a bit later, under the Optimize
Images Rule.
• Navigation Rule: Create a simple,
consistent navigation system.
Navigation in a Web site is simply a list
of links you provide to take a visitor to
other pages within your site. The device
used to do this is usually called a
Navigation Bar or Navigation Menu. It
typically takes the shape of a column of
links along one side of the page or a row
of links along the top of the page.
A visitor may enter your site on your
home page and then click the calendar
link to arrive at that page. There the
visitor has the option of seeing other
pages on your site. The Navigation Rule
is that no matter what page a visitor
views on your site, the same navigation
choices are available.
You may have visited a Web site
where after clicking a link to be taken to
another page, you arrive at a page that
has no links or a different set of links
from those on the previous page. It may
result in one of those “You can’t get
there from here!” moments.
You want your visitors to always
have the option of quickly viewing any
page in your site. A simple, consistent
navigation system provides that. (It is
true that the visitor can click the “Back”
button in the browser, but its intent is
not for use in site navigation.)
• Optimize Images Rule: Make images
load quickly by optimizing them. Digital
cameras are wonderful things. They
have the ability to produce fabulous
images with deep, rich colors. And on a
Web site dedicated to model airplanes,
photographs of these often fascinating
creations should be plentiful.
In Web design the problem with
those beautiful photographs is that they
may take longer to load. Photographs
that come straight from the camera
typically have much more detail than
can be presented on a computer screen.
The secret of photographs on Web
pages is that most of them are made to
load more quickly through a process
called “optimization.” This lets an
image load on a Web page more
quickly, but it still appears to be of high
quality.
The benefit to you as a Web site
designer is that since each optimized
photograph will load faster, you will be
able to put more pictures on the page.
Homestead has a button on its
SiteBuilder software that you simply
click to optimize your photos and other
images.
• Site-Update Rule: Update your site
content regularly. Once a month is a
good beginning goal.
Suppose your club newsletter editor
sent out the January issue and then sent
out the exact same newsletter in
February except for changing the
month? Club members would be
unhappy because they would believe
that they deserve some new content. The
same belief holds with the club Web
site.
You may update more or less often
than once a month, but do it regularly,
whatever that means to you and your
club. And put a note on the home page
indicating when the site was last
updated. That way club members and
visitors know you have been busy and
that the content is current.
• Content-Organization Rule: Find a
way to organize the content for your
site. It will make your job as Web
designer easier.
Our club Web site has thousands of
photographs on various pages. When I
began taking pictures for the site I
would name each image to include the
person (or people) in the photograph. If
it were a photograph of a model, the
name would include the builder’s name in
shorthand form (jsmith_aero
master.jpg). That organizational
technique lasted roughly a year. It was
extremely labor intensive.
For organizing pictures it is much
easier to purchase photo-album software.
There are two I recommend; which one
you choose will depend on which
computer platform you use.
If you use a Windows computer,
Adobe Premiere Elements is a good, lowcost
choice. If you use a newer Macintosh
computer, the system will come with a
program called iPhoto. Both are digital
photo albums that allow you to sort and
arrange photos in various ways. They
even provide basic photo-editing
capability.
Now I organize by events. All pictures
taken at the November club meeting will
go into a digital album named “November
2006 Club Meeting.” This system has
worked well for me in spite of the fact
that I need to manage thousands of
photographs.
• Focus Rule: A Web site should have
one clear purpose. Once I visited a site
whose designer was involved in RC and
was a plumber by trade. There was
information about both topics scattered
throughout the site. It was confusing;
don’t do this. Instead there should have
been two separate sites: one for modeling
and another for plumbing.
This idea extends to individual Web
pages. If a page were called “Calendar,” a
visitor wouldn’t expect to find items for
sale there. Additional Web pages in your
site typically don’t cost more, so create as
many as you need to allow each to have a
clear reason for being there.
• Visit Other Sites Rule: You can’t think
of everything. Visit other club Web sites
to see what they are doing. If you do this
you will get valuable ideas.
I live in AMA District VI. The district
Web site (www.csam.iit.edu/~ama
dist6/index.htm) has links to all other
club sites in the district. The AMA Web
site (www.modelaircraft.org) has a link
to the Charter Club Locator, which
allows you to visit sites belonging to
clubs in other AMA districts. Doing
this research will be worth the effort.
• Visit Your Site Rule: What? That’s
right. You will likely spend some time
building and refining your club Web
site, and you will believe you know it
inside and out. However, it is a good
experience to visit your site on the
Internet, preferably from a different
computer, perhaps at a different
location. Check your local library.
The point is to give you an
opportunity to see your site as others
do. I visit my club’s site often, and I
usually find things that need to be
adjusted.
View your site on a different
platform. If you use a Macintosh
computer to build the site, look at it on
a Windows computer.
Use different browsers. Windows
Internet Explorer is one of the most
popular, but others such as Firefox
have a large following. You may not be
able to design your site so it displays
perfectly in every browser, but you
should make sure it displays properly
in the most popular ones.
People take pride in the model
airplanes they build and fly, which is
why they are involved in this hobby.
Building an attractive club Web site
that offers current information that is of
use to people is an accomplishment to
be proud of as well.
Once you get past some of the
technical hurdles and have your new
site online, you will find that it is a
rewarding accomplishment. Please feel
free to contact me with questions or
comments. MA
Bill Bitautas
[email protected]
Edition: Model Aviation - 2007/01
Page Numbers: 46,47,48,50,52
IN THE OLD DAYS, getting involved
in the hobby meant a leisurely stop by
the local hobby shop. There people
would find helpful experts, beautiful
models hanging from the ceiling, and all
the latest hot gadgets under the display
counter. It was the local hotbed of
activity where anyone could join in the
fun and find out how to get more
involved.
Today the aeromodeling community
is adapting to the new information age.
Thanks to the Internet, people are used
to surfing the information superhighway
because it’s fast and convenient.
Everything a hobbyist needs to know is
just a click away.
To get these people out to the flying
site, they need to know about the clubs
in their area. A club Web site is a means
of distributing information about the
organization to the membership and to
the public. Newsletters, club rosters,
photo albums, plans, movies, and other
information are made readily available
on a Web page.
I have talked to other clubs’
members who receive their club
newsletters and other correspondence
solely via the Internet. That helps save
the cost of postage and paper. Of course
that distribution system only works if
the club’s members have an Internet
connection.
In some cases this may mean a trip
to the local library or to a fellow club
member’s house if you don’t have
Internet access at home. The Internet is
also available at many public libraries.
This article will describe some
options for how to structure a club Web
site. It will include information about
how to have your newly created site
appear on the Internet for the world to
see.
I belong to the Checkerboard Field
R/C Club in Maywood, Illinois, and
maintain the club Web page in addition
to editing the club newsletter: The
Checkerboard Flyer. Our site is
www.checkerboardrc.org. Please visit us
soon.
Site Content: One of the first
challenges in designing a Web site is to
determine what will be posted to it.
Some information will be there for club
members and other information will be
for the public. We have had new
members join the Checkerboard club
after visiting our page to learn about us.
The following are pages on our Web
site. I will explain their purpose. As you
read about them you may find that you
would like to have similar information
on your site or you may want to make
different information available.
Home: This is the page where visitors
arrive when they type your club’s Web
site address into a browser. Create a
site-address name that is as close to your
club’s name as possible; that will help
those who are looking for your Web
page find it more easily via most
Internet search engines. This address is
known as a Uniform Resource Locator,
or URL.
Your home page is your opportunity
to make a good first impression. As the
saying goes, you only get one chance to
do that.
I use the Checkerboard club’s home
page to disseminate important
information to club members. The home
page should contain the most important
headlines. The home page also features
links to other pages on our site that
visitors might be interested in viewing,
as follows.
