Category Archives: All Posts

Site Changes for Oct and Nov 2013

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Greetings from the Rowany Webright!!

A fair bit has happened over the last month or so, much of which you can actually see (for a change).

Content Helpers

  • We now have someone helping out with keeping information on the site up to date. They have been keeping an eye on mailing lists applicable to Rowany and adding things such as event and news information. This has been a fantastic help!

Process Guides

  • As I now have one person regularly helping to update the site, we’ve started discovering which areas require information on how it is best to add content. I’ve taken the opportunity to start creating a process guide for contributors. There is already a wad of information, and eventually this will outline a good foundation of the main procedures, how to add / update things, WordPress eccentricities, naming convention, tag usage and the like. This should help keep things looking semi-professional and coherent which is nice for visitors by providing a good understanding contributors can work from.

Header

  • When I originally changed the design to one that is “responsive” everywhere with a maximum width much larger than what had originally been set, the header went along for the ride. While the rest of the site looked much better and was able to use the real estate of visitors with larger screens, the header itself looked over-sized.
  • I’ve now set the image to fixed dimensions and wrapped some css gradient stuff around it. I’d like to make the time to put a new header image together and have received some feedback regarding this, however, this area is now functional and looks good enough until that happens. There are a few other priorities before a new header image.

Fonts

  • The main font has changed from whatever it was before (Arial from memory) to Helvetica. This one change alone made the site no longer look like it was created in the 90′s. I’m not sure why I didn’t change that immediately when I became webright, oh well.

Navigation

  • Initial changes to the navigation have been done. We were getting some feedback that the main menus had way too much information in them which was detracting from easy use, rather than helping it.
    • I’ve finished changing the navigation for the Arts and Sciences section. Now that main menu is JUST a link. When clicked visitors are taken to the A&S section where a secondary menu appears on the left hand side for navigation WITHIN that area.
    • This has gone down well with those requesting such a change. As such, I’ll do the other major categories over the next month or so, when time permits

Sidebars

  • I rearranged the Event, News, Notices and Recent Posts sidebars. I recently received a few requests regarding this which made perfect sense as the most important information was below the fold when viewed on smaller screens!
  • The number of items in each section has also been adjusted

Tags

  • I’ve cleaned up all of the tags for the site, getting rid of double ups (where two or more tags are that are actually the same thing), giving them all standard formatting and taking a logical and uniform approach to naming convention.
  • I then went through and adjusted ALL the tags on existing posts. Some of this was done with the adjustment of the tags themselves (as it populated the changes throughout the site), but, almost all posts before I arrived didn’t use tags at all and posts added by contributors or even I, often missed out on potentially useful tags (easy to do with no process or format outlined). Of course, more tags were added as needed. There is now quite a nice working base.

Content

Facebook Cross-posting

  • My testing of the Facebook cross-posting has been put on hold over the last few months. I’ve been too busy with my own business tech stuff (ongoing hosting woes) to finish this off.
  • The plugin most likely to be used requires Facebook App integration. This is not difficult at all (paint by numbers) but will probably require either admin access to each Facebook group / page or for admins to add code for us. Either way I’ll have to contact those involved. This was always likely to be the case, just noting more than anything else.
  • I’ve had a chat to a couple of people regarding the projected membership area of the site which will go around most of the security concerns such as information from Facebook being posted publicly here where real names have been used in private groups there. Obviously we cannot let that happen. The recent suggestion has been to find something that plugs into OpenAPI and Google and maybe Yahoo so most people won’t need to remember yet another login and password. Once members are verified and added to the site, they can use OpenAPI etc to do the actual logging in

FUTURE!

  • Further CSS adjustments
    • The theme needs updating before this is practical. As before, this is in the works with Masonry, and they’ve been busy
  • Implement cross communications between the site and Facebook… getting there slowly
  • Finish testing of plugins etc. A lot of new plugins have appeared out of nowhere?
  • Work with Masonry re backlog of issues and any new requests (such as plugin requests). I haven’t approached them regarding this yet.
  • I still have to finish the senate meeting minutes section of the site. Everything I have has already been added in draft form, but there is concern regarding posting of mundane names and the like. This may wait till we have the membership side of things sorted out.
  • I wish to add process guide information for contributors to the Admins & Officers section. This section currently contains, well, nothing (the draft posts of the senate meeting minutes are in there but not publicly available yet). I’ve spoken to one or two people who said they also have information that should go in here. Hopefully I’ll start to get this populated soon.
  • There is always more content to add. Getting some of the automation up will be good as this is far too manual a process when considering it is doubling up, tripling up or worse.
  • Create a new header image

So, a fair bit has been going on lately. We hope you enjoy the changes to the look, feel and navigation. As always, requests, suggestions, advice, feedback or related acronym of your choosing… is very welcome!

