Moving the Club forward, What is next

After our meeting at Botany today, the nine of us (Altezzagirl, Squid, Resist, Teeser, Cashfree, Jase, Tezz, Frylai & Greeneyes) decided-

The new webpage to replace my current front page is the priority! It will be a lot more stylish, based on the one Matt posted in our last gallery. It will carry the altezzaclub.org.nz logo.

Once we have that, we will get more business cards printed, and posters to put up everywhere. These will carry the logo also.

We will have vinyl quarter-window stickers made with the logo.

We will have number plate frames made with the logo.

We will have pens carrying altezzaclub.org.nz

Generally people thought a subscription was OK. This will buy a 'joining pack' of pens, window vinyls, cards and hopefully a copy of Performance Car magazine. I will add the number plate frame in the joining pack if I can get them sponsored.

As well as spreading the word with these, we will try advertising in some of the papers and setting up web links on other websites.

SO..... if you have any suggestions or can help with any of these, please post in here or PM me and we shall use your skills to the full!



keith

Sound's like an excellent idea to me just let me know the Bank account number.

Hi

When you search on google for this site you come up with nothing.
Maybe this needs looked at so all previous members can find it.

cheers,
cutty

I know!

It takes about 6months for the web spiders to pick up the new web pages and load them into the search engines!!

So we will get busy after next Feb!

We will have to rely on cards, posters and number plate frames!

Hi Keith (and all) - impressive turnout at the coffee meeting. Bit of a bitch I couldn't be there, but I'll detail here my thoughts and what I can do!

What I can (and am willing to do):
* Tech stuff - am a software developer and general techhead, and can code, develop, do HTML, setup up websites/servers and everything.
* Possibly sort out hosting at preferential rates from a mate who has a spare virtual server and spare bandwidth
* Could organise other domains as well, e.g. to include the AUS guys?

Questions and thoughts:
* Has the branding been decided upon? I think it'd be good to start out nicely with a good club "brand" including colours, fonts and logo. Does anyone have friends with graphic or brand design experience?

* Has it been decided how the Australian dudes are going to be involved, if at all? Given there are less Altezzas over there, perhaps it's a little moot when the branding is to be "Altezza Club".

* Keith - if you're keen for me to help out, want to PM/email me about forum stuff? Interested in what your plans are for forums and domains, use of Invision and such. :-]

* The subcription with pack seems a good idea to me. We'd probably just need to make sure we definitely had something to offer before we pushed subscriptions too hard. Perhaps forums could be augmented with a member's forum as well - not sure how this might work. (thinking out loud)


In terms of ideas, I think it'd be cool to develop the site and club with a really good online presence from day one - make it slightly less forum-centric than the old one, with more general content and theming - make it easier for people to get a feel for what's going on without delving into the depths of the forums?

OK, lots for you to do! I'll just have to take a day to think it out & write it all down!

Logo is a copy of the Altezza badge, in Arial bold italic, so easy to work with. It gets embossed and skinned with liquid metal. Matt & Thomas should have the new web page ready this week. I'll email you a copy to check over the HTML and see if you can improve. Do you want to view the source of the current front page & comment, as the keywords etc will be also used in the new one.

We will take the webpage image into the business cards and the posters. Put the posters up in the offices of the car yards selling Altezzas if we are allowed, and cards in the gloveboxes. Posters can also go up in any community noticeboards in shopping centres.

Server question will come up later once we have this all running. Maybe buy this off Invision and run it ourselves. PM Serran for the Aussie side of it, they are buying altezzaclub.org.au, as they see more to be gained from the Altezza name in the future. They will run as a separate club with their own meets, but share these forums.

Any suggestions for forum layout are welcome of course- we are making this one up as we go along....

keith

Well, here's what I think we should do, from a tech perspective.

Get some hosting, buy Invision and install the forum, with garage mod and anything else we want on a new host. Build it into a more inclusive site that's not too forum centric, picking some colours and a look that makes it our own, the 'brand' if you will. To speed, we can probably work from an existing skin.

I think the site should be country agnostic - should just refer to "altezza club" but not NZ or AUS explicitly, as that simplfiies things. We could have two domains pointing to the same host easily. That means we can share content between the two country's clubs and keep the branding similar, rather than maintain two separate front entrance pages to the same forums?

If we want to get the brand right so that dealers and yards will be happy to support us, I think it's important to get the online branding right (or at least half right) at the start, espcially since this is largely an online forum? Also to minimise the number of people who'll have to move to yet another forum address if we wait till it gets bigger to get our own server!

If I find out some more details about hosting and such, and find I can do it cheap (would be more than happy to put some money into it myself, if you guys will back me and provide input), would you be willing to give me a couple of weeks to get things going and such, migrate posts from here to the server and implement the branding etc?

Definitely keen on input from the Aussie guys; serran? Especially about how they'd feel about maintaining a shared branding and front page and make this a truly Australasian thing. :]

Well, we are moving ahead with our plans aswell, and have been speaking with some of you guys offline, so to speak!