• “About Us”: For visitors who want to
learn about your club, this section is the
first place they should look. It could
contain club contact information,
directions to the field, and the history of
your club. Checkerboard Field was once
a US Post Office airmail field, and it has
been established that Charles Lindbergh
landed on or near it.
We also include information about
how many members we have, what
special activities are scheduled, and the
fact that we have flight trainers
available. This information is important
to someone who is looking to join a
club. We have found that flight
instruction is usually a high priority for
newcomers.
• “AMA”: We provide a link to the
AMA Web site, and in turn AMA
provides a link to our Web site. You
will need to contact AMA Club
Secretary Lois Pierce (loisp@modelair
craft.org) to notify her that your site is
up and running and request a link. She
will check to make sure your site
contains an AMA link and will post a
link on the AMA Web page to your club
site.
AMA provides a mechanism on its
site to help people find clubs in their
area (at http://modelaircraft.org/
clubsearch.aspx). It works well and
provides another way for people to link
to your site to learn about you.
• “AMA District VI”: We provide a link
to the District VI Web site. All AMA
districts have their own Web pages.
If you haven’t visited your district
site, you really should. It will probably
contain good information about events
and news in your area.
• “Calendar”: We print our club
calendar in each issue of the club
newsletter, but people misplace their
newsletters and it is nice to view the
calendar online. It is also easier to make
changes to a Web-based calendar
because there is no printing or postage
involved and the changes take place
immediately.
• “Club Roster”: Club members like to
call one another or mail cards to fellow
members, so it is nice for each member
to have a current copy of the
membership roster. Making this
information available on the Internet
presents a problem; you have probably
heard about identity theft. No one wants
to be a victim, so we make the
Checkerboard club roster available only
to club members.
When someone clicks on the “Club
Roster” link on our site, a box pops up
and the visitor is directed to enter a
password. Only club members have the
password.
If visitors do not enter the correct
password, they go no further and will
not be able to view or download the club
roster. When club members type in the
correct password, they are taken to
another page where they are able to
download the member list.
• “Fly Market”: Club members
occasionally have items they would like
to sell. The Fly Market is the place to
post ads about hobby-related items that
are for sale privately. Anyone who visits
the club Web site is able to access this
section.
• “Join”: Our membership application
can be downloaded from our Web site. It
includes information about the
membership dues structure. After a
certain point in the year the fees go
down. We also have a greatly reduced
fee for junior members. The application
includes the address where the
completed form is sent. We have had
several new members join this way
because it’s quick and convenient.
• “Map”: Our site features a
downloadable map to the flying field. I
am still amazed by the number of people
who join the club and say that even
though they live nearby, they never
knew there was a model-airplane flying
field so close. We have also had people
visiting relatives in the area who found
the field using our map.
• “Members E-mail”: This list is
available to visitors to our site, with an
important exception. There are things
called “spambots” which are software
applications that travel the Internet to
“harvest” legitimate E-mail addresses.
Their purpose is to develop mailing lists
of people to which to send spam
(unwanted E-mail.)
Some Web site-creation software
allows authors to encrypt E-mail
addresses to make them unreadable to
spambots. This is in the realm of identity
security. We want our club members’ Email
addresses available to other club
Adobe DreamWeaver software was used to create the Checkerboard Field R/C Club
Web site. This software can be used as a drag-and-drop or command-line application.
One of many Web-hosting services is homestead.com. Its “one-stop shopping” in
mind, this site allows you to create, register, and host from one place.
members and to the public, excluding
spambots.
If you visit our site and move your
mouse over any of the E-mail addresses
on the members’ E-mail page, you will
notice gibberish at the bottom of the
page. This is what the E-mail addresses
look like after being encrypted.
• “Movies”: In the past few years highspeed
Internet connections have been
made available to home users. Services
such as DSL (Digital Subscriber Line)
and Cable Internet are fast, affordable,
and widely available. Although you may
never have thought of downloading a
10-megabyte file using a dial-up
connection, with a high-speed
connection it is no longer a problem.
The movies available on the
Checkerboard site are of club events. A
special gathering is the January 1
breakfast/first flight of the year. We have
movies posted of these flights for the past
three years.
At each club meeting we have time
devoted to Show & Tell, when modelers
stand in front of the membership with
their latest creations and talk about the
experience of building and flying the
models. We have movies of these
sessions. We recently posted a movie of
our Ribbon Cut Fun Fly. We also have a
few movies under the topic of “Safety”
that share serious problems members have
had.
The topic of how to format movies for
distribution on the Internet is the subject
for a separate article. The process involves
using a digital camcorder to capture video,
importing the video onto a computer’s
hard drive with appropriate cables, and
using software to edit the video.
That type of software is referred to as
NLE, or Non-Linear Editing. That means
you can move clips into a different order,
trim them, change their characteristics
(sound levels, speed, etc.), add titles and
special effects, and do many more things
to make a good movie.
Then you change the movie into a file
that can be uploaded to a Web server and
viewed by those who visit your site.
Movies add a dimension to your club
page; they make it more interesting than
simply posting static information.
• “Newsletters”: Our club still mails out
the monthly hard-copy newsletter; many
of our members do not use the Internet. As
I mentioned, receiving a club’s publication
via E-mail or downloading it from the club
Web site is a way to save money.
The other benefit of having newsletters
available on the club Web page is that
members, or anyone else, can go years
back to look for a particular article or
issue. In addition to having links to
previous newsletters, our club lists topics
covered in each issue. That way it is easier
to find the issue for which you are
looking.
• “Photo Albums”: We have thousands of
club pictures on our Web site. They are of
club events, pilot projects, fun-flys, etc.
The pictures capture model airplanes,
hamburgers cooking, and new engines,
but, more important, they capture fun
times, good friends, and great memories.
I remember many years of taking
pictures at the field, having them
developed, looking at them, and then
putting them away, not to be seen again
for a long time. The Internet allows you to
post all those pictures for your friends and
everyone else to see.
The new digital cameras make the
process easier. You can take pictures with
film cameras, scan them, and then post
them to the Internet, but it is a
cumbersome process. Digital cameras
allow you to quickly import pictures to
your computer and then upload them to
your Web site. Almost any modern
computer will feature a high-quality
display that will show all the beautiful
detail and color that digital cameras
provide.
• “Site Update History”: In time your club
Web site will grow. Changes will be
made; new sections will be added and
others will be deleted.
As the person who maintains the
Checkerboard club’s Web page, I like to
have a history of what I have done with
the site throughout the years and I like to
view such history when I visit other sites.
It is nice to see how a site was expanded
and what the priorities were in the process.
• “Weather”: Before leaving for the field
for a flying session, what important thing
do you check? The weather. Many club
Web sites have direct links from their
home pages to weather sites with their
geographic area preselected. I have just
added a weather link to our site, and it is a
great feature for my money.
I found the link in MA several months
Editors’ Picks: Club Web Sites We Liked
We did some clicking around the Internet to find some club Web sites that met the author’s criteria for a functioning
site. Perhaps the following will help spark your creativity.
For all you would-be Web masters out there, the following sites can help get you on your way.
The Checkerboard Field R/C Club site
loads fast whether you have high-speed
access or not. Its black-and-white
home page isn’t flashy, but the
information is detailed and well
organized. Give it a look at
www.checkerboardrc.org.
Most people who are looking for a club in
their area are new to the hobby and are
seeking instruction. The Miniature
Aircraft Association of Westchester in
New York highlights its training services
on its home page. Check it out at
www.maaw.com.
A club Web site is where many people
get their first impression of your club.
The Sky Ranch Flyers RC Flying Club
in Wisconsin shows off one of its
member’s beautiful creations and its
state-of-the-art flying facility on the
home page. Pay the club a visit at
www.skyranchflyers.com.
