New national association. How to make other vapers aware?

[arbogast]

Hi.
I've just finished the registration of the norwegian association Norsk Dampselskap (which means norwegian steam company, btw)

Up 'till now the only place I've posted about this on TW's norwegian sub forum.

I'd like to make it easier for norwegian vapers to find out about the association, of course. How does a guy who's not accustomed to working with 'online presence' go about doing this? (I'm the kind of person who never uses facebook personally, but will if this is deemed useful).

I'm aware that to get google juice, one needs to spend money. This is not possible, I'm afraid. Still, it must be possible to do something?

 

[rolygate]

Find at least one other vaper to work with. You have to do this to give some sort of legitimacy to your consumer group. Ideally you would locate others on a forum, and form a committee. Later on, you can have a vote among members to see who will be on the committee for a year.

Once you have more than one person, you have a group. At that stage the way to move forward is to set up a website. The easiest way to do that is to use a Wordpress site on your own domain name. Here is the sequence of action:

1. buy a domain name
Think up several versions of your name, either in full or using initials, and decide on the best option.
Always put dashes (hyphens) between names, never run them together.
buy three versions: the .org (which is what you will actually use), the .no (local version), which you will redirect to the .org, and the .com version, which you just get to protect yourself (to stop others buying it and putting e.g. a ......... on it to get 'wrong click' traffic.

In your case you will most likely buy:
norsk-dampselskap.org
norsk-dampselskap.no
norsk-dampselskap.com

Buy these domains at Namecheap, Cheap Domain Names Registration, Domain Transfer, SSL Certificates, Free DNS, Privacy Protection • Namecheap.com, they are probably the best domain registrars in the world. If you can't buy the .no name through them, find a local registrar for that (google in Norwegian).

2. Arrange website hosting
Try to find Wordpress hosting in Norway. If not available, then as near as possible.
Get a basic account, in the name of norsk-dampselskap.org
Wait till they give you the access details.

3. Point domain at site
When they tell you the nameservers, login to your account at Namecheap and point the domain at the nameservers the site host gave you. You will probably need some help doing that.

NEVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES ALLOW THE SITE HOST TO ALSO HOLD THE DOMAIN NAME
- always keep the domain name separate from the website hosting, using two separate services, as outlined above.


Then get a committee together and try to move forward. Once your association is set up and functional, contact other EU associations - an EU federation of e-cigarette consumer associations will be formed at some stage.

 

[arbogast]

Thanks a lot Roly.
I already have done some of these things: Domains are bought, I have server space (at another host, as it happens) and have even managed to get an SMF forum running. The Norwegian association now has 8 members.

The forum's temporary URL is Norsk Dampselskap - Hovedside until I manage to get the DNS juju going.

My main goals atm is: 1. getting more members, 2. fill the forum with (relevant) info.

If anyone else wants to chime in with advice, I'll be grateful, of course.

 

[rolygate]

Start a Facebook group.
This is important because if you don't do it, another enthusiast will, and they may do it wrong or disagree with you on its management. You need to own it.
It should be an open group, named as for your association.


Start a committee
A committee of two is enough to start with, if that's all there are.


Forum thread
Get a thread on the vaper's forum in your country. Announce the formation of your group.


Website pages
Get two pages done on your website: the front page and contact page.
The front page needs a little bit about e-cigarettes, and some info about the consumer group.
At this stage you have no information, so use terms like "We will..." instead of what you actually do now (which is very little).
Set up an email address at your domain, info@xxxxx is a good one, in your language of course.
Either use webmail to access it or set it up on an email client on your PC.


Get links
Once your website is set up, have other people link to you.
It's best to set up first, worry about this later. You need a two-page website first.
We can arrange several links for you so starting out won't be a problem.
We'll also help with the technical issues on your website.

 

[arbogast]

Just an update from me:

I finally managed to get DNS to work, the forum moved to Norsk Dampselskap - Hovedside (which is a dedicated server).

I have content ready for the website pages, but I'm wondering what's the best way to make these pages?
Unfortunately, I got the forum up prior to your wordpress recommendation, and am limited to 1 MySql database.

All of this web stuff is quite new to me, so until a tech-savvy member of norsk-dampselskap turns up, I'd prefer a couple of very simple pages.
I'm aware that we're doing very little atm. but hope to be able to form a commitee soon.

 

[arbogast]

* I managed to make a very basic frontpage with basic info (Norsk Dampselskap - Forside). It could really do with some improvement as I'm not sure if this is any better than no frontpage. I've never before attempted to do any html/css stuff, so advice reg this would really be appreciated.

* I'm gently trying to coerce a cpl of association members to join a comitee.

* I'm working on writing info about harm reduction and e-cigs in norwegian

* as of now the forum at Norsk Dampselskap - Forside is the only national vapers forum. I've announced its existence in other fora, though.

 

[arbogast]

De now have 300 + members, a comitee and inn late may we'll become more organized ele ting a secretary, spokesperson, forming subcommitees and som on.
We've also began participating inn public, debate, contacting politicians, health authorities and so on.
And we're about to get a design for our site made/implemented.

You mentioned something about arranging links to us. Please do if thats still adviceable.
regards
Jacob

 

[rolygate]

OK then if there is only one database then this is a way to do it:

- Create a database
- Install Wordpress, for the regular website pages. For the database, use a DB prefix like: web1_
- Install SMF as the forum, use a DB prefix like: for1_
- This way, two apps can use the same DB (each only sees their own tables in the DB)

If you already have a forum in the webroot then it will probably be beyond your capabilities to make any further change. If the forum is in a directory (a folder) like: /forum/ then the possibilities are better, and you can install Wordpress directly to the webroot (i.e. not in a directory like /wordpress/).

The ideal situation is where you have the website (actually these days the website app like Wordpress or Joomla) in the webroot 'loose' (not in a folder), and the forum is in a folder. So a visitor to example.com sees the index page (which is on Wordprees of Joomla) and there is a link to the forum, which is in a folder, and therefore at example.com/forum/ (or whatever).

Another alternative is to use a CMS that has an integral or plugin forum, so it only needs one DB. An example is Joomla+Kunena forum (a plugin).

It's too complicated to discuss how to do this stuff here, please email me (chris[AT]e-cigarette-forum[DOT]com

OK now I see that you have a couple of HTML pages in the webroot, and a forum in a directory. If you want to carry on with the HTML pages then I can assist you with them - jsut email me with the rough draft and I'll fix it up for you. Or you can install Wordpress using the method I gave above.

If you have FTP then personally I would change the forum's directory name from /NorskDampselskapForum/ to simply /forum/ - maybe you can find a webmaster to help you do this (it's fixed in some of the configuration files and some other trickery).

Anyway, congrats on getting up and running. I'll fix up a couple of links for you.

 

[arbogast]

Thanks a lot Roly!
A couple of our members work with webdesign and programming professionally, so I expect improvement soon.
Thanks for linking on the Ecca FB group.