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luar
13th November 2002, 15:49
This is a question for those of you out there who are in charge of your branch's web site. This might also be informative to those branches who are interested in doing something similar.

The NYC branch does not have a web site and I am interested in gathering information on who you are using as your service provider and typical monthly costs. Particularly I am interested in what is you estimated typical data throughput.

For example, GeoCities has a nice package for $8.95 per month that also includes 25 MB of storage, which is more than enough to host content and images. This same package also a Data Transfer Bandwidth of 10 GB per month. Does this 10 GB throughput seem like too much or too little for what will be a semi-commercial site?

Any recommendations or suggestions you can make would be most helpful.

Thanks

bubbavic
14th November 2002, 00:15
Gassho Luar & everyone else!

I'm in the same situation. The San Diego Branch does not currently have an active website which I hope to remedy.

My current plan is to use the same hosting company that I use for my own personal web space. http://www.readyhosting.com

They offer: 500MB of space, unmetered data transfer (it's true, I tested it), unlimited emails, and a whole lot of other extras most companies make you pay for.

It costs $99 for the year (so that makes it $8.25 a month). The nice thing is that if you sign up once you can "resell" other accounts for about half that. So that means that if I wanted to host 3 sites. I would sign up the first at $99 and the other two could be setup by that initial account at $50 each per year. I'm planning on doing this with the SD site since I already paid my initial $99 for my own site.

There is a $50 setup fee but that's waived if you're transferring an existing domain. So, the trick is to go to someplace like http://Godaddy.com and register a domain name (I think it's $9 or less for the year) and then transfer that domain name to be hosted on Readyhosting to avoid the $50 setup fee.

My other option is to simply host it on my own site in a dedicated subdirectory. I don't have any space issues so this isn't a big deal. I would probably purchase a domain name and have that domain name forward (masked) to the folder I create for the SD site.

I'm not sure which we'll go forward with. Anyways, I'm sorry for being so verbose but those are my options and recommendations to you.

If anyone has better options, I'd love to hear them too!

Thanks!

hsuntzu
14th November 2002, 03:14
Gassho,

For the San Francisco Branch, we use the Geocities Free hosting right now (http://www.geocities.com/sfshorinji). 15MB space and 3GB/month bandwith.... not bad. Our site is pretty basic, so the space hasn't been a problem. There are some limitations, like having to deal with the advertizement on the page, but it suffices for now.

Looking back, we initially started under someone's personal web page (a subdirectory); but that ran into problems when he switched ISP. Also, our logic was to start with a free service, see how it goes; then if we needed/wanted to upgrade to a better service. Hence the Geocities Free stuff.

I'd say things really depends on what you want to do with the your site, and who you'd aim it for. For the general audience, I think it's more of getting links to/from the right sites to get the traffic to your site, rather than having a domain name of your own (unless you got a good one).

Anyways, didn't the NYC branch have a site at:
http://members.aol.com/nykempo/index.html

This site doesn't seem to be have been updated recently, so purhaps that's an old one?

Kesshu,

luar
14th November 2002, 13:48
Gassho Hsuntzu,

So I take it that 3 GB a month is sufficient for you? How often have you surpassed that 3 GB limit?

As far as the URL you posted for the NYC branch, its part of the website of a former branch member (I think Miyata-Sensi) and you are also correct in assuming that it has not been updated in a while. In fact the address listed is several years old. This website is no longer listed on the WSKO branch listing.

Ideally I would like to have the basic information (What is SK?, History, Basic Philosophy, Techniques Overview, etc.) as well as some club photos. I also have some several embu videos we did that I was able to put into RealVideo format (est 2 MB) that I think are worth showing.

However, I disaggree with your opinion on the domain name registration. There is something to be said with easily identifying our branch with a simple website URL if we are to be serious about recruitment. I think this is especially true in this fast pace city where you need to work extra hard to catch people's attention.

In either case the biggest challenge is not the content but also soliciting everyone's input and trying to stay focus on how we wish to present ourselves.

I would like to add that I have a great admiration for the British Federation website whose approach is something we should adapt. If for example the US Eastern Federation had one umbrella website, I think we can be happy simply listing our contact information. It really does make the art appear consistent, organized and has a much more communal feeling.

Kesshu

bubbavic
14th November 2002, 20:27
Originally posted by luar
Gassho Hsuntzu,

I would like to add that I have a great admiration for the British Federation website whose approach is something we should adapt. If for example the US Eastern Federation had one umbrella website, I think we can be happy simply listing our contact information. It really does make the art appear consistent, organized and has a much more communal feeling.



I completely agree Raul. As a matter of fact, this is the first I've ever heard of the US Eastern Federation. Where can I go for more information? I really do wish that I could get a sense of a more closely knit community for Shorinji Kempo in the US. I see a lot of participation from our European brethren which makes me wonder how active participants are in the US.

As far as the website is concerned, if you simply want a simple website... then my suggestions obviously are a bit excessive. Looking at the logs for a few of my sites, I'd say that 3GB is more than sufficient. I just figured if you were going to pay $8.95 a month for Earthlink, then why not get more for your money.

Hsuntzu, I like the SF branch site. How often do you post updates?

Kesshu,

luar
14th November 2002, 23:23
Ok slightly off topic

Well I believe there are two North American federations, East Coast and West Coast. This also includes the Canadian branches. My understanding that is that it is very difficult to create one US Federation because the geographical size of North America and it is much easier to bring branches together under those two seperate federations than it would be if there was one. For example it is was easier for kenshi of the Eastern Federation to attend the Toronto seminar this past month than it was for those of the Western Federation.

hsuntzu
15th November 2002, 06:08
Hello there.

As for update frequency, we try to have one at least once a quarter. So we are due for one. Geocities has never bugged us about bandwith, so I assume we've been OK.

I guess what I was trying to say was that content is very important; and personally I'd put content above a decent domain name. If you do get a good domain name, I'd agree that's much better, and would be a big help. My logic is that, if you have good content, you'll probably get decent number of hits; on the other hand, if you have a great domain name, but bad content, you might get people visiting the site but not reading the content.

The BSKF and Swedish Shorinjikempo Federation websites are both great. Got good content as well as a good domain name; and of course links to/from the right places. I only read Japanes & English so I can't comment about many of other the WSKO Federation / branch sites.

As for a Federation in the North America region, currently there is only one... the US East Coast Federation, which does not include the Canadian branches, only the US based branches in the East Coast. There is a good discussion amongst right people, right now, for an US national federation, and a Canada national federation.

Gassho,