Could I please have a little more

[PonoBill]

Dave Kalama did a post on his blog tonight that is just so right on. First he's right on about what a great winter we've had in Hawaii and how we'd all like a little more please. Then he's also right on about how SUP makes it easy to go find new places, and the great benefits of leaving crowded lineups for more remote spots. I got to say, the guy can write. I'm helping him with edits, but other than a spelling correction I didn't touch a thing http://www.davidkalama.com/2010/03/is-it-over/

[Otis]

Bill - This is a great site, it is very much appreciated to hear directly from such a great source.  A quick observation on the design - I'm no expert by any means, just a consumer.  Chuck P's blog comes through slimmed down/formated different when I hit it from my bberry storm - it is quicker and the pics come through great.  Very nice to hit during down time, but when I'm not at a computer.  Most of my sup-web time - on the zone, surfline, NOAA, etc. is in this fashion.
Thanks!

[PonoBill]

Thanks for the comment, yes, I can do that, glad you reminded me.

[PonoBill]

Okay, I set up a basic mobile interface. I'll tune it from there, but it should give a pretty decent user experience as it is. I've pared it down to nada, I'll probably clean up the title and add some graphics. Try it on your mobile and et me know what you think.

[PonoBill]

I tweaked it a bit more, added graphics and thumbnails, increased the image size. Let me know what you think. I'd like to hear from other mobile users as well, it looks great on my iPhone, but hard for me to test others.

[Bald Brother]

Great read. This forum is an amazing opportunity to hear from guys like Dave Kalama and Chuck Patterson. Thanks for the efforts.

[Otis]

Looks great!  My meetings will be so much more interesting now...  Thanks!

[stoneaxe]

Very nice bro...comments aren't working though.

[tautologies]

Nice. Those pics are insanely nice...

In terms of the site...if you have things you do not use in the interface you should probably just take it off... :-)

Wordpress is easy to customize and you don't need all the e-commerce features if you are not using them :-)

There are so many nice free designs right at wordpress.org

 If you want something customized it is pretty fast and easy-ish to do too...

[StandUpPaddleSurf.net]

Nice job Bill.  Can you get Dave to post some downwind tips.

[PonoBill]

Thanks guys.

The site is still a work in progress, I kind of "soft launched" it here at the zone because we had enough content to make it interesting. But the site is really not ready for prime time.

I'm pretty familiar with WordPress. Ke Nalu runs on WordPress, as do pretty much all the sites I build (with a few exceptions). The eCommerce stuff is not a standard feature, I added several different iterations over the last weeks, and it was up and running because I needed to test it, but I've turned it off for now.

I had registration and comments turned off while I was getting the newsletter stuff sorted out. I still want to integrate the newsletter registration as an option for site registration, but I need to write some code for that since the plugin doesn't do that yet. I hate customizing plugins since it makes updates so clumsy, so I'm stalling.

As soon as I turned on comments the spammers found it. I swear they spider faster than Google. So it's going to have to be administered directly. I have all the usual anti=spam stuff running, but crap still gets through.

There's a lot of technique stuff in the works, paddling, fitness, downwinders, reading swell, surfing, etc.

How about someone taking a look at the site using a mobile phone other than my iPhone--I'd like to know how it looks. I used a pretty slick converter but it's complicated. I'd like to know it isn't blowing up on other phones.

[tautologies]

I hate customizing plugins since it makes updates so clumsy, so I'm stalling.

haha, agree!!!

[Tom]

Can someone explain what the 'ten man rule' is?

[PonoBill]

Sure, Ho'okipa has had a ten man rule for windsurfing for years. If there are ten or more surfers in a break then you can't windsurf in it. Works well at Ho'o because Lanes, the furthest west spot, is where the windsurfers go, and when it's windy, it's a long way back to anywhere you can get out. When the wind comes up there's usually only one or two diehards there, and they know what they are doing. They don't care about windsurfers.

That's not EXACTLY how it's supposed to work, but that's HOW it works.

Now SUP surfers have (sort of) agreed to abide by the ten man rule. Doesn't work as well since it doesn't have that natural thang going for it, except that really, there are so many spots as good or better that regular surfers don't use, that who really cares. Well, some folks do.

But I don't. I have my own little secret spot when I'm not at Kanaha, that just rocks out. Me and the turtles. I've never seen anyone else there. Only problem is that if something happens to me, I'm on my own.

[Otis]

Looks great on a blackberry storm.  Both landscape and portrait view.  It is much faster also.