• http://websitetips.com
• www.accd.edu/spc/iic/webmaster/
tutorials
• www.webdesignfromscratch.com
• www.w3schools.com/site/default.asp
• www.davidweston.com/quotes.htm
• www.webdevelopersjournal.com/
columns/abcs_of_building_web
_sites.html MA
—MA staff
ago; it is the AirVista site. The forecast is
presented in a graph covering a period of
several days. For me the important
feature is the wind-speed chart, which
shows the time of day and predicted wind
speed.
Site Creation: I assure you that if you
are reading this article and you have
basic computer skills, you will be able to
create and maintain a Web site on the
Internet. It is really not difficult.
Many Web-hosting services, or
Internet Service Providers (ISPs), walk
you through the process of getting a site
up and running. A company that
impresses me is Homestead (www.home
stead.com). It is an all-in-one solution
and can provide you with everything you
need to get a Web site online.
Homestead offers a gallery of
professionally designed Web sites you
can modify to suit your needs. It offers
SiteBuilder software as part of the service
you use to update text, images, logos, and
more.
You upload your site with a simple
mouse click on the upload button. (There
is no need for knowledge of FTP [File
Transfer Protocol] software.) Homestead
offers prompt technical support (I
checked), and the company offers more
sophisticated options to meet your needs
after you have mastered the basics.
Homestead will also help with your
domain name, which is the address where
people reach your Web site. Our club
domain name is checkerboardrc.org.
If you visit the Homestead site, you
have an option to view the design gallery
and take a free trial, and it is actually a
free trial. It won’t cost you anything. I
advise you to visit this site and get
familiar with options and terminology.
You can even begin building your site to
get a feel for the process.
If you would like to learn what else is
available, do a Google search for “Web
site creation software” or “Web site
wizard” and that will bring up plenty of
options. Keep searching until you find a
hosting service that meets your needs.
After you have located an ISP you
feel comfortable with, you need to create
the Web site. You don’t have to be a
designer to make an attractive,
functional site. Following are several
rules I use to ensure a good visitor
experience.
• Three-Links Rule: A visitor to your site
should be able to get to any information
by clicking on three links or less. If a
visitor wants to see the October 2004
club newsletter, he or she should not
need to click more than three times to
get there. This rule serves to make sure
that visitors are quickly able to access
the information they want from your
site.
• Fifteen-Second Rule: Web pages need
to load in 15 seconds or less. Years ago
many of us connected to the Internet
using modems. Compared to today’s
DSL and cable connections, modems are
slow.
If your pages contain only text, the
15-Second Rule is usually easy to
adhere to; type tends to load quickly.
Pages take longer to load when
photographs and other graphics are
added.
I chose 15 seconds as an arbitrary
number when I was visiting sites using a
modem connection. I began noticing
how long pages took to load and decided
that 15 seconds was my threshold of
patience. After 15 seconds I decided it
was not worth the wait (no matter what
the content was) and clicked to another
site. The first site lost one visitor.
You can make a 10-Second Rule or a
30-Second Rule; the point is that you
need to have a design goal in mind. Test
every page in your site to see if some
take an extremely long time to load. If
so, do something about it to improve
your visitor’s experience.
It is important to remember that even
with DSL and cable connections, it is
possible to create Web pages that load
slowly. I’ll discuss a solution to that
problem a bit later, under the Optimize
Images Rule.
• Navigation Rule: Create a simple,
consistent navigation system.
Navigation in a Web site is simply a list
of links you provide to take a visitor to
other pages within your site. The device
used to do this is usually called a
Navigation Bar or Navigation Menu. It
typically takes the shape of a column of
links along one side of the page or a row
of links along the top of the page.
A visitor may enter your site on your
home page and then click the calendar
link to arrive at that page. There the
visitor has the option of seeing other
pages on your site. The Navigation Rule
is that no matter what page a visitor
views on your site, the same navigation
choices are available.
You may have visited a Web site
where after clicking a link to be taken to
another page, you arrive at a page that
has no links or a different set of links
from those on the previous page. It may
result in one of those “You can’t get
there from here!” moments.
You want your visitors to always
have the option of quickly viewing any
page in your site. A simple, consistent
navigation system provides that. (It is
true that the visitor can click the “Back”
button in the browser, but its intent is
not for use in site navigation.)
• Optimize Images Rule: Make images
load quickly by optimizing them. Digital
cameras are wonderful things. They
have the ability to produce fabulous
images with deep, rich colors. And on a
Web site dedicated to model airplanes,
photographs of these often fascinating
creations should be plentiful.
In Web design the problem with
those beautiful photographs is that they
may take longer to load. Photographs
that come straight from the camera
typically have much more detail than
can be presented on a computer screen.
The secret of photographs on Web
pages is that most of them are made to
load more quickly through a process
called “optimization.” This lets an
image load on a Web page more
quickly, but it still appears to be of high
quality.
The benefit to you as a Web site
designer is that since each optimized
photograph will load faster, you will be
able to put more pictures on the page.
Homestead has a button on its
SiteBuilder software that you simply
click to optimize your photos and other
images.
• Site-Update Rule: Update your site
content regularly. Once a month is a
good beginning goal.
Suppose your club newsletter editor
sent out the January issue and then sent
out the exact same newsletter in
February except for changing the
month? Club members would be
unhappy because they would believe
that they deserve some new content. The
same belief holds with the club Web
site.
You may update more or less often
than once a month, but do it regularly,
whatever that means to you and your
club. And put a note on the home page
indicating when the site was last
updated. That way club members and
visitors know you have been busy and
that the content is current.
• Content-Organization Rule: Find a
way to organize the content for your
site. It will make your job as Web
designer easier.
Our club Web site has thousands of
photographs on various pages. When I
began taking pictures for the site I
would name each image to include the
person (or people) in the photograph. If
it were a photograph of a model, the
name would include the builder’s name in
shorthand form (jsmith_aero
master.jpg). That organizational
technique lasted roughly a year. It was
extremely labor intensive.
For organizing pictures it is much
easier to purchase photo-album software.
There are two I recommend; which one
you choose will depend on which
computer platform you use.
If you use a Windows computer,
Adobe Premiere Elements is a good, lowcost
choice. If you use a newer Macintosh
computer, the system will come with a
program called iPhoto. Both are digital
photo albums that allow you to sort and
arrange photos in various ways. They
even provide basic photo-editing
capability.
Now I organize by events. All pictures
taken at the November club meeting will
go into a digital album named “November
2006 Club Meeting.” This system has
worked well for me in spite of the fact
that I need to manage thousands of
photographs.
• Focus Rule: A Web site should have
one clear purpose. Once I visited a site
whose designer was involved in RC and
was a plumber by trade. There was
information about both topics scattered
throughout the site. It was confusing;
don’t do this. Instead there should have
been two separate sites: one for modeling
and another for plumbing.
This idea extends to individual Web
pages. If a page were called “Calendar,” a
visitor wouldn’t expect to find items for
sale there. Additional Web pages in your
site typically don’t cost more, so create as
many as you need to allow each to have a
clear reason for being there.
• Visit Other Sites Rule: You can’t think
of everything. Visit other club Web sites
to see what they are doing. If you do this
you will get valuable ideas.
I live in AMA District VI. The district
Web site (www.csam.iit.edu/~ama
dist6/index.htm) has links to all other
club sites in the district. The AMA Web
site (www.modelaircraft.org) has a link
to the Charter Club Locator, which
allows you to visit sites belonging to
clubs in other AMA districts. Doing
this research will be worth the effort.