We are keen to have a mix of our own identity, and a combined forum - this is particularly important for the sharing of ideas and information in the one place!

We would like to point out that the Altezza comes in two primary flavours, the RS200 and the AS200 right? AS200 = IS200, so we are within our rights to be an Altezza club are we not?

Besides, where would you fit in the IS300's, Suprcharged and 1JZ/2JZ/1UZ engine converted cars? We are all one big happy Altezza family, eh?!

More to follow, we are in the midst of registration and domain setup at the moment.

matt

Chad- i think its been already discussed and agreed upon between keith, matt, myself, and other council members that we will keep in theme with altezzaclub name.

as for shared front pages.. we will have separate front pages as au and nz will be distinct separate club entities eg. nz needs to manage their own club way of doing things, and so will we.

the forums and altezzaclub name will be the sharing focus between nz and au for primary information sharing and for a basis to expand to other club orientated focuses (independantly) without the uk tight asses control.

hope that makes sense.. if it doesnt.. matt or keith will explain better i think

Ouch! I've just looked up the costs for the 'Herald'

A one-line ad (Toyota Altezzaclub.org.nz) will cost $5!!

So we need to get one new member for every three times we put the ad in, allowing for the joining pack costs.

Still might be worth a try.

apart from determining if members would sign up at that rate.. it may be also worthwhile to consider while starting off to organise group cruise shots or for the more modified altezzas in nz to get a magazine to publish it in a feature article. of course the car would have to sport all the decals/logos and branding for the club

best of all, this is free advertising to a demographic that is likely to appeal target readers/subscribers

Oh hell yes, if we can organise that we will be right into it!

We better set up a page for "interesting links to visit" and start swapping links with the magazines also.

If you want to commercilise the site you could sell banner space.
Pricing you charge depends on the traffic and number of members.

Your target market will be any organisation that provides a service to modified vehicles.

Thanx for the idea. If I remember correctly this was something we never wanted to do - turn our forums into a commercial site for businesses to milk revenue off us.

I could be mistaken, will be interesting as to what the others comment. I am personally unaware of the current financial position of the club either.

Keith or Matt?

We can buy the advertising space currently on the page off Invisionfree, and then re-sell it as we please. The amount we pay depends on the number of page views on the site, which is why I put the page counter on the bottom.

I think its US15c per 1000pageviews, and we have had 2.2million- so about $NZ400 worth.

However we don't have the need to go to a lot of hassle and organising as we have enough money to run the Invision servers for the next couple of years.

If we get desperate for funds its the first option!

Please let's keep it banner free.

At present, the AU side of the club has a moderate but healthy bank balance. Enough to maintain a fairly steady supply of merchandise, and contribute to the costs of the forums we have here, which are not, in fact, free (we pay for the space used).

Moving forward, it would be nice to see the forums operate in their own hosted space, and i believe that between member contributions, fund-raising events and sponsors like our generous benfactors, Mr Grinder aka All Style Automotive, Sam from Currans, and Indy and the gang at IS Motor Racing, i think we could achieve this with minimal need for advertsing banners and the like.

However a more dedicated and less time-poor team of people is required on this side of the Tasman to help this along. I believe it should continue to be a joint effort from both sides. Although after seeing a taste of the import scene on the South Island, and flipping through the NZ cars guide XNICKX very kindly sent me last month (thanks Nick!) over time i think the larger contribution of time and members will come from New Zealand.

No probs Matt!

How could we go around fundraising in NZ?
What do you guys do?
I am always keen to help out in my spare time.

Hey Nick,

Didn't girl speed have a car wash recently?
What are our female members upto?

Maybe the boys will have to get out there in their swimsuits and show them how it is done LMAO.

id love to see the QLD as well as all of AUS side grow. there are the cars out there. they just dont know about us.

hi Josh (Lxtasy)
Do u have any club's card to distribute to other IS owners?

if u are running out, let me know, I will post some mroe to you..

yes, I ahve seen quite a few more IS200s around, some of them have light modifications..

Somethat I've been thinking about recently, anyone here in NZ have a few mins a week to spare updating or even re-making the NZ site?

Just take a look at the Australian version for an idea on how we can make it a bit nicer to the eye.

Maybe have like a mini archive of pictures from old meets etc?

I would love to do this but my computer knowledge stop at the forums and emailing etc.


NZ:
http://www.altezzaclub.org.nz

Aus:
http://www.altezzaclub.org.au

if i had any knowledge of updating the site i would offer.. but my knowledge also stops at forums and email

I might be able to assist in some way, but 1) am not artistic, so not really able to dream up the design, and 2) have no ability to make animated or flash/shockwave bits.

If I can be of help, I'll be keen. I can do some basic web site stuff.

Any help is still help Jeremy!

Not sure how to actually go about this but I'll email Keith tomorrow and get back to you.

Cheers!!!