In service to the Crown and the Barony,

Jan
Rowany Webright

IMPORTANT NOTICE – Venue change TBA – Petersham Town Hall closed for ten weeks from Jan 20th

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From the Seneschal:

 

Marrickville council have just called me.
Petersham Town Hall will be closed for ten weeks from Jan 20th, for repairs to the structure of the hall.

Unfortunately, Marrickville Town Hall is *not* going to be available to us as an alternative.

They are still sorting out what options may be available to us – perhaps a combination of St Peters and Herb Greedy Hall. Or we may need to go back to doing fighting at Camperdown park.

This has not yet been decided, but I will let you know when it happens.

Fighter prac will continue – and will return to Petersham after the ten weeks.

How-to (Successfully) Apply for FAT funds

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Basics

  1. FAT funds are to be spent improving the kingdom and/or festival
  2. anyone may apply (see further below for ideas)
  3. it is up to the Rowany senate to decide whether or not to approve an application. Applications may be accepted, refused or returned with questions that need to be answered before re-applying.
  4. senate decisions are final – there’s no use whining about it if your application didn’t get accepted. A more productive action would be to get cracking thinking up a new cunning plan and apply for that instead.
  5. to make a request, email or hand it to the Rowany Seneschal (that’s me) via seneschal@rowany.lochac.sca.org

There aren’t any rules, per se, for FAT applications. What we do have are “more like guidelines”, but they’re based on what my experience now is with past requests for FAT funds – what worked and what didn’t. You don’t have to have everything I mention below, but the more of the following you can provide, the better and more likely you’ll get a good, quick answer.

Guidelines

To begin with, give us details of what you’re after. The more specific the better. who it’s for, who’s spending it, on what, when, and why. Also how it’s going to improve either a) the kingdom or b) festival

We also want to know who exactly is going to benefit: what special interest groups specifically, how many people are likely to benefit from it and how much they will benefit. You can also count on how this will spread to others eg Mistress Mari ran classes at festival on teaching teachers, so her reach went beyond the immediate attendees of her classes

We also need to know what other sources of funding you are trying, especially when you’re requesting money to move teachers around the country because that is also covered by the Greater Kingdom Fund and the “laurel bus”.
Have you applied for those? did they accept / reject?
If they accepted, I’m assuming you’re looking for us to fill the “gap”, if they rejected you… then we want to know why.

Have you done any (are you doing any) fund-raising yourselves?
This question has become more important where, say, very large communities within the SCA have begun requesting funding for things that would only benefit that community, and they’re large enough that if they just passed a hat around amongst themselves, it’d be funded in no time.

Smaller groups, if they fund-raise, are likely to only be able to partly-fund something big. So they still may need “gap cover”… and that’s ok – but we’d still like to see a fund-raising effort – to show that there actually is enough interest in the community that will be benefited by your grand plan. If nobody could be bothered to even throw in $1… then that tells me that even if we throw in $500 – it will not be appreciated very much.

Finally – just so we’re clear: even if you meet all of the above – it’s not a guarantee that we will say yes. We get a fair number of requests each year, and have to decide where best to allocate the large-but-finite FAT funds so that it creates what we think will be the best impact on the kingdom. If we spend money on your idea – it means we have to say no to some other idea… we need to base our decisions so as to maximise the coolness-potential of where we allocate these funds.

Conversely, if we say no, it might not be no-forever, it might just be that right now we have an influx of uber-cool things to spend the money on… and we might in fact recommend that you apply again next year.

Sometimes we knock things back because they will create a dangerous precedent (e.g. we’ve been asked for $1000 for a yearly regular fund for one idea… imagine if five other groups asked for the same thing… there’d be no money left in FAT ever). We’re very much disinclined to accede to a perpetual fund…

 

So, I hope I haven’t overloaded you or turned you off applying altogether.

FAT requests get accepted all the time – so while this may seem like a big chunk of stuff – it’s really just being diligent about your plans and thinking about all the factors involved.

It’s also never just one-off. If we find that we need more info, we’ll let you know, and you can re-propose with the more info the next month Or try again next year.

