I am in the process of redesigning our website from the ground up to modernize it. I learned the hard way last month that changing it piecemeal is not going to be effective so we're going to make some sweeping changes at the core. Once the core is updated that will let me go in and change things like logos and graphics and all the cool stuff I wanted to do in the first place.
I'm full steam ahead in the process of learning web development and all of the necessary technologies and tools. Instead of using pre-made templates I am building the site from the ground up. I am also assessing the site and its services to organize and improve them for the new design. I have some friends who are highly experienced who are also helping me
Here are our domains as they stand
chinchillabreeders.org - CBO promo site
chinchillabreeding.com - Virtual chinchillas promo site
chinchillaclub.com - Chinchilla club home page
chinchillas.org - Chinchilla related products and services directory
virtualchinchillas.com - Virtual chinchillas promo site
chinchillaeducation.com - Not built yet
chinchillamagazine.com - hosts chinchilla magazine issues
Here are my thoughts on the current organization of the design:
- chinchillabreeding.com should go to a website about breeding real chinchillas with articles and resources specific to breeding.
- chinchillaeducation.com will be like a chinchilla encyclopedia with tutorials, case studies, and hopefully I'll be able to do some interviews with experts. It will be a site geared towards keeping chinchillas as pets as opposed to breeding.
- Chinchillabreeders.org should be more than a promo page, it should be a home page for the CBO with CBO specific content.
- Chinchillaclub.com needs to have chinchilla club specific content and should be the members area of the site.
- The public forum should be located in chinchillas.org, not chinchillaclub.com. Although the chinchilla club will be prominently promoted there it is not a member's only forum. It doesn't make sense to me to keep it here.
- Chinchillas.org should continue to be the portal for products and services. It will have its own membership that starts with a free membership to allow users to add and edit their content in the directories. Upgraded membership will add advertising benefits Additional services, such as graphic design and product promotions, can be purchased.
- chinchillamagazine.com should continue to host articles. It will be updated to be more SEO friendly and easier to search. Right now it's invisible to the search engines. I might also add a moderated comments area.
-There needs to be more premium content for the Chinchilla Club available to members who support our cause. We should be promoting membership and premium services to keep things running and to build the community. Not everyone is into gaming so I want to have more there that I can promote. Not sure exactly what yet. Existing services will be updated as well. The more revenues that we can generate the more services we can offer. Your ideas and input on this are greatly appreciated. At this point membership is synonymous with vchins. I want to attract people who aren't into vchins to be members too.
- Virtual Chinchillas will be redesigned yet again. The codebase will be completely rewritten. This will make page loads faster and make more sophisticated features possible. It will be updated to work well on small screens. The game will be more user friendly and have clearer gaming objectives. Most importantly the educational elements will be ramped up providing links to articles about real chinchillas for each simulation aspect. The simulation aspect itself will become more realistic and it will integrate existing data so no one will loose any v-pets..
chinchillas.org has to be a community effort. I certainly can't do everything myself in the way of generating content. I'm not a breeder, nor a zoologist. If you have content that we can host on our site and publish please let me know.
