sraacke
Regular Member
Our new website is live at www.laopencarry.org . Check it out.
Louisiana Open Carry Awareness League (LOCAL) formed in the Summer of 2009 with a internet discussion forum. Since then there have been regular monthly meetings, elections of officers, adoption of bylaws, dues and donations collected, education efforts which have included mailing out thousands of our informational brochures to Law Enforcement agencies and officials as well as news media and putting our brochures at gunshows across the state. LOCAL even put up a Facebook page and started a Twitter account.
While the LOCAL forum still serves as a tool for it's members to exchange ideas and information, a website was needed. After many starts and stops we can finally say, LOCAL HAS A WEBSITE.
Since 2009, if you typed in laopencarry.org you would be directed to the LOCAL forum. That is no longer the case. Now, if you type www.laopencarry.org or .us or .com or www.louisianaopencarry.org or dot com you will be directed to a brand new, easy to navigate and read website.
Many LOCAL members spent hours discusing ideas of how it should look and what should be included. They also donated the money to pay for the domain names and to pay to have the new website built. This is a project that went on for a long time and when life got in the way it was sometimes put on the backburner for months. After all of the starts and stops and everyone working so hard to get it done we can finally see the finished results.
The website was built by Robert Sinclair of Sinclair Designs. We found Robert after asking asking on the Bayou Shooter forum for a web designer to contact us. He was one of the designers who gave us a quote and told us what he could do for us. Robert (aka Renegade on Bayou Shooter) sat down with me and I gave him a general idea of what we wanted based on other websites we had seen used by similar groups. The next time I met with Robert he showed me a mockup of his idea for our page which let me know right away that we had chosen the right person for the job. Over the next few weeks LOCAL members met in person and discussed in the forum what we wanted for the website. Robert took part in these online discussions and met in person and on the phone several times, to come up with the final design. The plans grew and evolved over time with Roberts help. He designed an interactive version of our Membership form and linked it to our new Paypal accounts. He put a link to our trifold brochure on the page and a slide show of photos. He put a place for our Youtube videos and a section for links. He came up with ideas such as a comments/reply section for people to contact LOCAL electronically. He set up a blog so that we can update the announcements section of the main page regularly. Robert Sinclair did more than we could have ever imagined. If you are looking for webpage design contact Robert at sinclairdesigns@cox.net .
When it came time find a place to host the website we could have gone with GoDaddy, where we registered the domain names. They quoted us a fair price. Yet, we decided to go with someone local to LOCAL and who is a known gun guy. That person is Jeremy Jouette of Jouette Computer Services, http://www.jcspctech.com/ . You may know Jeremy better as Spanky, the owner of the Bayou Shooter forum as well as a board member of La Shooting Association and competative USPSA shooter. Jeremy quoted us a price competative with the one we got from GoDaddy so a vote by the members of LOCAL determined that our new website would go on Jeremy's servers. Before the move Robert and Jeremy discussed what would need to be done to ensure that everything would function. There wasn't a lot but they made sure that once the webpage was on the servers the membership forms and contact forms that Robert had designed would work properly. And of course they did.
Robert Sinclair and Jeremy Jouette weren't the only Bayou Shooter members with a connection to this new site. When we were redesigning our new trifold brochure to put on the website there were a few problems with the final design. That's when I took it to Loren McDaniel, owner of The UPS Store on Siegen Lane in Baton Rouge and a sponsor on Bayou Shooter. Loren took a look at the design, and being the professional that he is, didn't bust out laughing when I told him I had designed it using OpenOffice. Loren put it into his computer and made several changes to the fonts and spacing of the layout. He really made it look easy with his professional publishing software. His work is more proof that sometimes it's a good idea to pay someone to use the right tools instead of trying to hack your way along with something that may not quite work. Next time I need to redesign the brochure I'm going back to Loren and pay him to do it instead of fighting with it using software I shouldn't be wasting my time with. After Loren had finished fixing my mistakes I emailed the finished product to Robert to put on the webpage.