• Visit Your Site Rule: What? That’s
right. You will likely spend some time
building and refining your club Web
site, and you will believe you know it
inside and out. However, it is a good
experience to visit your site on the
Internet, preferably from a different
computer, perhaps at a different
location. Check your local library.
The point is to give you an
opportunity to see your site as others
do. I visit my club’s site often, and I
usually find things that need to be
adjusted.
View your site on a different
platform. If you use a Macintosh
computer to build the site, look at it on
a Windows computer.
Use different browsers. Windows
Internet Explorer is one of the most
popular, but others such as Firefox
have a large following. You may not be
able to design your site so it displays
perfectly in every browser, but you
should make sure it displays properly
in the most popular ones.
People take pride in the model
airplanes they build and fly, which is
why they are involved in this hobby.
Building an attractive club Web site
that offers current information that is of
use to people is an accomplishment to
be proud of as well.
Once you get past some of the
technical hurdles and have your new
site online, you will find that it is a
rewarding accomplishment. Please feel
free to contact me with questions or
comments. MA
Bill Bitautas
[email protected]
Edition: Model Aviation - 2007/01
Page Numbers: 46,47,48,50,52
IN THE OLD DAYS, getting involved
in the hobby meant a leisurely stop by
the local hobby shop. There people
would find helpful experts, beautiful
models hanging from the ceiling, and all
the latest hot gadgets under the display
counter. It was the local hotbed of
activity where anyone could join in the
fun and find out how to get more
involved.
Today the aeromodeling community
is adapting to the new information age.
Thanks to the Internet, people are used
to surfing the information superhighway
because it’s fast and convenient.
Everything a hobbyist needs to know is
just a click away.
To get these people out to the flying
site, they need to know about the clubs
in their area. A club Web site is a means
of distributing information about the
organization to the membership and to
the public. Newsletters, club rosters,
photo albums, plans, movies, and other
information are made readily available
on a Web page.
I have talked to other clubs’
members who receive their club
newsletters and other correspondence
solely via the Internet. That helps save
the cost of postage and paper. Of course
that distribution system only works if
the club’s members have an Internet
connection.
In some cases this may mean a trip
to the local library or to a fellow club
member’s house if you don’t have
Internet access at home. The Internet is
also available at many public libraries.
This article will describe some
options for how to structure a club Web
site. It will include information about
how to have your newly created site
appear on the Internet for the world to
see.
I belong to the Checkerboard Field
R/C Club in Maywood, Illinois, and
maintain the club Web page in addition
to editing the club newsletter: The
Checkerboard Flyer. Our site is
www.checkerboardrc.org. Please visit us
soon.
Site Content: One of the first
challenges in designing a Web site is to
determine what will be posted to it.
Some information will be there for club
members and other information will be
for the public. We have had new
members join the Checkerboard club
after visiting our page to learn about us.
The following are pages on our Web
site. I will explain their purpose. As you
read about them you may find that you
would like to have similar information
on your site or you may want to make
different information available.
Home: This is the page where visitors
arrive when they type your club’s Web
site address into a browser. Create a
site-address name that is as close to your
club’s name as possible; that will help
those who are looking for your Web
page find it more easily via most
Internet search engines. This address is
known as a Uniform Resource Locator,
or URL.
Your home page is your opportunity
to make a good first impression. As the
saying goes, you only get one chance to
do that.
I use the Checkerboard club’s home
page to disseminate important
information to club members. The home
page should contain the most important
headlines. The home page also features
links to other pages on our site that
visitors might be interested in viewing,
as follows.
• “About Us”: For visitors who want to
learn about your club, this section is the
first place they should look. It could
contain club contact information,
directions to the field, and the history of
your club. Checkerboard Field was once
a US Post Office airmail field, and it has
been established that Charles Lindbergh
landed on or near it.
We also include information about
how many members we have, what
special activities are scheduled, and the
fact that we have flight trainers
available. This information is important
to someone who is looking to join a
club. We have found that flight
instruction is usually a high priority for
newcomers.
• “AMA”: We provide a link to the
AMA Web site, and in turn AMA
provides a link to our Web site. You
will need to contact AMA Club
Secretary Lois Pierce (loisp@modelair
craft.org) to notify her that your site is
up and running and request a link. She
will check to make sure your site
contains an AMA link and will post a
link on the AMA Web page to your club
site.
AMA provides a mechanism on its
site to help people find clubs in their
area (at http://modelaircraft.org/
clubsearch.aspx). It works well and
provides another way for people to link
to your site to learn about you.
• “AMA District VI”: We provide a link
to the District VI Web site. All AMA
districts have their own Web pages.
If you haven’t visited your district
site, you really should. It will probably
contain good information about events
and news in your area.
• “Calendar”: We print our club
calendar in each issue of the club
newsletter, but people misplace their
newsletters and it is nice to view the
calendar online. It is also easier to make
changes to a Web-based calendar
because there is no printing or postage
involved and the changes take place
immediately.
• “Club Roster”: Club members like to
call one another or mail cards to fellow
members, so it is nice for each member
to have a current copy of the
membership roster. Making this
information available on the Internet
presents a problem; you have probably
heard about identity theft. No one wants
to be a victim, so we make the
Checkerboard club roster available only
to club members.
When someone clicks on the “Club
Roster” link on our site, a box pops up
and the visitor is directed to enter a
password. Only club members have the
password.
If visitors do not enter the correct
password, they go no further and will
not be able to view or download the club
roster. When club members type in the
correct password, they are taken to
another page where they are able to
download the member list.
• “Fly Market”: Club members
occasionally have items they would like
to sell. The Fly Market is the place to
post ads about hobby-related items that
are for sale privately. Anyone who visits
the club Web site is able to access this
section.
• “Join”: Our membership application
can be downloaded from our Web site. It
includes information about the
membership dues structure. After a
certain point in the year the fees go
down. We also have a greatly reduced
fee for junior members. The application
includes the address where the
completed form is sent. We have had
several new members join this way
because it’s quick and convenient.
• “Map”: Our site features a
downloadable map to the flying field. I
am still amazed by the number of people
who join the club and say that even
though they live nearby, they never
knew there was a model-airplane flying
field so close. We have also had people
visiting relatives in the area who found
the field using our map.
• “Members E-mail”: This list is
available to visitors to our site, with an
important exception. There are things
called “spambots” which are software
applications that travel the Internet to
“harvest” legitimate E-mail addresses.
Their purpose is to develop mailing lists
of people to which to send spam
(unwanted E-mail.)
Some Web site-creation software
allows authors to encrypt E-mail
addresses to make them unreadable to
spambots. This is in the realm of identity
security. We want our club members’ Email
addresses available to other club
Adobe DreamWeaver software was used to create the Checkerboard Field R/C Club
Web site. This software can be used as a drag-and-drop or command-line application.
One of many Web-hosting services is homestead.com. Its “one-stop shopping” in
mind, this site allows you to create, register, and host from one place.
members and to the public, excluding
spambots.
If you visit our site and move your
mouse over any of the E-mail addresses
on the members’ E-mail page, you will
notice gibberish at the bottom of the
page. This is what the E-mail addresses
look like after being encrypted.
• “Movies”: In the past few years highspeed
Internet connections have been
made available to home users. Services
such as DSL (Digital Subscriber Line)
and Cable Internet are fast, affordable,
and widely available. Although you may
never have thought of downloading a
10-megabyte file using a dial-up
connection, with a high-speed
connection it is no longer a problem.
The movies available on the
Checkerboard site are of club events. A
special gathering is the January 1
breakfast/first flight of the year. We have
movies posted of these flights for the past
three years.
At each club meeting we have time
devoted to Show & Tell, when modelers
stand in front of the membership with
their latest creations and talk about the
experience of building and flying the
models. We have movies of these
sessions. We recently posted a movie of
our Ribbon Cut Fun Fly. We also have a
few movies under the topic of “Safety”
that share serious problems members have
had.
