Well I hear you saying "it doesn't look much different." Strictly speaking that is correct. But the site has been rebuilt from the ground up to be up-to-date with technology. I won't bore you with the gory details, but suffice to say the site is built on solid enterprise level secure technology that will benefit the club and its members in the long run. A video site overview is located under the HELP menu.

No, I will probably have to bore you a little so you can understand better. I am a firm believer in "if its not broke, don't fix it." Well it was broke, and it did need fixing. Initially I was asked to look into a problem where new memberships were reverting to the ISO date default (01/01/1970). Once I got into the code it took about 30 minutes to realise that the task was going to be a little bigger than we first anticipated. Besides the web issues, the whole database needed "purification" as many fields had become corrupted. So what you are looking at now is about two weeks of solid work by myself, Thet and the Committee. What will it mean to you? Well read on.

You can purchase and renew memberships on-line without any fear that your access or magazine will not drift off into cyber-space. Sure you could pay on-line before, but there wasn't much of a paper trail, and auditing the books would have been a lot of fun. From a committee perspective they now have the tools and system to better manage the club, both from an efficiency and functionality perspective. Many of the work-flow processes and reporting will be automated to lift the burden off a few overworked volunteers. If you don't believe me just ask Larry, your records guy.

The site includes a mainstream classified ads system where you are in control of your own ads, and if you forget to remove them you will be reminded that it still is published. After a specific period of publication the ad will expire, but you can suspend the expiration five times. An export of the classifieds database will be emailed automatically to the editor on a monthly basis for inclusion in the Journal.

The events management is largely the same except the control over different calendars and repeating events is much better. The Articles (News) and Links areas are visually similar, but have a great deal of functionality waiting to be unleashed. For example, the updating of the links can be accomplished  from the "front-end." Select users will be given this access. Yes there is also a "back-end" where administration tasks can be accomplished in a nice "desktop like" environment (see image for payments system above).

The downloads section is also a complete component in its own right, and again select members can upload to the folders. Instead of guest visitors seeing a strike-through for files that they do not have access to, they will simply not see those files (e.g. minutes). The gallery is also completely new and allows for select members to upload, but instead of individual files, a whole folder (zipped) can be uploaded. Initially we will ask you to send those zipped folders to the WEB ADMIN staff. We would ask you to name the files and folder in the same way that you want them to appear in the gallery. The gallery will also have a slide-show and links to COOLIRIS.

The Regalia for sale will be placed into a lightweight shopping cart that is easy to administer and easy to buy (3+ clicks). The store will need modification to suit our needs, but is available for normal (mailed out) purchases.

The forum is new but will retain the posts and members in the right order. This small task actually took two days. The forum has the same look and feel but includes; file and image linking, spell-as-you-type, private messaging, recent posts, managing your own posts, and many more features. The big difference is the main contact details are permanently linked to the forum, the classifieds, and the messaging system etc. In fact the whole site is linked together without any bridges. A bridge is one piece of software that provides the conduit between various components, and historically is prone to fail. In so doing the site is extremely efficient and solid.

Other minor details include the use of defined lists wherever possible. This ensures consistent data. For instance, all the BMW models are in a list, and by doing it this way, we can better manage statistics, and target members for events that are specifically designed for their model. When you initially apply for membership, there will be interactive tools to check the validity and availability of an email address and server, to ensure there is no duplication of user names. Each applicant will be required to verified via email before logging on. Currently 1200 of the 2600 members do not have email addresses. I strongly urge you (if you actually have one an it is not on your membership details), to update your records so you can get the full functionality of the web site. You can still survive without one as we have created dummy ones for you, and access needs to be manually set by WEB ADMIN staff. However you may miss important messages or renewal information. A list of unknown email addresses (by user name) is available under the HELP menu so you can check if you email address is classified as UNKNOWN.

If you are looking for another member, or maybe just to see how many other members have the same motorcycle model as you, the members list is available in variety of formats. The lists are very limited in what data is available (for privacy reasons), and email addresses are never disclosed. Sure you can email another member, and when you do so, your email address becomes known to that person. However unless you respond, your email address remains safe. In other words the whole site is completely protected against spam bots and any guest that may be on the site. If you do not wish for your email address to be sent to another member, you can use our Private Messaging system (PM) that is in the forum and under the user profile.

Which brings me on to the main reason for the update, security. The Content Management System (CMS) we are using is Joomla. With an developer base of over 40,000 developers world-wide, and over 3500 components available, this is an award-winning enterprise quality CMS with 8 developers devoted to security alone. The site is going to run slower than before, and there is a reason for this, security. Without security we are open to php and sql injection attacks that not only have the potential to compromise this site, but even your local computer. Enough said.

From a risk assessment angle the site is now on the latest cloud computing technology utilizing; RAID disks (Raid Level 10 - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) so one hard drive can fail with no loss of functionality, daily backups to another site at a different location, weekly data (structure and database) dumps to a file that is automatically emailed to WEB ADMIN staff. The whole site can be restored from either one of these backups in about 5 minutes. In other words 3 levels of backup.

Enjoy your site....

BMWMCQ WEB ADMIN