Please excuse me if this seems out of place on the Guide
mailing list.

One of the members of my club has been concerned about
the stability of the Yahoo! clubs (which our club uses for
announcements, discussions, sharing images and links,
etc.). By happy circumstance, this man has the knowledge
and skill to know how to put a great site together and has
set up a dedicated machine for it to run on.

The URL for the site is www.astroclubs.com. Here is a
summary of what it offers:

------------
AstroClubs is currently in the development stage. We expect
to launch on June 1st, 2001.

AstroClubs.com Offerings

Astroclubs.com will offer templated communities similar to
Yahoo! Clubs. The main difference will be the utilization
of a central information store (CIS) that allows clubs
to share content across their sites. Standard features
will include:

@ Web-based e-mail (either @... or
@...)
@ Message boards
@ Chat rooms
@ Calendar
@ Photo galleries
@ Link libraries
@ Member bio pages
@ News and announcements
@ National astronomy-related news feeds
@ Localized weather conditions
@ Several unassigned, non-descript pages, which may be
built by each individual club Webmaster, thus
allowing the inclusion of content not predefined
in the system.
@ A club info section, which will be used to construct a
large directory of astronomy clubs (available from the
homepage of astroclubs.com).
@ Admin panel allowing the club Webmaster full control
of the site, including the cross-population of content.
@ Custom graphics can be used on a club's site. At the
time of launch, clubs will submit these graphics to
be integrated. At a later date, the admin panel will
be modified to allow club Webmasters to perform
this action themselves.

Clubs will be allowed to use their own domain name, though
they are solely responsible for registering and paying for
them. Clubs who choose not to use their own domain name
will be given a customized astroclubs.com domain, such as
http://clubname.astroclubs.com

The centralized database will contain articles submitted
by each of the local clubs. These articles will appear
automatically on the page of the club that submitted them,
and will be available as an option to all other clubs as an
option of the admin panel. A blanket release will be agreed
to upon establishment of service to allow reuse of articles
within the club system, but not reuse in print. Permission
to reprint must be obtained directly from the author.

Astroclubs.com will be a free service. There is no intention
at the present time to make this a for-profit venture. To
offset costs of maintaining the system, banner ad space
will become available once the sites start generating a
proportionate amount of traffic. A certain amount of banner
space will be allotted to the clubs for the purpose of
advertising special events. Club banners will be provided at
no charge.

------------
There is already a response from several U.S. and U.K.
clubs and the system is at least partially operational
right now. I encourage you to visit and see if is something
that your club would be interested in.

Clear skies


---------------
Roger Curry
Jacksonville, Florida
Visit the NEFAS Web Site at www.nefas.org
Join the Yahoo! NEFAS Club at http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/nefas
Roger's FTP site: ftp://rcurry.dns2go.com