What's that silliness in the Online Cavers window?

[GroundquestMSA]

What nice photos. Of people sitting at tables and standing in courtyards and other such nonsense.

[NZcaver]

I think the shots you are referring to are from the volcano speleology conference now going on in Jordan.

It appears when you upload photos to Online Cavers they show up in that window widget at the bottom of the forum, regardless of whether they are actually cave photos or not. You could always upload some of your own cave photos and bump the feed.

Incidentally, NSS Online Cavers will likely not be around for too much longer, as explained here. So the photo slideshow widget will either go away, or we will have to find some other source of photos.

[GroundquestMSA]

I see. No offense to the volcano speleology folks.

[David Grimes]

The widget always displays the latest 100 photos from Online Cavers. As for it not being around much longer, that is stil up for debate but it is not looking good for Online Cavers. You can read NZ's link if you want to know more.

[BrianC]

Just curious, online cavers has about 2300 members! How many facebook members are there?

[David Grimes]

The NSS fan page has about 600 fans. I know there is a big difference in the numbers. If Online Cavers had more activity I would feel differently. Occasionally there are small jumps in membership but generally it averages only a couple new members a month and even fewer posts. The site is currently not serving any purpose that numerous other websites already fill. Most of the groups we have on Online Cavers have Facebook counterparts that are generally much more active. One work on the new NSS website is completed you will see a much bigger push into social networking from the NSS as well (this has already started on a smaller scale).

Like I said before, the site can still be saved I am just looking for suggestions and really people to come forward and say they want to keep it. When it faced this problem a couple years ago there were tons of people complaining, now the only messages I have received are basically in favor of ending the site. If anything it likely will be around for another year since it is getting close to the renewal and we did make sure the payment was included in the budget this year. Maybe being here on Cavechat I will get a little more feedback.

[BrianC]

I had received a virus from a link on FaceBook, and since have had to removed most all friends with the feeling that things will get worse. Don't know for sure, but attacks look prominent for the future. If indeed this occurs, online cavers would be considerably safer in the future.

[David Grimes]

I have mixed feelings about Facebook and doubts about it's future. I understand your concerns and feedback like yours is what I want to see. Like I said this is not on any BOG agenda or anything like that it is just a personal evaluation of the sites value.

I am also interested in suggestions on how we could raise money to at least offest the cost if not fully support the website. I think any website should be able to justify itself by either paying for itself or providing some service to the owner and Online Cavers does not do much to help the NSS.

[BrianC]

.30 cents each from the 2300 members would offset the cost?

[David Grimes]

The big thing is nobody would need to donate anything if we could get more users to click on the google ads. Google does not allow me to directly suggest users click on the ads but we could easily make enough money to pay for the site if we could just get 30-50 clicks per month on the ads.

We had considered adding a PayPal donate button at one time but there was an issue with integrating it into the current NSS payment system. If we did take donations it would likely be $5-$50 from a few users instead of $0.30 from 2300 users but I do see your point.

[rlboyce]

We're now way off topic here, but I am curious, could you combine Cavechat and Online Cavers into one? I doubt they are compatible, but I think it is an interesting thought to consider. I bet if they were combined, you'd see a higher usage rate.

[David Grimes]

The main issue is that we do not own the CMS used on the website. We simply pay ning and they host their proprietary software and the database on their server. We had looked into creating basically a clone website wiht our own CMS so we could host it on our server and the cost would no longer be an issue. The problem we ran into was finding someone who had the time and skill to creat ethe website on a volunteer basis. It really is a fairly complex CMS so it wold require a lot of work but even that option or something similar will be considered before the any decision will be made.