Portsmouth IVC

I’ve just found a video that shows how to add your photos to articles that you post on here. The link is on the FAQ page.

Your picture should be resized automatically when you upload if it is too big, but the webserver has limited memory and may not be able to  process your picture if it is too big.  There are several websites that offer image resizing, or you can use software such as picasa (free) or photoshop elements to do it. I would recommend making the longest side of the picture no more than 1024 pixels.

Before the AGM it was suggested that I organise some workshops to show members how to post articles and pictures to this website.  Ed kindly offered a Saturday Morning at his house on a date to be confirmed.

Well, we never did confirm a date.

So what I am going to do is have sessions at the clubnight where I will show small groups of 1-3 people how to post articles and pictures.

Ed posted his article about the weekend away in Birmingham with my help at lat night’s club night.

So, if you are interested in finding out how to tell the world of potential members what a great club this is and what interesting events we have on, you need to:

1. Click on Register (down the bottom on the right of this page) to create a username for the website – don’t forget to read and accept the disclaimer.
2. I will then approve you if you are a member of the club.
3. You will get an email confirming your username and password (so check your inbox if you already have a username or see me to get your password reset).
4. Come and find me at a clubnight, I usually have a laptop with me and an internet connection.

Bring some ideas of what you want to write about (e.g. a recent event you went to, a review of a recent book from the reading group).  If you want to include photos bring them on a memory stick or canera memory card and I will show you how to upload them.

As you may remember I announced a competition back in November for the best article to be posted on the website and the best photograph showing the members having fun.

The judging has been very arduous, but I am pleased to announce the results!

The winners are…

• For the best article on the website – Chris Featherstone won this by default as the only entrant for his posting about the Christmas meal at the Red Lion Hotel.
• For the photo best showing the club having fun – again there was only one Entrant, but he did put loads of photos on Activity Exchange, Ed Lait for this photo from the Christmas Meal at the Red Lion Hotel.

Jim (the webmaster) is planning to run one or two workshops on how to post to this website. If you are interested in finding out how you can contribute, then please drop him an email, use the contact form on the homepage or see him at a clubnight.

In the meantime check out the FAQ link at the top of the page.

In a blatant effort to get members to post things on the website and hence show the world what a fun and vibrant club this is I am going to award some prizes at the AGM.

There will be two categories:

• Best article posted to this website – have you been to an event and do you want to show the world what they missed by not being a member? Do a write-up and tell them.
• Best picture of members enjoying themselves at an event.  This could be a picture in an article on the website, a picture in our photo gallery, or on activity exchange.

Rules (you’ve got to have rules)

1. The intention of the competition is to increase the amount of material on the website that portrays the club as a fun club that people will want to join and demonstrate the sorts of activities we get up to. Articles / photos will be judged against those criteria not on their technical merits.
2. Only articles posted and photos uploaded between 1st December 2009 and 31st January will be considered.
3. A member may post as many articles / pictures as they like, all articles posted / pictures uploaded during the period will be entered into the competition (the more you write the more chances you have of winning)
4. Any articles / photos that are offensive / derogatory to the club will be removed.
5. One prize in each category will be awarded at the AGM
6. The webmaster’s decision is final.

See me (or leave a comment) if you have any questions

I have just installed a new plugin that will resize any pictures larger than 1024 pixel high or wide to be 1024 pixels in the longer dimension, hopefully this will prevent any recurrence of the problem we had earlier this week.

I know we have a welcome note, but I just wanted to say welcome to the new look website. Using Wordpress allows us to easily post messages like this. In fact this is being sent from a laptop at tonights club night.

Expect to see news appearing here regularly from various people.

Enjoy

Jim

P.S. If you looked at this website before this evening (16 July 2009) you will have seen an error message where the list of upcoming activities is in the sidebar.
This was caused by activity exchange not being in the list of sites that our website was allowed to contact. I would like to thank the support team at Supanames for speedily fixing the problem.

Jim