The topic of how to format movies for
distribution on the Internet is the subject
for a separate article. The process involves
using a digital camcorder to capture video,
importing the video onto a computer’s
hard drive with appropriate cables, and
using software to edit the video.
That type of software is referred to as
NLE, or Non-Linear Editing. That means
you can move clips into a different order,
trim them, change their characteristics
(sound levels, speed, etc.), add titles and
special effects, and do many more things
to make a good movie.
Then you change the movie into a file
that can be uploaded to a Web server and
viewed by those who visit your site.
Movies add a dimension to your club
page; they make it more interesting than
simply posting static information.
• “Newsletters”: Our club still mails out
the monthly hard-copy newsletter; many
of our members do not use the Internet. As
I mentioned, receiving a club’s publication
via E-mail or downloading it from the club
Web site is a way to save money.
The other benefit of having newsletters
available on the club Web page is that
members, or anyone else, can go years
back to look for a particular article or
issue. In addition to having links to
previous newsletters, our club lists topics
covered in each issue. That way it is easier
to find the issue for which you are
looking.
• “Photo Albums”: We have thousands of
club pictures on our Web site. They are of
club events, pilot projects, fun-flys, etc.
The pictures capture model airplanes,
hamburgers cooking, and new engines,
but, more important, they capture fun
times, good friends, and great memories.
I remember many years of taking
pictures at the field, having them
developed, looking at them, and then
putting them away, not to be seen again
for a long time. The Internet allows you to
post all those pictures for your friends and
everyone else to see.
The new digital cameras make the
process easier. You can take pictures with
film cameras, scan them, and then post
them to the Internet, but it is a
cumbersome process. Digital cameras
allow you to quickly import pictures to
your computer and then upload them to
your Web site. Almost any modern
computer will feature a high-quality
display that will show all the beautiful
detail and color that digital cameras
provide.
• “Site Update History”: In time your club
Web site will grow. Changes will be
made; new sections will be added and
others will be deleted.
As the person who maintains the
Checkerboard club’s Web page, I like to
have a history of what I have done with
the site throughout the years and I like to
view such history when I visit other sites.
It is nice to see how a site was expanded
and what the priorities were in the process.
• “Weather”: Before leaving for the field
for a flying session, what important thing
do you check? The weather. Many club
Web sites have direct links from their
home pages to weather sites with their
geographic area preselected. I have just
added a weather link to our site, and it is a
great feature for my money.
I found the link in MA several months
Editors’ Picks: Club Web Sites We Liked
We did some clicking around the Internet to find some club Web sites that met the author’s criteria for a functioning
site. Perhaps the following will help spark your creativity.
For all you would-be Web masters out there, the following sites can help get you on your way.
The Checkerboard Field R/C Club site
loads fast whether you have high-speed
access or not. Its black-and-white
home page isn’t flashy, but the
information is detailed and well
organized. Give it a look at
www.checkerboardrc.org.
Most people who are looking for a club in
their area are new to the hobby and are
seeking instruction. The Miniature
Aircraft Association of Westchester in
New York highlights its training services
on its home page. Check it out at
www.maaw.com.
A club Web site is where many people
get their first impression of your club.
The Sky Ranch Flyers RC Flying Club
in Wisconsin shows off one of its
member’s beautiful creations and its
state-of-the-art flying facility on the
home page. Pay the club a visit at
www.skyranchflyers.com.
• http://websitetips.com
• www.accd.edu/spc/iic/webmaster/
tutorials
• www.webdesignfromscratch.com
• www.w3schools.com/site/default.asp
• www.davidweston.com/quotes.htm
• www.webdevelopersjournal.com/
columns/abcs_of_building_web
_sites.html MA
—MA staff
ago; it is the AirVista site. The forecast is
presented in a graph covering a period of
several days. For me the important
feature is the wind-speed chart, which
shows the time of day and predicted wind
speed.
Site Creation: I assure you that if you
are reading this article and you have
basic computer skills, you will be able to
create and maintain a Web site on the
Internet. It is really not difficult.
Many Web-hosting services, or
Internet Service Providers (ISPs), walk
you through the process of getting a site
up and running. A company that
impresses me is Homestead (www.home
stead.com). It is an all-in-one solution
and can provide you with everything you
need to get a Web site online.
Homestead offers a gallery of
professionally designed Web sites you
can modify to suit your needs. It offers
SiteBuilder software as part of the service
you use to update text, images, logos, and
more.
You upload your site with a simple
mouse click on the upload button. (There
is no need for knowledge of FTP [File
Transfer Protocol] software.) Homestead
offers prompt technical support (I
checked), and the company offers more
sophisticated options to meet your needs
after you have mastered the basics.
Homestead will also help with your
domain name, which is the address where
people reach your Web site. Our club
domain name is checkerboardrc.org.
If you visit the Homestead site, you
have an option to view the design gallery
and take a free trial, and it is actually a
free trial. It won’t cost you anything. I
advise you to visit this site and get
familiar with options and terminology.
You can even begin building your site to
get a feel for the process.
If you would like to learn what else is
available, do a Google search for “Web
site creation software” or “Web site
wizard” and that will bring up plenty of
options. Keep searching until you find a
hosting service that meets your needs.
After you have located an ISP you
feel comfortable with, you need to create
the Web site. You don’t have to be a
designer to make an attractive,
functional site. Following are several
rules I use to ensure a good visitor
experience.
• Three-Links Rule: A visitor to your site
should be able to get to any information
by clicking on three links or less. If a
visitor wants to see the October 2004
club newsletter, he or she should not
need to click more than three times to
get there. This rule serves to make sure
that visitors are quickly able to access
the information they want from your
site.
• Fifteen-Second Rule: Web pages need
to load in 15 seconds or less. Years ago
many of us connected to the Internet
using modems. Compared to today’s
DSL and cable connections, modems are
slow.
If your pages contain only text, the
15-Second Rule is usually easy to
adhere to; type tends to load quickly.
Pages take longer to load when
photographs and other graphics are
added.
I chose 15 seconds as an arbitrary
number when I was visiting sites using a
modem connection. I began noticing
how long pages took to load and decided
that 15 seconds was my threshold of
patience. After 15 seconds I decided it
was not worth the wait (no matter what
the content was) and clicked to another
site. The first site lost one visitor.
You can make a 10-Second Rule or a
30-Second Rule; the point is that you
need to have a design goal in mind. Test
every page in your site to see if some
take an extremely long time to load. If
so, do something about it to improve
your visitor’s experience.
It is important to remember that even
with DSL and cable connections, it is
possible to create Web pages that load
slowly. I’ll discuss a solution to that
problem a bit later, under the Optimize
Images Rule.
• Navigation Rule: Create a simple,
consistent navigation system.
Navigation in a Web site is simply a list
of links you provide to take a visitor to
other pages within your site. The device
used to do this is usually called a
Navigation Bar or Navigation Menu. It
typically takes the shape of a column of
links along one side of the page or a row
of links along the top of the page.
A visitor may enter your site on your
home page and then click the calendar
link to arrive at that page. There the
visitor has the option of seeing other
pages on your site. The Navigation Rule
is that no matter what page a visitor
views on your site, the same navigation
choices are available.
You may have visited a Web site
where after clicking a link to be taken to
another page, you arrive at a page that
has no links or a different set of links
from those on the previous page. It may
result in one of those “You can’t get
there from here!” moments.
You want your visitors to always
have the option of quickly viewing any
page in your site. A simple, consistent
navigation system provides that. (It is
true that the visitor can click the “Back”
button in the browser, but its intent is
not for use in site navigation.)