Good luck, and we look forward to hearing from you.

Rowany Seneschal

First Cut Off (Price Rise) for Festival 2014 Approaching

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Greetings,

just a reminder that the first Cut Off for Rowany Festival Prices is
approaching. After the 30th of November the price of Rowany Festival will
rise. So if you would like to book at the lower price you have just under a
month to do so.

Bookings can be made by going here
http://festival.lochac.sca.org/booking-summary/booking-information/

Caristiona nic Beathain
Rowany Festival Steward

Update – Open Day to Visit Festival Site going Ahead – Smoke Free Zone

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Greetings,

An update on the Rowany Festival Site Visit this weekend.
The planned visit will be going ahead as planned with one minor alteration.
The site is to remain a smoke free site for the day. So if you are a smoker
please be aware of this and make sure that you do not smoke anywhere on the
site on Saturday.

For those who are coming we will see you there.

Caristiona

Position Vacant: Reeve

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From the Baronial Seneschal:

 

Hi all,

The office of Reeve (treasurer) is an essential office to be filled for any Barony.

We’ve had one – but sadly he’s had an attack of life.

So I am now officially advertising for a new reeve.

A reeve is the treasurer of the barony, and involves a fair amount of work. We’re looking into the feasability of paying a book-keeper to help us with some of the work to make the reeve’s job easier, but even so, this job will require regular time each week to gather receipts, make payments, liaise with stewards for their financial reports, and the constable regarding member insurance and create quarterly reports.

You may make as many deputies as you require to help you with this.

We need somebody honest, reliable and willing to do this work regularly.

If you’d like to apply, please contact me via the webform. Submissions close on November 7th.

Monthly Sunday Tournaments!

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Just a reminder that the first Rowany Monthly tournament is on this Sunday the 27th October!

What:     Potluck lunch and tournament.
Where:  St Peters Public School, 31 St. Peter’s Street, St Peters, NSW, 2044 [MAP]
When:    Site opens at 12pm. Armour inspections from 1pm. Site closes 4pm

Cost:      $5 to help cover site hire. (+$5 for non member insurance levy)

The format of the tournament will be decided on the day based on there number of fighters, likely round robin, Valhalla or single kill / double elimination. This is a garbed event, and we can arrange loaner garb if needed. There is seating on site, but bringing a chair wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Hope to see you there!

Yours in service,
Sigvald Sviðanda

(Information on other regular events found here)

A Start to the A&S Gallery

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A page of images of the work of the artisans and scientists of the Barony of Rowany. For more information, email the Arts and Sciences officer.

Cushion in the style of the Hardwick Hall wall hangings

16th Century German Hats

An Elizabethan Sweete Bag

Mayela de la Rue in late Elizabethan dress

Visit to Festival Site Potential Postponement Due to NSW Fires – TBA Later

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Greetings,

at the moment the planned Site Visit on the weekend is up in the air. The
owner of the property has asked that he be able to contact us on Thursday
to either clear our visit on the weekend or to reschedule it. This decision
will be made on a number of factors including;
Safety
Fires in the area
Access on the roads
Air Quality
Emergency Services in the area and their concerns
and a number of other different concerns.

When we hear from the owner of the site and we discuss these concerns on
Thursday details on the site visit will be forthcoming. Additional
information will be posted here when it is forthcoming.

The Festival Stewards

Sunday Fighter Practice

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A missive from Lord Sigvald:

Sunday fighter practices have a new home!

From the 13th of October (the week after Spring War), the Barony of Rowany has booked the oval of St Peter’s Public School, St Peters (more info via link below) from 12-4pm. This field is private, large, copious amounts of parking, and has facilities attached.

Archery practice will start up at the same place from the 20th. I will be bringing my two bows and a number of arrows, so I’ll be able to help out those without, but if you have arrows please bring those. We’ll have a temporary target (armour on a chair), so if anyone has any ideas about a more permanent archery target, please let me know.

The field is also perfect for war practices (which have been held there in the past, and will again).

To help cover field hire, a small donation is requested.

Further details (address, directions, MAP) can be found here.

We will be having a monthly tournament which be starting up soon. One Sunday of each month, fighter practice will now be transformed into Monthly Sunday Tournaments! Click on the link back there for more details.

Look forward to seeing you all there on the 13th!

Yours in Service,
Sigvald Sviðanda

(Information on other regular events found here)