Otto Vondrak wrote:None taken, but when I need a good reason to travel two hours and expend valuable gas money, the web site does little to encourage me- which creates a conflict in my brain, because I hear everyone saying such wonderful things. The site does little to confirm those compliments. I'm sure one of these times I will indeed head out there and enjoy their operations...
I'll give you that the website is pretty poorly designed. The website looks as if it was designed in the late 90's and never redesigned since. Information CAN be hard to find at times unless you are a frequent visitor. It can be loud (both visually, and audibly), confusing and just plain ugly. The pages can change general design based on the webmaster's whim and the intro page is so 1995.
BUT... BUT.. It's update weekly just about, and sometimes more often. New photos find the front page, and 'Latest Views' page very quickly and the Online News letter is updated sometimes Tri-Monthly. The fact that it is even updated makes me happy. I've seen plenty of websites drift off into the basement of the interwebs due to lack of updates. There are plenty of static websites for museums and other organizations out there that put the most general information they can and call it done. Not the CTM website. The webmaster keeps it up to date, informative and plain amusing at times. I would not expect any more from a volunteer to be quite honest.
Usually, the lowest going rate for web design these days is $500-2000. While it would be visually nice, we would have to update it. No one volunteer at the museum has enough time to do that. And to be honest, many of the volunteers are crotchety old men (no offense intended) who if they are not too intimidated to touch a computer, usually break them when/if they do.
Would I love to have the website redesigned, maybe thrown over a CMS? Oh hell yes. I would love for it to be simple for the office lady to add time sensitive info, like if we are open during a snow storm, or update prices. I would love to have the webmaster's job 1000x easier when adding a page. I would love for consistency, order and simplicity for the visitors of the website. But I tell ya, for what the museum pays, they have a good deal for what they get.
But if you are reading this Mister Mystery Webmaster, (only like 4 people at the museum have met him. I hear he is a green haired orc...) I would be more then happy to help you redesign the Connecticut Trolley Museum's website and get it up into the 21st century. I cannot do it all, but I can absolutely throw ideas out and maybe some coding here and there.
The hell with the $0.02...that's $15.