• Optimize Images Rule: Make images
load quickly by optimizing them. Digital
cameras are wonderful things. They
have the ability to produce fabulous
images with deep, rich colors. And on a
Web site dedicated to model airplanes,
photographs of these often fascinating
creations should be plentiful.
In Web design the problem with
those beautiful photographs is that they
may take longer to load. Photographs
that come straight from the camera
typically have much more detail than
can be presented on a computer screen.
The secret of photographs on Web
pages is that most of them are made to
load more quickly through a process
called “optimization.” This lets an
image load on a Web page more
quickly, but it still appears to be of high
quality.
The benefit to you as a Web site
designer is that since each optimized
photograph will load faster, you will be
able to put more pictures on the page.
Homestead has a button on its
SiteBuilder software that you simply
click to optimize your photos and other
images.
• Site-Update Rule: Update your site
content regularly. Once a month is a
good beginning goal.
Suppose your club newsletter editor
sent out the January issue and then sent
out the exact same newsletter in
February except for changing the
month? Club members would be
unhappy because they would believe
that they deserve some new content. The
same belief holds with the club Web
site.
You may update more or less often
than once a month, but do it regularly,
whatever that means to you and your
club. And put a note on the home page
indicating when the site was last
updated. That way club members and
visitors know you have been busy and
that the content is current.
• Content-Organization Rule: Find a
way to organize the content for your
site. It will make your job as Web
designer easier.
Our club Web site has thousands of
photographs on various pages. When I
began taking pictures for the site I
would name each image to include the
person (or people) in the photograph. If
it were a photograph of a model, the
name would include the builder’s name in
shorthand form (jsmith_aero
master.jpg). That organizational
technique lasted roughly a year. It was
extremely labor intensive.
For organizing pictures it is much
easier to purchase photo-album software.
There are two I recommend; which one
you choose will depend on which
computer platform you use.
If you use a Windows computer,
Adobe Premiere Elements is a good, lowcost
choice. If you use a newer Macintosh
computer, the system will come with a
program called iPhoto. Both are digital
photo albums that allow you to sort and
arrange photos in various ways. They
even provide basic photo-editing
capability.
Now I organize by events. All pictures
taken at the November club meeting will
go into a digital album named “November
2006 Club Meeting.” This system has
worked well for me in spite of the fact
that I need to manage thousands of
photographs.
• Focus Rule: A Web site should have
one clear purpose. Once I visited a site
whose designer was involved in RC and
was a plumber by trade. There was
information about both topics scattered
throughout the site. It was confusing;
don’t do this. Instead there should have
been two separate sites: one for modeling
and another for plumbing.
This idea extends to individual Web
pages. If a page were called “Calendar,” a
visitor wouldn’t expect to find items for
sale there. Additional Web pages in your
site typically don’t cost more, so create as
many as you need to allow each to have a
clear reason for being there.
• Visit Other Sites Rule: You can’t think
of everything. Visit other club Web sites
to see what they are doing. If you do this
you will get valuable ideas.
I live in AMA District VI. The district
Web site (www.csam.iit.edu/~ama
dist6/index.htm) has links to all other
club sites in the district. The AMA Web
site (www.modelaircraft.org) has a link
to the Charter Club Locator, which
allows you to visit sites belonging to
clubs in other AMA districts. Doing
this research will be worth the effort.
• Visit Your Site Rule: What? That’s
right. You will likely spend some time
building and refining your club Web
site, and you will believe you know it
inside and out. However, it is a good
experience to visit your site on the
Internet, preferably from a different
computer, perhaps at a different
location. Check your local library.
The point is to give you an
opportunity to see your site as others
do. I visit my club’s site often, and I
usually find things that need to be
adjusted.
View your site on a different
platform. If you use a Macintosh
computer to build the site, look at it on
a Windows computer.
Use different browsers. Windows
Internet Explorer is one of the most
popular, but others such as Firefox
have a large following. You may not be
able to design your site so it displays
perfectly in every browser, but you
should make sure it displays properly
in the most popular ones.
People take pride in the model
airplanes they build and fly, which is
why they are involved in this hobby.
Building an attractive club Web site
that offers current information that is of
use to people is an accomplishment to
be proud of as well.
Once you get past some of the
technical hurdles and have your new
site online, you will find that it is a
rewarding accomplishment. Please feel
free to contact me with questions or
comments. MA
Bill Bitautas
[email protected]
Edition: Model Aviation - 2007/01
Page Numbers: 46,47,48,50,52
IN THE OLD DAYS, getting involved
in the hobby meant a leisurely stop by
the local hobby shop. There people
would find helpful experts, beautiful
models hanging from the ceiling, and all
the latest hot gadgets under the display
counter. It was the local hotbed of
activity where anyone could join in the
fun and find out how to get more
involved.
Today the aeromodeling community
is adapting to the new information age.
Thanks to the Internet, people are used
to surfing the information superhighway
because it’s fast and convenient.
Everything a hobbyist needs to know is
just a click away.
To get these people out to the flying
site, they need to know about the clubs
in their area. A club Web site is a means
of distributing information about the
organization to the membership and to
the public. Newsletters, club rosters,
photo albums, plans, movies, and other
information are made readily available
on a Web page.
I have talked to other clubs’
members who receive their club
newsletters and other correspondence
solely via the Internet. That helps save
the cost of postage and paper. Of course
that distribution system only works if
the club’s members have an Internet
connection.
In some cases this may mean a trip
to the local library or to a fellow club
member’s house if you don’t have
Internet access at home. The Internet is
also available at many public libraries.
This article will describe some
options for how to structure a club Web
site. It will include information about
how to have your newly created site
appear on the Internet for the world to
see.
I belong to the Checkerboard Field
R/C Club in Maywood, Illinois, and
maintain the club Web page in addition
to editing the club newsletter: The
Checkerboard Flyer. Our site is
www.checkerboardrc.org. Please visit us
soon.
Site Content: One of the first
challenges in designing a Web site is to
determine what will be posted to it.
Some information will be there for club
members and other information will be
for the public. We have had new
members join the Checkerboard club
after visiting our page to learn about us.
The following are pages on our Web
site. I will explain their purpose. As you
read about them you may find that you
would like to have similar information
on your site or you may want to make
different information available.
Home: This is the page where visitors
arrive when they type your club’s Web
site address into a browser. Create a
site-address name that is as close to your
club’s name as possible; that will help
those who are looking for your Web
page find it more easily via most
Internet search engines. This address is
known as a Uniform Resource Locator,
or URL.
Your home page is your opportunity
to make a good first impression. As the
saying goes, you only get one chance to
do that.
I use the Checkerboard club’s home
page to disseminate important
information to club members. The home
page should contain the most important
headlines. The home page also features
links to other pages on our site that
visitors might be interested in viewing,
as follows.
• “About Us”: For visitors who want to
learn about your club, this section is the
first place they should look. It could
contain club contact information,
directions to the field, and the history of
your club. Checkerboard Field was once
a US Post Office airmail field, and it has
been established that Charles Lindbergh
landed on or near it.
We also include information about
how many members we have, what
special activities are scheduled, and the
fact that we have flight trainers
available. This information is important
to someone who is looking to join a
club. We have found that flight
instruction is usually a high priority for
newcomers.
• “AMA”: We provide a link to the
AMA Web site, and in turn AMA
provides a link to our Web site. You
will need to contact AMA Club
Secretary Lois Pierce (loisp@modelair
craft.org) to notify her that your site is
up and running and request a link. She
will check to make sure your site
contains an AMA link and will post a
link on the AMA Web page to your club
site.
AMA provides a mechanism on its
site to help people find clubs in their
area (at http://modelaircraft.org/
clubsearch.aspx). It works well and
provides another way for people to link
to your site to learn about you.
