Beginners Website

[Conor]

Hi all

After recieving such good advice from you all over the last few months and looking for a new hobby between dives, the thought occurred to me to create a beginners guide to scuba. Not how to do it, but what are the options etc, holiday training, club training, local or holiday diving etc. Essentially a one stop shop for the kind of advice I have been recieving and therefore the type of page I would have liked to have found before.

I have bought a suitably named domain and am planning to start putting together some content. Any opinions on what should be on there ? Any existing sites that you think do it well or don't do it well and why ?

Thanks in advance

Conor

 

[chiara]

Not to be a wet blanket, but I feel the web is a bit saturated with forums and people tend to stick to the usual ones.

One I used to consult quite a bit is: http://www.newdiver.com/forum/ and it is related to Rodale's.

 

[Conor]

Its not a wet blanket at all.

I wasn't thinking about a forum, but more writing a bit of a distilled guide.

Its mostly for my own interest, capturing and expressing information and trying to layout a nice site, the choice of subject matter is simply more motivating for me and may be of use to someone else

 

[DivemasterWill]

Been working on one of those myself, and it kind of evolved on its own. I ended up creating a "Members Only" Section to the site where people can create dives, sign up for dives, contact other members, etc.... which is nice. I put up a photo gallery, put up my dive logs (as if anyone cares), there's a bulletin board which isn't all that utilized, and pics of the people with whom we dive (as well as their cert levels)... Started doing some links, but that sorta fizzled since I got obsessed with coding the new site. Which leads me to...

I'm working on the next version of it, which aside from being a lot prettier, will also have a searchable database of local dive sites (complete with pictures and all the gory details, including what level of experience you should have), a marine ID engine, and I'm still ironing out the details on the whole thing where we can tell you how many times someone dove a given site when you are trying to decide who you should invite on your dives. Should have the new one up in a couple of weeks (been saying that for 3 months now).

~W

 

[boney]

Sounds like it would be fun... I know some other divers out there are doing similar things.
You should have links to vendors so people can see the gear, and probably one to Rodales site. Other links to where people can get certified and upgrade their skills.
From the sounds of it, you wanna encourage potential divers to become divers, and also provide newbies with answers/suggestions. Like chiara said the web is saturated, not only with diving stuff but everything in general. I would put up losta pics, local diving sites and reviews of offshore locations you've been to so other thinking of going there can see/read what its like. To compliment that you could have travel suggestions like "you'll need to get a visa before going to this country", or stay away from this holiday spot. Safety guidelines should also be on there somewhere.

The list goes on... Although I'm sure you've already thought of most of this stuff...