Category Archives: Website News

Website Update

Hi Everyone!  Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!

Hacking the Matrix….

Our website has had some gremlins of late.  It was down for a day several weeks ago thanks to an auto-update that upset a major plugin we run.  This plugin, ‘Jetpack’, is responsible for some of the website’s cooler functionality, including sending out email notifications to subscribed members about new posts.  In order to get the site running again I had to disable Jetpack.  Now that I’ve have some time to look into the issue, it’s properly fixed and Jetpack has been re-enabled.  We were running out of memory….

Excellent advice…

This is just a little message to alert you to some of the content that’s been posted whilst the email notification system has been down.  Specifically of timely interest is:

2017 Callbooks available early January

plus you may have missed:

WIA Political News

Special exams part of the WIA Exam Service

WIA licence assessment system complies

Morse code club lifts its profile

and

Australia ends major shortwave broadcasts

See everyone at the meeting on the 7th of Jan.  If you’re travelling, travel safe – Paul, VK2ICQ

ORARC Facebook Presence

Facebook

Hi Everyone!

As per the committee’s decision, the club’s Facebook Group has been (nearly) wound-up.  Facebook Groups are designed to allow people with a common interest (that’d be us) to interact and collaborate with one another.  Whilst the idea was sound, the requirement of having to be ON Facebook seemed to keep the majority of members away from the group, leaving only a small contingent of members to do the interacting and collaborating.

Facebook is, however, a fantastic way to promote our cause to new (and probably younger) potentially interested parties, and it would be lax of us to not have a presence on a medium that’s capable of reaching so many people so easily.  As a result, ORARC now has a Facebook Page (as opposed to a group).  The Facebook Page, for all intents and purposes, will essentially mirror the content of the website and provide information on our hobby and our club to people who would otherwise never cross our paths.  No one can post things to our page – we explicitly control the contents.  The page also has a facility for interested parties to contact us should they have any queries, enquiries, etc.

You don’t need to have a Facebook account to view the page either (it’s public) so if you’d like to see what it looks like it’s right here.  It’s obviously a little sparse at the moment but new posts go up automatically in sync with the website, so it won’t take long before there’s a reasonable amount of content.

If you have a Facebook account, it would be appreciated if you could visit the site and give it a like and invite other interested parties (both within and outside of our club) to like it too.  It’s beneficial to our page and it would certainly be a good thing for other Amateurs on Facebook to be exposed to the articles we write and events we host here on the Mid North Coast.

Website News

No Internet
AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!

Hello All,

My apologies to our page update subscribers who’ve been flooded with 14 emails regarding 14 new website posts in the one day – I don’t mean to spam you!  I blame Telstra; I’m still without a stable DSL connection here at my home after 3 solid weeks of no internet – it’s a long story – definitely an ordeal but not quite a saga.  I’m catching up with these posts using a Telstra interim telephone unit (that also provides slow 3G wireless data).

If you’re not subscribed to our page updates, please check out the last 3 pages of posts as they’ve all been posted today!  Of particular interest to ORARC members will be the following posts:

ORARC embroidered bucket hats are available for order
The ORARC 41st Annual Field Day program has been released (4 weeks to the field day!)
May OxTales Newsletter has been released

There’s also a load of interesting (I hope) news stories, including one about how mobile phones don’t cause brain cancer – you can show that to your long haired new age hippy niece (we’ve all got one) who thinks your radios are slowly killing everyone living in a 5km radius.  It won’t change her mind though….

Subscribe
Do it, you know you want to! Illustration only, clicking is futile.

If you’re not subscribed to our page updates, you should be – just enter your email up there (in the right of the webpage), confirm it in the email you receive and you’re done – website news is then delivered straight to your inbox.  Neat huh?

Finally, there’s now a gallery system installed in the website, somewhere we can post photos of outings and other interesting stuff.  It’s in the menu at the top of the page.  It’d be nice to fill it with things.  There’s some photos (and by some I mean 2) of our repeaters there at the moment.  Please contact me at the club’s address (vk2bor [at] orarc [dot] org) if you’ve got some photos of interest.

Normal service should resume from here, pending Telstra saga not withstanding.

ORARC Webmaster Poster of Things – Paul VK2ICQ

Website Updates

Website

Hello All,

There have been several tweaks and additions to the ORARC website!

For those who hadn’t noticed, all editions of Oxtales shy of the 90s have been available for your viewing pleasure on the Oxtales page for a little over 6 weeks now (as noted in the last edition of Oxtales itself).  I have, however, just completed the laborious task of finishing off the 90s uploads and links, so the collection is now complete!  Go back to the future here!

Much gnashing of teeth has also been involved in getting comments to display in-line below articles on the home page, but to the relief of my dentist and wallet I have succeed (sort of) in getting this working.  I am a PHP programming genius! (not really).

I say ‘sort of’ because I think the comment system wording is a little unclear.  If an article has no comments on it, you’ll see this under the post itself:

Uncommented PostClick ‘Leave a reply’, enter your comment and your response will soon appear (after it’s been moderated if it’s your first post, or immediately if you’ve commented before).

An article that has already been commented on, though, looks like this:

Commented PostThe imperfect bit (in my humble opinion) is that clicking the reply button in the bottom right of the above image will reply to the comment that’s been left (so in this case you’d be replying to Bruce VK2HOT’s comment) – not make a new comment on the article itself.  If you want to comment on the article itself you need to click where it says ‘1 Reply’ (top right of the image) and fill out the form.

You can differentiate between who you’re replying to, as it does tell you:

Reply to Article
Commenting on an article.
Replying to an existing comment (Bruce, VK2HOT in this case).
Replying to an existing comment (Bruce, VK2HOT in this case).

 

Here’s how it looks in practice:

Commented ThreadThe top post is Bruce’s comment (well done too Bruce!) – the next (indented) post is my reply to Bruce’s comment and the bottom post is a new comment regarding the article (and is therefore not indented).  Leaving a new comment on the above article would require you to click on the ‘3 replies’ at the very top right of the image.  This should be familiar to anyone who’s worked with threaded discussion systems (once you get around the crappy wording).

Clear?  Not really?  Clearer?  Hopefully…  I think this may need some context and may become clear as you give it a try…

I hope with the comments now being displayed in-line instead of hidden on the post’s dedicated page (which no one ever visits), we’ll get a little more interaction on the site.  So, please, get commenting! 🙂

Website Update

Update!Hello All,

Please now find a Links page and the VK Repeater Map in the menu above.

I’m open to suggestions for sites to added to the links page, but let’s not attempt to complete with the likes of AC6V and their 6000 links!  Current links have been provided by Bruce VK2HOT with a few added myself, but feel free to let me know at the club’s email address of any glaring omissions or other sites of major interest.  Please submit the URL of the site and a brief description as per the layout of the links page.

A while back now I generated a map of NSW Repeaters that I publicized on Facebook, but since then (and thankfully for me) the talented Steve Ireland VK2MD (who’s now caretaker of the WIA’s repeater list) has collated together the info for all Amateur Repeaters & Beacons, UHF CB Repeaters and Marine Radio installations in Australia and made the data available for download.  With this data, I have generated a map of all of the above VK radio installations courtesy of Steve and Google maps, which you’ll find embedded on the VK Repeater Map page above.  I will update the map with current info as Steve publishes new data.

A Net Controller’s roster and real-time Solar-Terrestrial information is also now available in the sidebar on the right (you may need to scroll down to see them).

Here’s a small version of the repeater map:

I welcome any feedback or suggestions regarding the website in general as well as suggestions for website content.

Paul VK2ICQ