Considering a RC Website

[ghost2212]

Have you done any web development before?

[SamS]

Not properly, I have a photography website, but very basic.

[meggark]

Re: Considering a RC Website

I'd recommend WordPress as a base system to start with. Drupal is also very good and better for larger and I ore complex sites but it's not as easy to use.

[ghost2212]

Not properly, I have a photography website, but very basic.

It will require a lot of work to learn web development skills and build a site that is nice to navigate and has decent information on it.

[debrooker]

I'll always advocate giving it ago, as (a) you may come up with something that will differentiate your site from others and (b) you'll be learning/improving very marketable skills.

I will caveat the above, though by saying that I think people have their own trusted sources, they will goto XYZ for advice on this and that and it will be difficult to entice others away. As someone above has said, with a few searches on the internet you can find advice on anything you want.

Also who will moderate the advice given, some sort of ranking system (points scoring based on quality of answers with down voting if advice is naff)?

anyway, wishing you the best of luck if you do go ahead.

[SamS]

Yeah, I'm all up for giving it a go, I have been in the process of doing stuff on the site at the moment. I have not created this site from scratch, its a template site, but I think it looks real cool at the moment and different from others.

Only trouble is, the site costs £8 a month to run, which, Okay, Isn't a lot, but I obviously it'll never pay back, so can't really decide if it's worth it tbh :L

[Keratos]

Well, for what its worth,
I joined here about 4 weeks ago. it took some time to get into the comfort zone and I probably ****ed a few members off with my approach but no harm intended - thats just me.
4 weeks ago I knew nothing about RC let alone RC helis.
thanks to RCHELIADDICT members (about 10 in particular) I feel significantly more confident, more educated, and part of the "family", I owe so much to these guys and gals.
Quite why anyone would need to go anywhere else is not immediately clear to me
Links to text, documents, videos, images, animations - you name it - have all been provided here through rcheliaddict
I am so glad I came across this site, perhaps others may take a different view though

Upshot is, if you feel you can add something this site lacks then IMHO it cannot be that significant a shortfall so why not introduce it into this site??

[RcRotaryMadness]

I think a lot of what your site would do has already been covered by forums, google, YouTube and other sources.

google any servo number, esc, motor etc and you can easily find its specification, so your site would only be duplicating information.

videos on YouTube showing "how to do xyz" are becoming very widespread now too.


i think to make anything useful its needs to be more specific, I'd suggest you make it more of a one stop shop for newcomers only and make it clear and concise.

i think a big problem with forums there's a lot of background "noise" it can take a lot of searching to find an answer and to a newbie, reading someone else's misguided information can confuse them further... Plus the stuff experienced flyers talk about can go over the heads of newbies.

so in summary,
needs to be more specific towards newcomers only...
instead of listing all the servo specs under the sun, a newbies guide to selecting the right servo for the job might be more useful for example... So teach them rather than tell them
clear and concise articles on the parts of Heli's and ssetup

think of it a little bit like when on the forum, a thread is so useful it gets "pinned" to the top... Like that but better, clearer and easy to understand language covering each part of the hobby.

whatever you decide to do I wish you luck :-)

[adieuk]

Hmmmm i dont want to sound funny here but im gutted that after everyone who helped you on your problem you had with your heli and all the help you got from addict members you want to start your own forum
sorry i dont understand!

[SamS]

I don't want to start my own forum, I already said I don't, I'd have no need to when there's RCHA.

Like I previously said, it would only be to help people out (or newbie specific), it would be nothing like a forum. It'll let newcomers find direct and easy to understand information a out flying ...


That has annoyed me a bit tbh, I have endlessly said thanks to everyone for their help, and now you're trying to make me feel bad, I do not want to replace RCHA

[PKNEC]

Hi Sam from my point of view I think what you are after doing is already covered.
You have the tech build vids from Finless on the freak and all the other advice on here.
As regards product tests and reviews you cant beat some ones opinion who has shelled out there hard earned cash and has experienced quality or not first hand and again that's already covered.
I think young gun and Keratos have said it already to be honest and at £8 a month save your cash.
If you really want to add something have a look at Raptortechnique there might be something in a niche/specialist site maybe start your own blog type portal.

Paul

[hedge]

This is a nice site for beginners RC Helicopters, The Most Fun And Rewarding Of All RC Hobbies.. Forums are good but often difficult to work out whether the information is good or not. It's rare for people like finless to hang around, they often do an amazing job for a couple of years then drop off the radar. I don't think that there is a single goto source for good info, more a collection of sites you need to take advice from. In short I think there is room for another, the big differentiator would be marketing, you need to spend £££ to get found in google and this will not be cheap and would need a concentrated commitment.

[RcRotaryMadness]

Just to add to my earlier comment, I do think some sort of professionally audited, clear, concise, centralised information as a guide specific to newcomers would be very useful... However there is people doing this in one form or another already but that's fine, it's all in support of the hobby and that's what counts really.

things you need to consider is the amount of time it'll take to build and maintain it, the cost of it (how come £8 per month?) and how to get newbies to actually find it?

i'd get some hosting (i recommend tsoHost but maybe you already have some hosting from your photo site)
build a Wordpress site (quick, easy and for the most part free) also pretty good looking for minimal effort
and build up slowly to see how it goes
stick a PayPal donate button on if you wish, so if people feel they have been helped significantly they can help support the cost of the site, although I suspect you'll be paying the cost of the ssite

or another approach would perhaps involve typing up an ebook/PDF as a definitive guide for newcomers, again already been done to some degree but I'm yet to see one that's all that complete.

give it some thought though because there is a wealth of advice and "live help"for newcomers all over the Internet, rcha, YouTube, google etc

[tourerjim]

Your first post suggest your not ready after reading others 'reviews' which is a word you've used, its always best to put 'your' in this case web site structure in place first.? so my advice is learn from these posts & build that web site on paper first so you've got A's to the Q's great way of getting reviews that needed to start the build.!!!

[heliboy]

You get once chance in this life mate.Give it a go