Website moving to new hosts

[Beano]

Thanks to our hosting provider deciding to almost treble the cost of our web space, we are moving to a new provider. This will hopefully result in the cost of the hosting remaining static year-on-year, with improved disc space and bandwidth.

 

Our new hosts are based in the USA and are handling the transfer for us. While the process should be seamless, I thought it sensible to flag up that this is happening in case there are any issues. If anything does go wrong with the site, please post in this topic.

 

Thanks!

[Swifty]

Do we get any choice on the colour of the site, i.e. tangerine instead of blue?

 

I only hope the new site doesn't log me out as often as this one has. It did so again tonight and I sent two help messages without reply though, thankfully, someone or something got me back on track and I was able to carry on as normal an hour later.

 

Tango Man has a lot to answer for!

[Beano]

Swifty, it's the main club website which is moving to a new host. The design won't be changing for now.

 

This forum is provided free by nonleague.co.uk, the main man of which also advised us about our hosting problem (thanks, Ian). There's a "change theme" button at the bottom of the page that will take out quite a bit of the blue.

[Ian_W]

If you are having issues, here, please let me know.

 

My door is always open

 

I hope to complete a replacement skin today, which will solve one or two lingering bugs.

 

Either PM me or use the contact us link. http://www.nonleague.co.uk/contact to open up a ticket.

[Beano]

Right, well as far as I can tell, the transfer of the main site from the old hosts to the new hosts is complete, with no downtime! If anyone has had any problems, please let me know.

 

All that remains for me to do is get my money back from Pickaweb and obtain a reciept from HostGator for the lower cost, which should work out at less than last year's hosting costs.

 

Happy New Year everyone and please let me know if there's anything missing from the site, or new features you'd like included.

[fatboyatmfc]

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I would like to see another background colour, rather than the grey, which i know was originally used because of limited choice.

[fatboyatmfc]

BTW well done Beano for the smooth switch over. Happy new year to you too!

[Beano]

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I would like to see another background colour, rather than the grey, which i know was originally used because of limited choice.

 

I'm guessing that you mean the navigation on the left of the main site and the "Match Centre" on the right, both of which have grey backgrounds?

 

Fair enough, but what would you suggest as an alternative? We needed a background that wouldn't clash with the club colours of Tangerine & White, while also not being too harsh on the eyes. Speaking as someone with eyesight issues, I wouldn't want that grey to turn black, or tangerine as it would just give me headaches. Any more white in the background and those sections lose their impact.

 

I'm happy to look at changing it if we can find a colour that works.

[fatboyatmfc]

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How about green ? Our badge has the Ash tree in the middle or could you line the boxes out like a football pitch?

[Swifty]

Very smooth transition. Well done, Beano!

 

I might need to contact Ian as I'm having trouble with my emails. I'm a ham-fisted keyboarder and don't always write what I mean to first time round, but I've lost the option of editing old emails - either the box is greyed out or it's disappeared altogether.

[Beano]

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How about green ? Our badge has the Ash tree in the middle or could you line the boxes out like a football pitch?

 

There are two strands to this request: the first is finding a colour for those two areas of the page that works for our brand as a club while also working from a design perspective - one of the reasons we adopted the grey in the first place was that it (sort of) matched our club colours which are, according to the consititution, "Tangerine and White or Black" whilst also focussing the visitor's attention on the main body of the page.

 

I took some screen shots of the main site homepage, then used Microsoft Paint to fill the grey boxes. (Try it yourself - just hit the "PrtSc" or Print Screen button, then open Paint and paste in the shot. You can then use the tools to replace the grey with a different colour.) I've had a bash at a few different colour variations and they seem to fall into one of two categories:

 

1) Look terrible and/or hurt the eyes

2) Look OK, but distract the attention of the end user (me) from the body of the page

 

The second part of the question is technical. Our site's layout is based on a template that was created by someone else. I have been able to amend it over the years, mostly to utilise the "white space" under the grey boxes, but I've never changed the base colours and I'm not sure whether I possess the knowledge to do so. Creating a football pitch motif for the navigation or next match is definitely beyond me. I'm not a professional website designer, although I do have some knowledge of the technologies involved.

 

While I was looking at the navigation, it occurred to me that we have grey dots that match the areas under discussion at the top of the page and these graphics would also need to be redone to match any new colour scheme.

 

The software that powers the site is very old now and if we can find a way to migrate it to a more up-to-date version, then new templates that I can adapt will become available to us, as would other modifications to the site. I've had several goes at updating the software over the last 12-18 months, without success - if I ever manage it, then we will completely revamp the look and feel of the site. The current layout works well, but it is three and a half years old and a refresh is probably desirable. Of course, the sheer scale of the site these days creates its own issues and this is part of the reason the upgrades have never succeeded.

[Beano]

Because I'm sad I did some statistical analysis of our website traffic:

http://www.ashfordtownmiddlesexfc.com/content/view/1760/1/

 

While it's not ideal that traffic has dropped, the numbers do illustrate the value of the website as a low-cost communications and marketing tool. In fact, moving hosts has brought the costs down from £65.99 last year to £64.54, meaning that the site represents real value for money. On the whole, I think the stats stack up pretty well and I would like to thank everyone who puts time into assisting with the site - especially Whitelaw, who generates a lot of the news items.

 

On an unrelated note but relevant to this thread, Eddie I too have lost the ability to edit my posts on this forum, which indicates to me that a setting was changed here during a recent software upgrade.

[Ian_W]

Very smooth transition. Well done, Beano!

 

I might need to contact Ian as I'm having trouble with my emails. I'm a ham-fisted keyboarder and don't always write what I mean to first time round, but I've lost the option of editing old emails - either the box is greyed out or it's disappeared altogether.

 

I assume you mean editing old posts?

 

You should have the ability for 60 minutes after making a post.

 

Let me know if that is not happening.