Well its easy enough to install a wordpress front end with a link to simple portal which would give a better looking interesting site rather than a dull text based forum.

The new forum looks a lot nicer than the old one, but is essentially still just a forum.

I thought the new site was going to incorporate some site info, club contacts etc etc.

The best one I've seen is Cumbria Soaring Clubs page. Simple, effective and has lots of relevant info for members and visiting pilots alike (plus obviously the members only forum)

http://www.cumbriasoaringclub.co.uk

Owen

http://www.cumbriasoaringclub.co.uk/
Yes it is good. Can we simply copy it and add our info?
With there permission, may be a fee.

I used to co-run a very successful modified car website and one of the things that kept bringing people to the site was a photo gallery where members could upload their own photos of cars, kit, accessories, projects etc etc. I know its not cars but scattered around various sites we all frequent are info pics and videos of varios, wings, radios, harness's, kobo mods etc etc etc if all this was collated into a central place it would make finding all the stuff they want. Lots of text is boring and looses peoples interest but if there is something nice to look at aswell keeps the attention.

I also like the look of the Cumbria Soaring Club's website. 

I've looked at 18 BHPA clubs' websites and made a note of the different navigation buttons that appear on the home pages of each one.  By far the most popular navigation button appearing on the home page is "Sites Guide", with 17 of the 18 clubs having this on their home page.  The most popular navigation buttons are: Sites Guide (17); About Us (13); Links (11); Weather (10); Competitions (9); How to Join the Club (9); News (9); Contact Us (6); Forums (6); Safety (6); Gallery (5); Members (5); XC (5); Coaching (4); Learn to Fly (4); Visting Pilots (4) and Diary (3).

The Cumbria Soaring Club's website appears to have nearly all of these and they are very easy to locate.  A couple that appear to be missing, that I think would be of interest to visitors and new club members, are Coaching and Learn to Fly.

This is a brilliant post, thanks for initiating it Steve. Please keep the suggestions and ideas coming!

Had a quick shufty at the cumbria page and i like the tabs for site guide's and the way the xcleague goes straight to the club league. but what i miss about our last website is that in a stolen minute i could quickly look at the opening page and see nearly everthing i needed to even from mobile, the new page is over a third of banner and if your lucky you see the last post at the top i find myself scrolling and clicking just to see whats "new", call me lazy but it seems i have to  look for stuff in places instead of it just being there.
  I know its no easy task and Drew has done a great job in giving us a secure platform and is constantly improving the site to be more user friendly.

I think Andy is on the right track...a Photo's and video's  section would be a great addition.
Ron Chipman has done some good informative vids on coastal flying on the DSC facebook page...maybe we could get some of our local sites

Video site guide: http://d-f-c.co.uk/links/derbyshire-soaring-sites-uk/

The Long Mynd site has a feed from Facebook - nice touch to keep non FB users aware that something has been posted there which may be of interest.
Assuming it updates automatically it is an easy way of adding another interest to the site.

Andy

After looking at these other sites it seems a £50 responsive wordpress template from themeforest would give DSC the best looking site in the country (These others are terrible(design wise)).  I would love to help out but just cannot commit this year.

Looks like an all singing dancing website is on its way. March on?