Author Topic: AUK Finances and Website Project was: AUK Chairman Statement  (Read 119730 times)

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: AUK Webpage Supplier
« Reply #725 on: 22 February, 2020, 02:05:31 pm »
SHIT!!!!!

Re: AUK Webpage Supplier
« Reply #726 on: 22 February, 2020, 02:19:45 pm »
There is a flutter of phoenix wings.

Re: AUK Webpage Supplier
« Reply #727 on: 22 February, 2020, 02:21:56 pm »
And were does this leave the auk website update etc?

S2L

Re: AUK Webpage Supplier
« Reply #728 on: 22 February, 2020, 03:06:15 pm »
Should heads roll?

telstarbox

  • Loving the lanes
Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #729 on: 24 February, 2020, 11:49:06 am »
Someone posted elsewhere that the website contractor has gone into administration - will this delay the project further?
2019 🏅 R1000 and B1000

quixoticgeek

  • Mostly Harmless
Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #730 on: 24 February, 2020, 12:00:07 pm »


Is hosting independent of the "design" company?

J
--
Beer, bikes, and backpacking
http://b.42q.eu/

frankly frankie

  • I kid you not
    • Fuchsiaphile
Re: New audax.uk site
« Reply #731 on: 24 February, 2020, 12:04:32 pm »
Hosting is under AUK's control. (As much as hosting ever is)

And the project is not delayed (IMHO, unfortunately) because
a) when IIP went down there was already a natural pause in dev over the memberhip renewals period, which has just finished
b) the demise of a company employing 20-odd skilled staff leads to 20-odd skilled people looking around for someone to pay them.
when you're dead you're done, so let the good times roll

mattc

  • n.b. have grown beard since photo taken
    • Didcot Audaxes
Re: AUK FINANCES AND WEBSITE PROJECT was: AUK CHAIRMAN STATEMENT
« Reply #732 on: 24 February, 2020, 06:37:05 pm »
Did you say 20 odd-skilled people?
Has never ridden RAAM
---------
No.11  Because of the great host of those who dislike the least appearance of "swank " when they travel the roads and lanes. - From Kuklos' 39 Articles

Redlight

  • Enjoying life in the slow lane
Re: AUK FINANCES AND WEBSITE PROJECT was: AUK CHAIRMAN STATEMENT
« Reply #733 on: 24 February, 2020, 06:55:24 pm »
Why should anybody steal a watch when they can steal a bicycle?

Redlight

  • Enjoying life in the slow lane
Re: AUK Webpage Supplier
« Reply #734 on: 24 February, 2020, 07:00:29 pm »
Should heads roll?
Are you volunteering to step up and take on the work?
Why should anybody steal a watch when they can steal a bicycle?

bairn again

Re: AUK FINANCES AND WEBSITE PROJECT was: AUK CHAIRMAN STATEMENT
« Reply #735 on: 24 February, 2020, 09:31:26 pm »
I forgot that AUK had so many IT experts. 

Im sure they will all get their shoulder to the wheel soon enough, rather than expending efforts on petty and ill informed comment on this forum.

With so many people possessing all the correct skills required for exactly this situation allied to an inclination to help the club they love Im sure we will be fine. 

Re: AUK FINANCES AND WEBSITE PROJECT was: AUK CHAIRMAN STATEMENT
« Reply #736 on: 25 February, 2020, 12:23:26 pm »
Is commenting on the Board’s determination when in a hole to keep on digging permissible? Or the Board’s squandering of vast financial reserves that took decades to accumulate? Or the utter lack of accountability for those executive and financial disasters?

Or are those matters also not to be commented upon?
Eddington Number = 132

Re: AUK FINANCES AND WEBSITE PROJECT was: AUK CHAIRMAN STATEMENT
« Reply #737 on: 25 February, 2020, 12:41:45 pm »
"On the other hand, the new arrangement is potentially cheaper so the outcome may even be cash positive overall."

Ha.

Ha ha ha ha.

*goes back to popcorn*
"Yes please" said Squirrel "biscuits are our favourite things."

Re: AUK FINANCES AND WEBSITE PROJECT was: AUK CHAIRMAN STATEMENT
« Reply #738 on: 25 February, 2020, 12:59:31 pm »
I forgot that AUK had so many IT experts. 

Yes, opinion and experience rich, but often time poor.

I would have loved to have helped on the system, and indeed I volunteered myself, but with the proviso that I (along with many other IT experts here) thought that the proposed plan was the wrong thing to do at the time. I would have modernised the existing infrastructure and then looked to improve/enhance in situ. I had an interesting discussion back and forth with the AUK Chair over this and it was decided not to pass on my name to the IT Refresh team due to this fundamental disagreement.

