The message board was originally a resource provided by the
California Cape Dory Owners Association (CCDOA), which was founded in
1994 and was the brainchild of Bay area CDers
Mike Fahy and
Walt Bilofsky. Walt became their webmaster and created and maintained their web site. The message board went live in
October 1996.
In
1996, Al Lawton called a meeting of Chesapeak Bay CDers and the
Cape Dory Sailboat Owners Association (CDSOA, Inc.) was formed. The CCDOA then maintained a single web page for the CDSOA as well as the web pages for the Tiburon Yacht Club.
In June of
1999, I became the assistant webmaster and helped Walt manage the message board, the registry of boats, maintain the pages we already had and created new pages as we collected additional info. I also ran the backups.
In
January 2000, Leo MacDonald called a meeting of CDers in the northeast to discuss forming an organization. Since the CDSOA already existed and their by-laws provided for the formation of regional fleets, those present opted to become the Northeast Fleet of the CDSOA rather than forming another organization. The formation of the Northeast Fleet caused the automatic formation of the Chesapeake Fleet. Up until that time, there were no 'fleets'. At that time, not only was I the assistant webmaster for the CCDOA, I became the webmaster for the CDSOA.
In
March 2000, CDSOA officer
Mitch Bober registered the
capedory.org domain name. By that time our web site had grown from a single page to many but contained information which was mostly specific to the CDSOA with links to the resources on the CCDOA's web site -- no need to duplicate already existing info. The message board continued to be administered by the CCDOA.
In
April 2002 the CDSOA was asked to take over much of the information that was being provided by the CCDOA -- including the message board. Walt and I kind of swapped positions and I became webmaster and Walt became assistant webmaster. The message board was transferred to the CDSOA as well as all of the boat specifications pages and anything that was in the 'Cape Dory Info' and 'Where to Look' sections at that time. Much has been added since then. The registry of boats remains under the stewardship of the CCDOA.
In
May 2003, Bob Dugan made the mistake of volunteering to help improve the performance of the message board. It was a space hog and slow, the database was inefficient, and it was becoming increasingly more difficult to manage. Folks liked its ease of use, but it had to go. So Bob became our "webmeister". Around that time we also started looking for and evaluating replacement bulletin board software.
September 2003, after experiencing some problems with our ISP and server performance, we decided it was time to change ISPs and started looking for a new one. In
February 2004, we changed ISPs and moved both web sites (CCDOA and CDSOA).
In
November 2004 we submitted our proposal to the CDSOA Board of Directors with our recommendation to switch from WWWBoard to phpBB software for the message board. We set up a test area and asked folks to use it, to comment and supply suggestions. If we could implement changes based on their suggestions, we did. And in
February 2005 the new Cape Dory Board was implemented in the form that we are currently using.
Cathy
CDSOA Webmaster
CD32 Realization, #3
Rahway, NJ
Raritan Bay
PS: Meet your current web team:
- Catherine Monaghan, CDSOA Webmaster -- Username: Cathy Monaghan
Walt Bilofsky, Assistant Webmaster -- Username: bilofsky
Bob Dugan, Data Webmeister & Moderator -- Username: bobdugan
Bill Slater, Moderator -- Username: barfwinkle
NOTE: To contact one of us, just click on our
Username then click on either the "
email" or "
pm" button to send us a message OR send an e-mail to <a href="mailto:
webmaster@capedory.org">
webmaster@capedory.org</a>.
