Caithness.org moan .....

[mrs_inkstack]

caithness.org ..... says it all in the title ...... doesn't it ? Or not as the case may be.

I have used this site for many years and have been very grateful for the publicity and enthusiasm of the moderators of the site for their tireless, hard work BUT and it's a big one ....

Over the past year or so, I've sent numerous posters etc for fundraisers and charitable events, asking kindly to advertise these on the front page and it hasn't happened. I ask Mr Fernie why and his reply was, he's too busy with other things and doesn't have the time to dedicate to smaller events ..... fair enough I say but why can he still devote time to events out with the county ..... I.e. Helmsdale extravaganza on the front page etc. Surely the ethos of this site is to promote growth within the county or maybe his area of concern now lies within Highland Region being a Highland councillor?

My gripe is ..... should this site now be called 'Northofscotland.org' .... I'm obviously being incredibly facetious, so, what is the solution to this ? Can I pay a fee to advertise my events on the front page ? I'd be very interested to find out other peoples views.

Before the moderators come right back at me and tell me there is the forum or the what's on page to add local events ..... I know but there obviously isn't the same hits as the front page and to be honest .... the org is probably as popular, if not more, than the Groat and they charge a fortune.

Brace myself for the onslaught :D

[Niall Fernie]

Have you ever submitted your event to our what's on section?

Or have you just e-mailed details (or a poster) in order for my father to type it out for you?

Any event submitted to our what's on section using the online form will be on the site within the day as all we have to do there is authorise your submission and not retype it. Also there are two other people apart from my father available to do the authorising.

You can submit your event details here:

http://whatson.caithness.org/submissions.php

You will find all of the events for today on the sidebar of the front page of caithness.org and similarly placed on every page of the business, sport and arts indexes. Also on the side of most of the photo pages.

[mrs_inkstack]

Thanks for that. As I previously said, I have used the site for years, so I'm well aware of all these things, including the what's on section, which I regularly use.

Have you ever considered using the site in a more commercially viable way? Maybe then some events wouldn't be left out and favoured for larger ones like the Fort William or Helmsdale ones on the front page?

It is incredibly frustrating when people tell you ..... I didn't see it on the org, after submitting posters etc.

Of course it is a criticism and I appreciate that your incredibly busy, what would be the solution as it's happened to me numerous times.

[Niall Fernie]

The solution is to only use the What's on submissions and not e-mail posters.

We have very limited time to work on the site and the things that require the least effort get the earliest attention.

So in this limited time we have to decide, do we click on "authorise" or retype a poster into the same form that would have been used by the event organiser to submit their event and then click to authorise it?

Also regarding e-mail, personally I receive more than 100 per day and apart from the things that are very quick to deal with they get left unread until I have a day off. I then spend pretty much my entire free time to catch up on what I've missed. I know that my father receives a great deal more e-mail than I do and has far less time to deal with any of it.

[mrs_inkstack]

I understand all of this but why would you retype a poster ??? Being a web designer myself for a number of years, wouldn't it be more beneficial for you to upload a gif or jpg image of the said poster ..... or a link to the what's on page ..... as you've done in the past ?

Of course time restraints are an issue but why put 'some' events on the front page, surely, in your opinion, if the what's on page is the way forward, wouldn't you put all events here and not favour a few on the front page ?

Surely your priorities lie with events hosted within the county considering the nature of the site ?

[Niall Fernie]

When I get a chance to I will add the ability to upload images to the What's on and agree that it would be much easier, however time has not allowed me to do this so far. I have been working on some small tweaks to the section so hopefully the addition of posters is not too far away.

Of course we would favour events in the county but the front page is only updated perhaps once a week at the moment and by that time there could be upwards of 2000 e-mails sitting in my fathers inbox, how much time do you think it takes to even skim through that amount of mail.

Also the site is run from more than one physical location and as such we do not have access to every part of the site from each location. At the moment the front page and the main site is only updated by my father, the rest of the sites are maintained by myself.

Over time I hope to make it easier to update the entire site but I need to transfer all of it to a database to make it easier to manage. The site has been growing for over 10 years now and has tens of thousands of pages and photos so I'm sure you'll understand that it will take some time to get through.

[mrs_inkstack]

Maybe we could look into sources of funding for you. The org is an essential community commodity after all.

Update it, tidy it up and leave you to the daily management.

Streamline the whole thing so that's it's more manageable.

Just a thought ?