Posted by kreynen on April 9, 2007 at 8:04pm
Of the 400+ IMBA groups in the US alone, what are the best sites? What features make them the best? Are there Drupal modules with these features?
Of the 400+ IMBA groups in the US alone, what are the best sites? What features make them the best? Are there Drupal modules with these features?
Comments
Best mountain biking sites
After looking at several of these sites I found many of them are lacking a way for the communities to post content. Below are some sites allow community contributions and/or have a nice design...
http://www.bump.org/
http://missinglinkracing.org/
http://flagstaffbiking.org/
http://www.pmbc.org/
http://www.corbamtb.com/
http://www.sharemtb.com/
http://www.ccorc.com/06/
http://www.btcmarin.org/ (I could do without the frames)
http://www.sbclub.org/sbc/
http://www.mbosc.org/
http://bicyclecolo.org/index.cfm
I only got to Colorado :)
post content
I found after trying to keep a forums board going for a couple years it just wasn't worth it. We only have a couple hundred members and the amount of hits the forum got was fairly small and comments were quickly out of date. I'm in Northern CA and the MTBr.com California - Norcal board is pretty active. So if you're interested in communities post why not just link out to a MTBr style forum? You've never going to be able to compete with the larger forums so better to join them then have a board that gets 10 post a month. It's easy enough to post your club info to an established forum and use a listserv to keep your club members up to date.
Brent
btceb.org
PAMBA's boards are really active
I don't know if it is the number of members PAMBA has or the number of users who've registered on the website (437!), but forums are the most active area of PAMBA. Activity in the other areas (calendar, photo gallery, etc) has really dropped off as people found sites like Flickr, YouTube, and Google documents to host other types of content.
I'm all for using other sites/services to host content... especially if the it's free. There are downsides to hosting externally; users need multiple usernames/passwords, the content can't be displayed flexibly (a home page posting with a date doesn't show up in the calendar), it's not searchable, and it doesn't build Google-rank.
So I guess I feel like anyone with phpBB or Simple Machine Forums and enough users can compete with MTBr. I also think that forums are a great tool for converting users to active members and that Drupal has some tools that help do that.
PAMBA's boards are really active
I guess it depends on what you consider really active. One post today is not active IMO. And post from Feb & Dec show up in the first 10 items. I think most casual members aren't going to make daily visits to a board with post from 2005. I didn't like all this old stuff on our forum - IMO it made the club seem old and stale, especially when even the regional sections of MTBr are getting hundreds of post a week.
Brent
I don't think forums are
I don't think forums are something that can be right or wrong, but I think that there are real benefits to using localized forums vs. pointing users to MTBr. I also don't want to this group to be just for Brent and I to argue about this. If there isn't enough interest in developing an IMBA customized Drupal install for clubs, I'm not going to push this on anyone.
I've visited most the active, CMS driven IMBA affiliated sites when looking for people who might be interested in participating in this group. Most of them have forums enabled. I don't think clubs are using forums to increase daily visits or not using them for fear of looking stale.
Local forums are a way to ask location/trail specific questions and know that one of the more active (and hopefully knowledgeable) members will respond. It's a just one tool available to build an online community that supports the physical community/geographic location. It doesn't matter how many times you post to forums, trail work requires people to show up in the real world and do some real work.
MTBr forums are great for what they are, but when is the last time you met someone on the trail you knew from that forum? That's the type of thing that happens to PAMBA members all the time, but it's a large club within a small geographic location. There are more posts this week in PAMBA's Farmdale Reservoir forum than on the entire MTBr Midwest forum that includes IL, IN, WI, MN, OH, and KY!
Forums
As the founder of PAMBA, I can tell you right now that I would have NEVER accepted using MTBR as our "serrogate" forum. MTBR is cool as hell, but there are way too many looky-loo's and potential flamers on that site for it to be your only source of a bulletin board type forum. You really need someone within your own organization making decisions on censorship, liability, slander, etc. With MTBR, if someone decides to post out of line statements about your organization, you have little recourse but to attempt to rebut them on the board, or beg some moderator, that you don't know, to delete the posts. PAMBA's forums are PAMBA's turf and that's a nice thing to have!! Plus, the arguement of "old" posts making things look stale....my fault....I could or can set the board to delete any posts on a given time limit...say every post more than 5 months old gets the axe. What kind of control do you have with Greg and Francis' forums on MTBR??? none.... Plus...with hundreds of posts a day an important post could be buried in minutes...and that sucks. Plus, "casual" members definitely won't hit MTBR every day if they aren't hitting their own clubs site daily.