• “AMA District VI”: We provide a link
to the District VI Web site. All AMA
districts have their own Web pages.
If you haven’t visited your district
site, you really should. It will probably
contain good information about events
and news in your area.
• “Calendar”: We print our club
calendar in each issue of the club
newsletter, but people misplace their
newsletters and it is nice to view the
calendar online. It is also easier to make
changes to a Web-based calendar
because there is no printing or postage
involved and the changes take place
immediately.
• “Club Roster”: Club members like to
call one another or mail cards to fellow
members, so it is nice for each member
to have a current copy of the
membership roster. Making this
information available on the Internet
presents a problem; you have probably
heard about identity theft. No one wants
to be a victim, so we make the
Checkerboard club roster available only
to club members.
When someone clicks on the “Club
Roster” link on our site, a box pops up
and the visitor is directed to enter a
password. Only club members have the
password.
If visitors do not enter the correct
password, they go no further and will
not be able to view or download the club
roster. When club members type in the
correct password, they are taken to
another page where they are able to
download the member list.
• “Fly Market”: Club members
occasionally have items they would like
to sell. The Fly Market is the place to
post ads about hobby-related items that
are for sale privately. Anyone who visits
the club Web site is able to access this
section.
• “Join”: Our membership application
can be downloaded from our Web site. It
includes information about the
membership dues structure. After a
certain point in the year the fees go
down. We also have a greatly reduced
fee for junior members. The application
includes the address where the
completed form is sent. We have had
several new members join this way
because it’s quick and convenient.
• “Map”: Our site features a
downloadable map to the flying field. I
am still amazed by the number of people
who join the club and say that even
though they live nearby, they never
knew there was a model-airplane flying
field so close. We have also had people
visiting relatives in the area who found
the field using our map.
• “Members E-mail”: This list is
available to visitors to our site, with an
important exception. There are things
called “spambots” which are software
applications that travel the Internet to
“harvest” legitimate E-mail addresses.
Their purpose is to develop mailing lists
of people to which to send spam
(unwanted E-mail.)
Some Web site-creation software
allows authors to encrypt E-mail
addresses to make them unreadable to
spambots. This is in the realm of identity
security. We want our club members’ Email
addresses available to other club
Adobe DreamWeaver software was used to create the Checkerboard Field R/C Club
Web site. This software can be used as a drag-and-drop or command-line application.
One of many Web-hosting services is homestead.com. Its “one-stop shopping” in
mind, this site allows you to create, register, and host from one place.
members and to the public, excluding
spambots.
If you visit our site and move your
mouse over any of the E-mail addresses
on the members’ E-mail page, you will
notice gibberish at the bottom of the
page. This is what the E-mail addresses
look like after being encrypted.
• “Movies”: In the past few years highspeed
Internet connections have been
made available to home users. Services
such as DSL (Digital Subscriber Line)
and Cable Internet are fast, affordable,
and widely available. Although you may
never have thought of downloading a
10-megabyte file using a dial-up
connection, with a high-speed
connection it is no longer a problem.
The movies available on the
Checkerboard site are of club events. A
special gathering is the January 1
breakfast/first flight of the year. We have
movies posted of these flights for the past
three years.
At each club meeting we have time
devoted to Show & Tell, when modelers
stand in front of the membership with
their latest creations and talk about the
experience of building and flying the
models. We have movies of these
sessions. We recently posted a movie of
our Ribbon Cut Fun Fly. We also have a
few movies under the topic of “Safety”
that share serious problems members have
had.
The topic of how to format movies for
distribution on the Internet is the subject
for a separate article. The process involves
using a digital camcorder to capture video,
importing the video onto a computer’s
hard drive with appropriate cables, and
using software to edit the video.
That type of software is referred to as
NLE, or Non-Linear Editing. That means
you can move clips into a different order,
trim them, change their characteristics
(sound levels, speed, etc.), add titles and
special effects, and do many more things
to make a good movie.
Then you change the movie into a file
that can be uploaded to a Web server and
viewed by those who visit your site.
Movies add a dimension to your club
page; they make it more interesting than
simply posting static information.
• “Newsletters”: Our club still mails out
the monthly hard-copy newsletter; many
of our members do not use the Internet. As
I mentioned, receiving a club’s publication
via E-mail or downloading it from the club
Web site is a way to save money.
The other benefit of having newsletters
available on the club Web page is that
members, or anyone else, can go years
back to look for a particular article or
issue. In addition to having links to
previous newsletters, our club lists topics
covered in each issue. That way it is easier
to find the issue for which you are
looking.
• “Photo Albums”: We have thousands of
club pictures on our Web site. They are of
club events, pilot projects, fun-flys, etc.
The pictures capture model airplanes,
hamburgers cooking, and new engines,
but, more important, they capture fun
times, good friends, and great memories.
I remember many years of taking
pictures at the field, having them
developed, looking at them, and then
putting them away, not to be seen again
for a long time. The Internet allows you to
post all those pictures for your friends and
everyone else to see.
The new digital cameras make the
process easier. You can take pictures with
film cameras, scan them, and then post
them to the Internet, but it is a
cumbersome process. Digital cameras
allow you to quickly import pictures to
your computer and then upload them to
your Web site. Almost any modern
computer will feature a high-quality
display that will show all the beautiful
detail and color that digital cameras
provide.
• “Site Update History”: In time your club
Web site will grow. Changes will be
made; new sections will be added and
others will be deleted.
As the person who maintains the
Checkerboard club’s Web page, I like to
have a history of what I have done with
the site throughout the years and I like to
view such history when I visit other sites.
It is nice to see how a site was expanded
and what the priorities were in the process.
• “Weather”: Before leaving for the field
for a flying session, what important thing
do you check? The weather. Many club
Web sites have direct links from their
home pages to weather sites with their
geographic area preselected. I have just
added a weather link to our site, and it is a
great feature for my money.
I found the link in MA several months
Editors’ Picks: Club Web Sites We Liked
We did some clicking around the Internet to find some club Web sites that met the author’s criteria for a functioning
site. Perhaps the following will help spark your creativity.
For all you would-be Web masters out there, the following sites can help get you on your way.
The Checkerboard Field R/C Club site
loads fast whether you have high-speed
access or not. Its black-and-white
home page isn’t flashy, but the
information is detailed and well
organized. Give it a look at
www.checkerboardrc.org.
Most people who are looking for a club in
their area are new to the hobby and are
seeking instruction. The Miniature
Aircraft Association of Westchester in
New York highlights its training services
on its home page. Check it out at
www.maaw.com.
A club Web site is where many people
get their first impression of your club.
The Sky Ranch Flyers RC Flying Club
in Wisconsin shows off one of its
member’s beautiful creations and its
state-of-the-art flying facility on the
home page. Pay the club a visit at
www.skyranchflyers.com.
• http://websitetips.com
• www.accd.edu/spc/iic/webmaster/
tutorials
• www.webdesignfromscratch.com
• www.w3schools.com/site/default.asp
• www.davidweston.com/quotes.htm
• www.webdevelopersjournal.com/
columns/abcs_of_building_web
_sites.html MA
—MA staff
ago; it is the AirVista site. The forecast is
presented in a graph covering a period of
several days. For me the important
feature is the wind-speed chart, which
shows the time of day and predicted wind
speed.
Site Creation: I assure you that if you
are reading this article and you have
basic computer skills, you will be able to
create and maintain a Web site on the
Internet. It is really not difficult.
Many Web-hosting services, or
Internet Service Providers (ISPs), walk
you through the process of getting a site
up and running. A company that
impresses me is Homestead (www.home
stead.com). It is an all-in-one solution
and can provide you with everything you
need to get a Web site online.