Im sure they will all get their shoulder to the wheel soon enough, rather than expending efforts on petty and ill informed comment on this forum.

The problem was the arbitrary dichotomy being presented:-
a) Existing AUK/yacf members volunteer to do it all for free
b) Pay a third party a shitload of money for doing things arse-about-face and an increasingly wooly "Phase III" plan.

Neither is workable, mostly because the people in a position to do (a) don't have enough time (or other motivation) to do it, and (b) hasn't exactly turned out as hoped/planned.

Options (c), (d), (e), etc were just never even considered.

With so many people possessing all the correct skills required for exactly this situation allied to an inclination to help the club they love Im sure we will be fine.

I'm sure AUK will be fine, it's not defined by its website. It's defined by its organisers and the riders of events those organisers put on. Those are unlikely to change overnight. You could replace the website with a static thing listing the calendar and you probably wouldn't lose more than 10% of members in the short/near term.

[EDIT] I'd forgotten how angry the original debacle had made me, time does not seem to have mellowed my mood.
"Yes please" said Squirrel "biscuits are our favourite things."

Re: AUK Finances and Website Project was: AUK Chairman Statement
« Reply #739 on: 25 February, 2020, 01:55:23 pm »
The fact remains that the various people tasked with emergency replacement of the leaky club portakabin roof that we’re told is in danger of blowing off at any minute and have thus far spent several years and an unimaginable amount of money building an ornate shrubbery and a swimming pool.

Ideas for phase III include an ornamental clock tower or a jetty for our new yacht. I haven’t decided if I’ll help out building those.

Meanwhile all of the club’s business continues in the leaky, condemned portakabin.

S2L

Re: AUK Finances and Website Project was: AUK Chairman Statement
« Reply #740 on: 25 February, 2020, 02:33:33 pm »


Meanwhile all of the club’s business continues in the leaky, condemned portakabin.

That's the thing... the only time I use the new site is to send the link to enter my perm, as apparently they have all migrated there. EVERYTHING ELSE is still done on the audax.net site... one year after the migration

Wycombewheeler

  • PBP-2019 LEL-2022
Re: AUK Finances and Website Project was: AUK Chairman Statement
« Reply #741 on: 25 February, 2020, 03:30:33 pm »


Meanwhile all of the club’s business continues in the leaky, condemned portakabin.

That's the thing... the only time I use the new site is to send the link to enter my perm, as apparently they have all migrated there. EVERYTHING ELSE is still done on the audax.net site... one year after the migration
I only go there when the link on the old site sends me to the new site, in order to find a link to take me to the correct page on the old site.

Eddington  127miles, 170km

frankly frankie

  • I kid you not
    • Fuchsiaphile
Re: AUK Finances and Website Project was: AUK Chairman Statement
« Reply #742 on: 25 February, 2020, 04:34:00 pm »
If the current schedule doesn't slip, there will be significant changes to all that by the end of April if not before.  By then, you will only be able to access and enter events of all descriptions via the new website, and you will no longer have a login on the old website (unless you are an organiser or an admin).  However the entries will still be processed on the old site, just as happens at present.
By then, audax.uk should be your bookmarked address, not aukweb.  (sob!)
when you're dead you're done, so let the good times roll

quixoticgeek

  • Mostly Harmless
Re: AUK Finances and Website Project was: AUK Chairman Statement
« Reply #743 on: 25 February, 2020, 04:47:33 pm »
If the current schedule doesn't slip, there will be significant changes to all that by the end of April if not before.  By then, you will only be able to access and enter events of all descriptions via the new website, and you will no longer have a login on the old website (unless you are an organiser or an admin).  However the entries will still be processed on the old site, just as happens at present.
By then, audax.uk should be your bookmarked address, not aukweb.  (sob!)

The main section I use is the "My Record" section. Last I checked the display on the new site was essentially useless. It told me how many rides I'd done, but as they were all done on 30th of September, the utility of this is questionable.

Do we expect the schedule to be adhered to ?

J
--
Beer, bikes, and backpacking
http://b.42q.eu/

frankly frankie

  • I kid you not
    • Fuchsiaphile
Re: AUK Finances and Website Project was: AUK Chairman Statement
« Reply #744 on: 25 February, 2020, 04:51:47 pm »
Yup.
when you're dead you're done, so let the good times roll

Re: AUK Finances and Website Project was: AUK Chairman Statement
« Reply #745 on: 25 February, 2020, 05:47:51 pm »
To this day, I do not understand (despite many attempts from various IT bods on this and other forums) what exactly was wrong with a standard interface of some description to enter events, pay with paypal and whatnot, with a back door audax.net for organisers, that does the maths for all the minute and insignificant AUK awards and those members interested in such awards can check their status on the ancient interface.