Depends on your club
The message board (forum) is the most important part of PAMBA's website if you ask me. That is because it is understood to be the preferred method of communicating all club activities. Everything is in a central location, and all active club members use it. Listserv and email does not make a very good discussion tool. One feature I would like to see in a CMS system is a module or something to distinguish between members and registered users. Such that actual paid club members can get to private email, or access to private club data that general users cannot access (such as membership lists, private forums, etc). If such a module can keep track of membership info, expired memberships, and be used to send out dues reminders, handle payments, etc... that would be sweet.
Integrating CiviCRM and
Integrating CiviCRM and Drupal role accomplishes this very easily. Membership status in CiviCRM synchronizes with Drupal roles which are then managed via permissions. This allows us to provide special badges within the forums that distinguish members from non-members and encourages membership. Any feature that can be managed via Drupal roles and permissions can be turned on or off automatically.
One example is that only members can maintain our trails condition pages to report the open or closed status of trails.
best visited drupal websites!
i would like to inform also about a very nice drupal site i found: www.fashionata.be (fashion beauty lifestlye site)
100% cutomized layout, very recent site that is getting high position on alexa
cheers
Marcio
www.creandi.com
Hello... I am new here
I have an MTB site with 800 members (tracked with CiviCRM) and over 1500 registered users at www.dorba2.com. Currently we serve over 20,000 page requests per day.
I have lots of Drupal and CiviCRM stories to tell. The site is a work in process but we've made great progress since staring this past April.
What I really need to do next is find a sponsor to pay for a kick ass theme. ;-)
Mike
We just did a makeover...
to http://www.dorba2.com and it has been well received.
A few more links
Wow, this group has existed since 2007? If I'd only known!
Hi, I'm the webmaster for Evergreen MTB in Seattle (formerly Backcountry Bicycle Trails Club, bbtc.org), now http://www.evergreenmtb.org. The existing site is implemented in hand-built custom PHP, most of it > 5 years old, and ripe for a redo. I've wanted to rebuild it using Drupal for a while, and may yet get a chance to do so.
An interesting subset of our site is the Trails Guide, which is implemented using Mediawiki. (http://www.evergreenmtb.org/trails)
It seems there's more and more Drupal among MTB sites. It'd be great to see if we can jumpstart this group. Aside from DORBA, here are some I've seen:
IMBA Canada Events is using Drupal:
http://www.imbacanadaevents.com/
IMBA itself has started using Drupal and CiviCRM:
https://www.imba.com/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=1&custom_76=...
NoBMoB (Australia):
http://nobmob.com/
Just Racing UK:
http://yopensource.com/en/news/drupal-news-and-announcements/369-just-ra...
NW Trails Association (Portland, formerly PUMP)
http://www.nw-trail.org/
In additional to those sites,
In additional to those sites, Rad finally upgraded http://2pedal.com/ to Drupal. In addition to running a great source for trail guides, Rad is also behind the theming of imba.com.
FATRAC
If I may add my site to the list of IMBA affiliated sites that use Drupal.
Folsom-Auburn Trail Riders Action Coalition
http://www.fatrac.org
I've been using Drupal for content management and CiviCRM to track memberships and donations for about 2 years now. I really enjoy the huge amount of modules to choose from, and all the community feedback if I need to make minor modifications. Before utilizing Drupal I had to continuously go in and modify code to add new stories and update the event calendar. Now I've been able to task members of the club to do this, while I maintain the functionality of the site.
I've also finally been able to add some mapping ability by using a combination of GMap and TrackField.
I'm always looking for ways to improve the site and encourage member participation, your feed back is welcome.
-Gil
Cro-Moly
Nice site.
Ya know, Cro-moly is steel. :) (I was looking at your membership levels.)
DORBA has moved
We've moved to www.DORBA.org and made a few enhancements. Via CiviCRM we now have over 1,500 paid annual memberships and 6,000 registered users in our community.
We still have lots of work to do on the site.
Mike
There is a framework
There is a framework available using a combination of CiviCRM and Drupal to provide club management along with a social sub net. It also a good alternative to the IMBA Chapter program if you are wanting to keep it local (and not give up 60% of your membership dues).
http://www.ORGwerks.com
Austin Ridge Riders, the
Austin Ridge Riders, the largest MTB club in Austin is up and running with a version of ORGwerks.
http://www.austinridgeriders.com