Homestead offers a gallery of
professionally designed Web sites you
can modify to suit your needs. It offers
SiteBuilder software as part of the service
you use to update text, images, logos, and
more.
You upload your site with a simple
mouse click on the upload button. (There
is no need for knowledge of FTP [File
Transfer Protocol] software.) Homestead
offers prompt technical support (I
checked), and the company offers more
sophisticated options to meet your needs
after you have mastered the basics.
Homestead will also help with your
domain name, which is the address where
people reach your Web site. Our club
domain name is checkerboardrc.org.
If you visit the Homestead site, you
have an option to view the design gallery
and take a free trial, and it is actually a
free trial. It won’t cost you anything. I
advise you to visit this site and get
familiar with options and terminology.
You can even begin building your site to
get a feel for the process.
If you would like to learn what else is
available, do a Google search for “Web
site creation software” or “Web site
wizard” and that will bring up plenty of
options. Keep searching until you find a
hosting service that meets your needs.
After you have located an ISP you
feel comfortable with, you need to create
the Web site. You don’t have to be a
designer to make an attractive,
functional site. Following are several
rules I use to ensure a good visitor
experience.
• Three-Links Rule: A visitor to your site
should be able to get to any information
by clicking on three links or less. If a
visitor wants to see the October 2004
club newsletter, he or she should not
need to click more than three times to
get there. This rule serves to make sure
that visitors are quickly able to access
the information they want from your
site.
• Fifteen-Second Rule: Web pages need
to load in 15 seconds or less. Years ago
many of us connected to the Internet
using modems. Compared to today’s
DSL and cable connections, modems are
slow.
If your pages contain only text, the
15-Second Rule is usually easy to
adhere to; type tends to load quickly.
Pages take longer to load when
photographs and other graphics are
added.
I chose 15 seconds as an arbitrary
number when I was visiting sites using a
modem connection. I began noticing
how long pages took to load and decided
that 15 seconds was my threshold of
patience. After 15 seconds I decided it
was not worth the wait (no matter what
the content was) and clicked to another
site. The first site lost one visitor.
You can make a 10-Second Rule or a
30-Second Rule; the point is that you
need to have a design goal in mind. Test
every page in your site to see if some
take an extremely long time to load. If
so, do something about it to improve
your visitor’s experience.
It is important to remember that even
with DSL and cable connections, it is
possible to create Web pages that load
slowly. I’ll discuss a solution to that
problem a bit later, under the Optimize
Images Rule.
• Navigation Rule: Create a simple,
consistent navigation system.
Navigation in a Web site is simply a list
of links you provide to take a visitor to
other pages within your site. The device
used to do this is usually called a
Navigation Bar or Navigation Menu. It
typically takes the shape of a column of
links along one side of the page or a row
of links along the top of the page.
A visitor may enter your site on your
home page and then click the calendar
link to arrive at that page. There the
visitor has the option of seeing other
pages on your site. The Navigation Rule
is that no matter what page a visitor
views on your site, the same navigation
choices are available.
You may have visited a Web site
where after clicking a link to be taken to
another page, you arrive at a page that
has no links or a different set of links
from those on the previous page. It may
result in one of those “You can’t get
there from here!” moments.
You want your visitors to always
have the option of quickly viewing any
page in your site. A simple, consistent
navigation system provides that. (It is
true that the visitor can click the “Back”
button in the browser, but its intent is
not for use in site navigation.)
• Optimize Images Rule: Make images
load quickly by optimizing them. Digital
cameras are wonderful things. They
have the ability to produce fabulous
images with deep, rich colors. And on a
Web site dedicated to model airplanes,
photographs of these often fascinating
creations should be plentiful.
In Web design the problem with
those beautiful photographs is that they
may take longer to load. Photographs
that come straight from the camera
typically have much more detail than
can be presented on a computer screen.
The secret of photographs on Web
pages is that most of them are made to
load more quickly through a process
called “optimization.” This lets an
image load on a Web page more
quickly, but it still appears to be of high
quality.
The benefit to you as a Web site
designer is that since each optimized
photograph will load faster, you will be
able to put more pictures on the page.
Homestead has a button on its
SiteBuilder software that you simply
click to optimize your photos and other
images.
• Site-Update Rule: Update your site
content regularly. Once a month is a
good beginning goal.
Suppose your club newsletter editor
sent out the January issue and then sent
out the exact same newsletter in
February except for changing the
month? Club members would be
unhappy because they would believe
that they deserve some new content. The
same belief holds with the club Web
site.
You may update more or less often
than once a month, but do it regularly,
whatever that means to you and your
club. And put a note on the home page
indicating when the site was last
updated. That way club members and
visitors know you have been busy and
that the content is current.
• Content-Organization Rule: Find a
way to organize the content for your
site. It will make your job as Web
designer easier.
Our club Web site has thousands of
photographs on various pages. When I
began taking pictures for the site I
would name each image to include the
person (or people) in the photograph. If
it were a photograph of a model, the
name would include the builder’s name in
shorthand form (jsmith_aero
master.jpg). That organizational
technique lasted roughly a year. It was
extremely labor intensive.
For organizing pictures it is much
easier to purchase photo-album software.
There are two I recommend; which one
you choose will depend on which
computer platform you use.
If you use a Windows computer,
Adobe Premiere Elements is a good, lowcost
choice. If you use a newer Macintosh
computer, the system will come with a
program called iPhoto. Both are digital
photo albums that allow you to sort and
arrange photos in various ways. They
even provide basic photo-editing
capability.
Now I organize by events. All pictures
taken at the November club meeting will
go into a digital album named “November
2006 Club Meeting.” This system has
worked well for me in spite of the fact
that I need to manage thousands of
photographs.
• Focus Rule: A Web site should have
one clear purpose. Once I visited a site
whose designer was involved in RC and
was a plumber by trade. There was
information about both topics scattered
throughout the site. It was confusing;
don’t do this. Instead there should have
been two separate sites: one for modeling
and another for plumbing.
This idea extends to individual Web
pages. If a page were called “Calendar,” a
visitor wouldn’t expect to find items for
sale there. Additional Web pages in your
site typically don’t cost more, so create as
many as you need to allow each to have a
clear reason for being there.
• Visit Other Sites Rule: You can’t think
of everything. Visit other club Web sites
to see what they are doing. If you do this
you will get valuable ideas.
I live in AMA District VI. The district
Web site (www.csam.iit.edu/~ama
dist6/index.htm) has links to all other
club sites in the district. The AMA Web
site (www.modelaircraft.org) has a link
to the Charter Club Locator, which
allows you to visit sites belonging to
clubs in other AMA districts. Doing
this research will be worth the effort.
• Visit Your Site Rule: What? That’s
right. You will likely spend some time
building and refining your club Web
site, and you will believe you know it
inside and out. However, it is a good
experience to visit your site on the
Internet, preferably from a different
computer, perhaps at a different
location. Check your local library.
The point is to give you an
opportunity to see your site as others
do. I visit my club’s site often, and I
usually find things that need to be
adjusted.
View your site on a different
platform. If you use a Macintosh
computer to build the site, look at it on
a Windows computer.
Use different browsers. Windows
Internet Explorer is one of the most
popular, but others such as Firefox
have a large following. You may not be
able to design your site so it displays
perfectly in every browser, but you
should make sure it displays properly
in the most popular ones.
People take pride in the model
airplanes they build and fly, which is
why they are involved in this hobby.
Building an attractive club Web site
that offers current information that is of
use to people is an accomplishment to
be proud of as well.
Once you get past some of the
technical hurdles and have your new
site online, you will find that it is a
rewarding accomplishment. Please feel
free to contact me with questions or
comments. MA
Bill Bitautas
[email protected]