The interface isn't the main problem, it's a little dated and a new/fresh/modern interface would probably scare off fewer prospective entrants than the existing system. The backend calculations that decide on awards aren't the problem, they work fine.

The hardware it runs on isn't really a problem (if other bits were sorted properly) and, even if it was, that's a cost of roughly £1000/year, and it's something that could be taken care of once the initial overhaul is done.

The problem is that everything it runs on (in terms of software) is old and dated and needs to be overhauled. Software ages, you can't just implement something once and expect it to run forever. Vulnerabilities are found and if you don't keep things up to date then it's a security risk (especially given that it holds data subject to GDPR). The version of the software you're using stops being supported, the upgrade path to the newer versions is not entirely simple, then there's an urgent need to update one item and you have a huge set of dependencies that mean you need to update pretty much everything.

Updating software is rarely a like-for-like replacement, so tweaks here and there are required and sometimes fundamental changes. This requires time (for testing and implementation) and expertise. These two things (time and expertise) cost.

Surely that could have been developed from standard cheap existing platforms for a couple of quid... but then again, I am no IT person and surely there are a million reasons why virtually all businesses (including cycling ones organising events) can do that, but AUK cannot

The hardware is cheap. The building blocks of software are cheap (if not free). The problem is the expertise in gluing it all together.

Paper is cheap. Pens are cheap. So write me a Booker Prize winning novel please.

Or, put it another way, if I give you the land, all of the building materials and all of the tools required, can you build me a set of six 4 bedroom houses for a couple of quid?

To continue to bludgeon this square peg of an analogy into a round hole, if you want to renovate your house you might be able to ask favours from friends to help you do it on the cheap, and do it slowly and surely so you can continue to live in the house whilst the work is going on. You might have to live with no carpets for a few months but that's fine. Eventually you may get to a bit where you need a professional in (i.e. an electrician) but you can save money by chasing all of the walls yourself and giving him the minimum work to do that someone qualified has to do.

Or you can try and do everything all in one go as quickly as possible, which will involve huge disruption, but you're going to find out all of your friends who would have volunteered here and there will dry up as it is just too much work to do in one go. The only way to do the latter is to pay someone to do the majority of the work for you - this gets expensive very quickly and you don't have as much control over the final outcome as you may have wanted.

I'll leave others to describe how this translates to how AUK ended up approaching this whole problem.
"Yes please" said Squirrel "biscuits are our favourite things."

Re: AUK Finances and Website Project was: AUK Chairman Statement
« Reply #746 on: 25 February, 2020, 05:50:22 pm »
That's the thing... the only time I use the new site is to send the link to enter my perm, as apparently they have all migrated there. EVERYTHING ELSE is still done on the audax.net site... one year after the migration

http://www.aukweb.net/events/detail/**PERM NUMBER**

Re: AUK Finances and Website Project was: AUK Chairman Statement
« Reply #747 on: 25 February, 2020, 05:52:06 pm »
...an unimaginable amount of money building an ornate shrubbery and a swimming pool.

There lies the problem, they never budgeted for the white picket fence!

Re: AUK Finances and Website Project was: AUK Chairman Statement
« Reply #748 on: 25 February, 2020, 06:04:54 pm »
I'll leave others to describe how this translates to how AUK ended up approaching this whole problem.

I think S2L's question was whether AUK should be in the custom software business at all. Many other national audax organisations (and indeed some AUK organisers) just have a Wordpress site that links to a third party event booking engine, or even just a Paypal link. Whether that approach would be scalable or palatable to AUK is another matter - and academic given the determination to continue with the current approach.

IIRC the current project was originally sold as "we'll take some off the shelf software and customise it a bit". The problem is the customisations went full Project Binky, while paying full market rate for each custom bracket.

Re: AUK Finances and Website Project was: AUK Chairman Statement
« Reply #749 on: 25 February, 2020, 06:22:16 pm »
I'll leave others to describe how this translates to how AUK ended up approaching this whole problem.

I think S2L's question was whether AUK should be in the custom software business at all.

Ah yes, that makes more sense, apologies. I'll leave my semi-rant there though.
"Yes please" said Squirrel "biscuits are our favourite things."