New forum...

[Mr Cob]

"Education"

....deserving of a top menu bar button before the "Chat" button.

Link it to a new forum. In this forum we can list news and documentation of how MAAST is helping to give back to education. This should also be a permanent topic in our monthly Newsletter. Let's force ourselves to be active in this area.

Need a little bit of brainstorming as to what sub forums would be added but we really need an "easy access" to a forum that is more "proof" of our mission statement.

We could have some of these sub forums:



Scholarships
Educational Presentations
...I don't know what else...my brain just stopped working


Even if we aren't yet giving out scholarships etc....we can still start laying the foundation to help motivate and bring it to pass.

Just some thoughts I had as I was browsing the forums.

[Mr Cob]

Forum button (placed before Chat): Education

Scholarships
See how and where MAAST is sponsoring educational marine related scholarships.

Educational Presentations
This forum is dedicated to documenting educational presentations that our members and speakers have provided.

MAAST in the community
Check out how MAAST is volunteering and helping in the community.

These forums will also open up a place for members to submit ideas and info about how MAAST can be a part of each. Just kind of speaking out loud so please add to it.

[Europhyllia]

Oh and while we're adding buttons on top, how about adding a button to the newsletters? We work hard to crank these out. It would be great if more than 30 people would find and download them...

[hobogato]

good ideas, keep em coming!

[Mr Cob]

Remove from top menu bar: Blogs
Remove from top menu bar: Chat

No one blogs anyways. No one chats either. The top bar should only have important links in my opinion. I agree with Karin about adding the Newsletter button.

Here's the link to the newsletter forum that the button should link to: http://www.maast.org/forumdisplay.php?82-MAAST-Newsletter

[StevenSeas]

I think we should atleast keep the chat option available somewhere It is helpful when walking a person through something, or asking a lot of questions. Both of which i have had to do multiple times

[hobogato]

even if we remove the tab, it will still be available. it would just be a link under the "community" sub-menu. lets have some more input on this...

[allan]

Ditto on aggies remark concerning chat. I originally contested the chat feature but routinely spend time on there chatting with other maasties.

Education tab is waaaaaaay over due though.

[StevenSeas]

ok that works then. and I agree w/ mr. Cob on the education part, I think it actually shows what we are doing to support our mission statement. Also it never hurts to give back to our comunitee.

[Europhyllia]

keep chat button (pixels are cheap, chat is nice, I hate having to go through several steps to get somewhere... ;) )
add newsletter button (in place of blog button if you like)

[Mr Cob]

Well, we do need to compromise somewhere though. We are talking about adding an Education button and a Newsletter button. That means we need to remove some buttons, otherwise we quickly end up with a cluttered menu bar.

To remove the Chat button and Blog button does not mean those features will be gone from the site.

Please remember, not everyone surfs the net on the same screen resolution or browser. If you put your browser to 1024 x 768 and are on a standard 17" monitor you will quickly see there is not room for 2 more buttons.

Try this: Make your MAAST browser window "free" and size it to something smaller and see what happens to the menu bar. Pretty nasty.

[Europhyllia]

Blog can go
What's New can go (it's the same as Forum so sort of redundant)
Or fine you can sacrifice chat...

[StevenSeas]

i think theres a better more simple option:
everybody just get a better bigger screen and fix your resolution to make it fit. that way we can fit everything this wonderful club does on there.

just kidding of course. But I agree with what Karin said about which buttons can go

[Mr Cob]

Personally, I feel that the top menu bar should relate to our Mission Statement and be a useful navigation tool to the information people NEED. It's what people see first when they come to the site.

Chat is one of those social features that in part could add to some of the problems we had with getting approved for Non Profit. If we focus on structuring everything around education then we will have less problems in the future and our statement will be clear. It's been a bit blury in the past.

That's my opinion.

[Mr Cob]

"What's New" and "Forum" are not the same.

"What's New" shows anything new on the site...including blogs, posts/threads, galleries etc... "Forum", lists all of the forums...Not post/threads.

[Europhyllia]

That's a good point Rob about the education part. I definitely like that Education and maybe even Newsletter buttons will be added.

I still think Blog and What's New would be the buttons that can be dropped. What's New is the same as Forum and like you said nobody blogs.

To me Chat and Forum are just two different vehicles for conversations to take place. Like I can call you on the phone or I can mail you a letter. In both conversations I can convey something equally educational. Chat isn't necessarily more 'social'. It just makes it easier to discuss certain subjects because of the immediate nature of response (hence the phone versus letter analogy) ;)

[Mr Cob]

Just keep submitting ideas...the Board will document and weed through our mess...LOL!