Hey folks, I am building a new web site for my local car scene. I want to make sure I nail this one before I spend the cash to promote it in the local papers so I thought I would seek advice from the experts here. What features would you want to see in a local car scene web site folks, I can use all the help I can get! The theme is based on all the guys I hang with being home builders and drivers of their vehicles like many of the folks here are. The intent is to keep folks updated on the local and national rodding scene. For sure will be linking to the HAMB. www.hardcorecruisers.info Thanks!
I think the promotion of the site is more important than the site itself, you're trying to promote the scene right? A car site, like flyers and ads, seem to only promote to the people who already are in the hobby. Thats asinine. Promote your site outside of the hobby to really gain crowds. And since you're promoting to newbies, etc.... keep the site clean and non-offensive.
I'd want to see the dates and places of all the local car shows. Seems like unless you show your car, you can never find out when or where other car shows are.
I've found through building our club website and other stuff that car dudes ARE NOT OFTEN very computer-savvy. Stuff that you would take for granted, like clicking on THE ONLY IMAGE ON THE MAINPAGE to enter a website are lost on a lot of them. Also, building your website to 1024x768 or 800x600, which worked fine for bands I was in, is ALMOST ALWAYS greeted with complaints that the page goes off their screen. Good luck.
LOL, yes indeed, finding that stuff out quickly! I am also surprised how many folks are scared to simply register.
You might be able to steal some ideas from this one: http://www.utahscarclubcenter.com/ My favorite feature of this site is that it automaticly e-mails reminders of all the events, shows, cruise-ins etc going on in the valley every day. I just wish it reminded you of the events the day before the event rather than the day of the event. I also dont like that its its tied into yahoo groups and that you have to be a yahoo user to get into alot of it. Tom
Though still under construction the site Redneck Smooth is putting together for our club is a work of art. Here's the sample: http://www.carscroungers.com/ Jim Leis President ScroungersCC
Keeping the site as an additional information source, as opposed to the main info source is best. Like you said, some people are afraid to register. And like Tomcat mentioned, advance reminders/notice is better than same day notice. Tucson really sucks for this kind of stuff. You want crowds, advertise in advance, at places women hang out. Especially if it's a family show. You know how tool truck guys load up on knives, gold plated wrenches and stupid shit like that at Christmas time??? I knew a tool guy made a killing stocking up on makeup, lingerie etc.... at Christmas time. Same reasoning.
Oh man, don't post that. I just moved it from a Windows-based web server to a UNIX based one and realized that I wasn't anal about case-sensitivity before, so it's full of broken links and pics that don't work. Color me embarassed...
Check out "The Latest Scoop" (www.scoopautoevents.com) from Colorado. I heard the Nebraska car calendar was going bye-bye - are you planning to replace it?
I looked through all the sites, some nice stuff! I am PHP based because all my web building buddies use php. I think I may add bikes to the mix as well, maybe not. The cool thing is, you can do about anything you want!
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