Now that a new year is upon us let's get an official website going for MINI Club of WNY since the old one wasn't secure enough to stop the "hacking". The address for this site is to long and it is difficult to get new members to sign up at Towne MINI. The business cards that were being used have the old address on them and I would like to somehow put them to use since I have 1000 of them. I was also thinking of maybe having a link from the Towne MINI website that says MINI Club on it and when an interested party wants to join they go to Towne MINI website and click on that link and it would bring them to here. I can't believe that with all this knowledge in computers that we are unable to establish a permanent website for the club. I would like to use www.minicooperclubofwny.com for the site but I'm not quite sure how to accomplish this. Our 4th annual MINI Road Rally productions will be determined on whether or not a secure, permanent site can be established. Any ideas?
It is very confusing to keep changing websites, so I think it would be best if we do what we can to promote this site rather than change it again when we have just managed to get the word out about the relocation.
We'll definitely be printing up cards for Towne to give to new Mini owners, and to keep everyone in touch, along with working on plans for window clings and T shirts.
Looking forward to the rally in June! Is it spring yet? :)
You're right. It is confusing to keep changing sites. That is why I want to go back to www.minicooperclubofwny.com. Now I have 1000 cards which I paid over $100.00 gone down the tubes......
Of course that's always possible, as long as someone is willing to pay for the URL. Sparklit can do it for you (including registering the domain name, and running the re-direct), but of course, it's an added fee.
It's quite easy to set up. Here's the info from Sparklit:
$25 setup $3.95/mo. New Domain: If you do not have a domain yet, we can register the domain for you, and set it up to redirect to activeboard.com. Before continuing, please check that the domain is valid and is available.
It's really up to Cathleen, as she is the one taking the financial risk. If/when we ever run out of donations, she's the one that gets charged to keep the place advertising free.
It certainly would add a lot to the current cost of this site, though there are some obvious advantages. Diane, do you still have the domain registered, or is it currently available?
I hope people will consider making a small donation to the site to help cover the domain name registration.
I have sent an email to the old webmaster to see if it is possible to temporarily get the old website up so that I may get the list of all the members that had registered. We lost quite a few because of the hacking problem. There is no way that I would be able to get in touch with them unless through the old website. I also sent Greg from Towne an email to see if it is possible to have a link via Towne's website to direct anyone interested in club news to this active board. As for the fee of the website I did maintain the old one for 3 years without a cost to any of the members. I was fortunate to have someone who did not charge a lot but unfortunately did not have the security to prevent hackers.
Another note: As for our 4th annual MINI Road Rally which is currently planned for June 10, if it is not possible to get in touch with many of the old members then it may be not ecconomically feasible to host a road rally for a handful of members. It costs a lot to put on the rally not to mention the amount of work involved. Therefore before I would even begin I would like to know roughly how many people plan on attending. Has to be a minimum of 15. Thank you.
And if you can get that full e-mail list again, that would be of great help, as many of the people who did attend events really were not active board members...
The old website is still registered in my name through domaindirect.com. My password is ****. Anyone interested in trying to access is welcome. Also the site I used for the business cards is: www.business-cards.com. They have the MINI car. You can design the card online and the cost was $95.00+S&H for 1000 cards.
Erik's Comments: I removed the password for security's sake.
I have a request in for that weekend off, so hopefully that will work out! Diane, do you want to start a thread under 'Events' to see if people looking for stuff to do are looking there?
We'd been hoping to make it this year, but the date mentioned is a week before MINIs on Top. Since we're going to MOT we're going to have to wait until closer to the WNY event to see if we'll be able to make it.
I spoke to Greg at Towne and he informed me that they were unaware that there was a new site for the club. You need to keep in frequent touch with Towne MINI due to the fact that that is where we get the members for the club. Also if an old member calls to find out about the club they can direct them to this site. Also they still don't have business cards for this new site. Has anyone ordered them online yet? As for the rally, it is not set in stone. I spoke with Keith and he suggested a scaled-down version of the rally being the fact that we will probably not have the amount of participants that we had last year. We would start off @ one site and end up @ a restaurant and everyone would be responsible for their own lunch. There would be no 2nd and 3rd prize. Dash plaques would not be available either. This is the best we could do. That is why it is imperative to get on board with Towne so when Spring comes and new MINIs are sold new members will be available.
This domain is not registered with Domain Direct. Please click here for information regarding this domain and the company it is registered with, or click here to transfer your domain to Domain Direct.
Doing a WhoIs search for the URL, this is the only thing it brings up:
WhoIs (Domain Lookup) Whois information could not be retrieved. (minicooperclubofwny.com not found)
My suggestion is to forget about www.minicooperclubofwny.com. This is like starting all over again. You can use your new website but you need to get going on the advertising. Get some cards printed up (www.business-cards.com has 2 MINI cards) and keep in touch with Towne. I already gave Greg this new site and he is going to try to get in touch with some of the old members to let them know about the new site. The Bennets in Pennsylvania for instance being that they always attended the rally even though they were not active on the web. What site we use is not that important, just getting the word out. Thanks,
I sent domaindirect.com an email and told of the problem at hand. If it is possible to be able to type in www.minicooperclubofwny.com and get directed to this site would be good because then we would save on the business cards. Otherwise we'll just have to start anew. Actually that may be a good thing. The 1st annual MINI TSD Road Rally we had 22 participants! So maybe history can repeat itself!
Thanks for calling Greg, Diane. Greg called last evening and gave us the new address. We registered last night. The last time we tried to use the old address was probably late October/early November. Shortly after logging on we got an extremely colorful Eastern European/Middle Eastern type of display with anti-American comments.
Although we have not posted much, we generally have checked the site 2 or 3 times a week to see whats going on.
We certainly intend on attending the Rally this year.
Mini thanks,
George Bennett
-- Edited by Stoney at 08:31, 2006-02-02
__________________
George & Marion
2002 Mini Cooper
BRG/White
Delivered by Towne September2002
I sent domaindirect.com an email and told of the problem at hand. If it is possible to be able to type in www.minicooperclubofwny.com and get directed to this site would be good because then we would save on the business cards. Otherwise we'll just have to start anew. Actually that may be a good thing. The 1st annual MINI TSD Road Rally we had 22 participants! So maybe history can repeat itself!
The old site went inactive and the address was picked up by someone else. Conclusion: Go with the new address www.miniclubofwny.activeboard.com and go from there. Since this site is up and running good just stick with this. Let's just pray that it doesn't get hacked because what a nightmare that was. Thanks,
Ahhh, so someone snaged it up quick... It's amazing how many people are out there just snagging website names trying to turn a quick profit... But I would be very suprised if Sparklit was hacked... there might be a password hack here or there due to users using an unsecure password, but I've used Sparklit for quite some time for other services without a hitch....
