Im not a developer, but i am a graphic designer and could help with some of the building if necessary. I fear the website as is, is just here to fill a void, rather than be a resource for many. And especially with facebook cracking down on live animal (coral/fish) sales, i think this could be a great place to do that again. 

Thoughts?

Like WildBill said, Tapatalk is a free community forum that allows members to post. There are also 5$/mo and 10$/mo options depending on how much we'd want to customize it. The forum funtionality is already built in, so it'd really just be the process of setting it up, updating graphics to jpegs with more than 3 pixels.  

this would give us the photo upload options we so desperately need while maintaining all the functionality we already have. maybe we leave the current site open to "guest" members and only allow access to the new forum for paid WMAS members. the cost of the forum access would more than cover the monthly fee to tapatalk. even if you just upped membership costs by $1-2 per member.

I believe what was said was that the website, server, software, hardware and domain are all donated to the club. The support, updates, and maintenance of the site are all handled by volunteers to keep it updated and running.  There are limitations with this configuration but it has allowed us to have the site and keep it for over 25 years.

It was then mentioned that maybe the club should pay for these things in order to get paid level of support for the site and features. Since none of that had been included in the budget for the year there was no money to do that then.

It was discussed again at the first of last year and this year and if we are to do those upgrades to the site there would be no money left for any of the meetings and events that the members wanted for the year.  With member visitation of the site way down due to Facebook and other sites and paid membership continuing to not be a priority for members, it was deemed not it the best interests of the club to spend more than an entire years funds on website updates for a declining audience.

  This club is completely run by volunteers and funded only by selling memberships and by selling tickets for drawing items at our meetings and events for donated items. If we spend the funds to update the website we will have a slight improvement in the website and no meetings or events for at least two years while we fund raise to try and bring the funds back to cover those things.

If anyone is looking for a donation opportunity with some tax incentives we would be more than happy to look at those options with anyone in the position to help in that manor. This current presidency has chosen to provide and support the events and meeting requests of its members for this year while looking for additional ways to improve the website and plan to revisit these items at the first of the year unless an option becomes available before then that doesn't jeopardize the planned schedule for the year.

Please let us know if this should get a renewed look for this year at the risk of the planned events for the rest of the year.

Ouch.

Tapatalk is a free app but including it's capabilities on your website is not free at any level and only works with certain forum applications. Our current platform is not one that is supported with the current Tapatalk implementation. So adding support for that would require us to transition the forum to a new platform or possibly a newer version of our current application. Either option is not free to do.

I'm glad you have enough faith to think that only costs this club has is in supporting the website and that there is somehow enough paid members to support a second website or forum section on a continued basis. If what the club members want is to fully support the website then we can of course do that but that has not been the response we have heard nor have we seen an increase in paid memberships to indicate that either. 

I'm all about hearing the wants of the club and having a discussion about what we think takes this club on through the next years but there is no room in that discussion for statements like you started the above post with. Those are not helpful in having a discussion.

I get it you are looking for a platform to sell your corals on now that you have been kicked off of Facebook. We have always had a platform to sell them on and it may not be as simple as Facebook to post your stuff but it is free and you don't even have to be a paid member to do it.

If you are asking that this free club that tries to include anyone and everyone that wants to be involved in this hobby, become a pay to play club, I'm not sure I'm on board. That is not the charter of this club and that is not what this club or its website have been about. We want anyone to be able to come here and get help, information and support in their quest into this hobby. We also want to do that as close to free as possible.

Maybe we should create a poll and have the paid members and free members vote on whether they would all be willing not only become paid members but be open for the price going up to $30 per year knowing that they could get this one feature upgraded on the website next year once the memberships are paid?

Why is the presidency so attached to this website? Im not saying we have to go to tapatalk, if there is a better platform, then sure. i'd be more than willing to consider other options. Im not trying to be as combative as you're making me out to be, Im just looking for something better than what we have. Just because its the way we've always done something, doesn't mean its necessarily the best way.

The website is attached to the club. It is not only the source of many many years of accumulated experience of both successes and failures but it is also a repository for official club business required to maintain our non-profit status as a club.

Why would you assume that the presidency hasn't looked at other options or even options to improve what we have? I assure you that we have many times and we have even considered the potential loss of some historical records in order to make it happen. So far the options, costs and benefits have not out weighed the inconvenience posed by our current solution.

I love that you seem to be interested in being involved in the club and helping make some positive changes for the club. The best way you can do that is to become a paid member and join the club presidency to help us hear the wants / needs of the club and seek out information on ways to make those things potentially happen.

What if one of us who know how was to donate their expertise and time to build a better community that is more usable?  Would there be a membership or something in it for that person? 

Adam

I would love to get more traffic here.  I don't do the Facebook thing.  I would like to be more involved with the society but won't go as far as going to Facebook. ;)

Can you describe what is not working on the lFS page? It is working fine for me.

The picture upload is what we are currently looking into and looking for options. We should have more information on that in the next couple of weeks.

Honestly if WMAS was to convert over to a WP based platform you would have tons more options. Drupal is limited in its functionality and development. Converting over would be pretty easy and you could have a complete site setup overnight. This would allow you to continue to improve the site as well as bring in more members. WP has a complete classifieds plugin that works awesome. It is 100% mobile friendly and tons of ways to make WMAS money both in advertising and paid member features. 

We've actually already started converting the main website to WP but that doesn't help the forum or the image upload issues. We are trying to tackle the things we can, it just takes us a bit of time to find the right solution with the least impact on the site and the custom tools that have been created to help manage memberships and background tasks. Each change generally means that we are fixing or recreating a tool or two that goes along with that. We also use a few third party apps to handle our email lists and notifications and the like, and those usually need some tweaking as things change.

Juggling what we can in the time we have to work on the site.