I hope that everyone has a chance to take a look at LOCAL's new website. We want to thank everyone for their support and hope that LOCAL can continue to be a positive voice for gun rights in Louisiana and for Open Carry into the future. We hope that this new website will help us fulfill our Mission of educating the public about our rights and our organization.
Steve Raacke,
Secretary,
Louisiana Open Carry Awareness League (LOCAL)
Louisiana Open Carry Awareness League (LOCAL) formed in the Summer of 2009 with a internet discussion forum. Since then there have been regular monthly meetings, elections of officers, adoption of bylaws, dues and donations collected, education efforts which have included mailing out thousands of our informational brochures to Law Enforcement agencies and officials as well as news media and putting our brochures at gunshows across the state. LOCAL even put up a Facebook page and started a Twitter account.
While the LOCAL forum still serves as a tool for it's members to exchange ideas and information, a website was needed. After many starts and stops we can finally say, LOCAL HAS A WEBSITE.
Since 2009, if you typed in laopencarry.org you would be directed to the LOCAL forum. That is no longer the case. Now, if you type www.laopencarry.org or .us or .com or www.louisianaopencarry.org or dot com you will be directed to a brand new, easy to navigate and read website.
Many LOCAL members spent hours discusing ideas of how it should look and what should be included. They also donated the money to pay for the domain names and to pay to have the new website built. This is a project that went on for a long time and when life got in the way it was sometimes put on the backburner for months. After all of the starts and stops and everyone working so hard to get it done we can finally see the finished results.
The website was built by Robert Sinclair of Sinclair Designs. We found Robert after asking asking on the Bayou Shooter forum for a web designer to contact us. He was one of the designers who gave us a quote and told us what he could do for us. Robert (aka Renegade on Bayou Shooter) sat down with me and I gave him a general idea of what we wanted based on other websites we had seen used by similar groups. The next time I met with Robert he showed me a mockup of his idea for our page which let me know right away that we had chosen the right person for the job. Over the next few weeks LOCAL members met in person and discussed in the forum what we wanted for the website. Robert took part in these online discussions and met in person and on the phone several times, to come up with the final design. The plans grew and evolved over time with Roberts help. He designed an interactive version of our Membership form and linked it to our new Paypal accounts. He put a link to our trifold brochure on the page and a slide show of photos. He put a place for our Youtube videos and a section for links. He came up with ideas such as a comments/reply section for people to contact LOCAL electronically. He set up a blog so that we can update the announcements section of the main page regularly. Robert Sinclair did more than we could have ever imagined. If you are looking for webpage design contact Robert at sinclairdesigns@cox.net .
When it came time find a place to host the website we could have gone with GoDaddy, where we registered the domain names. They quoted us a fair price. Yet, we decided to go with someone local to LOCAL and who is a known gun guy. That person is Jeremy Jouette of Jouette Computer Services, http://www.jcspctech.com/ . You may know Jeremy better as Spanky, the owner of the Bayou Shooter forum as well as a board member of La Shooting Association and competative USPSA shooter. Jeremy quoted us a price competative with the one we got from GoDaddy so a vote by the members of LOCAL determined that our new website would go on Jeremy's servers. Before the move Robert and Jeremy discussed what would need to be done to ensure that everything would function. There wasn't a lot but they made sure that once the webpage was on the servers the membership forms and contact forms that Robert had designed would work properly. And of course they did.
Robert Sinclair and Jeremy Jouette weren't the only Bayou Shooter members with a connection to this new site. When we were redesigning our new trifold brochure to put on the website there were a few problems with the final design. That's when I took it to Loren McDaniel, owner of The UPS Store on Siegen Lane in Baton Rouge and a sponsor on Bayou Shooter. Loren took a look at the design, and being the professional that he is, didn't bust out laughing when I told him I had designed it using OpenOffice. Loren put it into his computer and made several changes to the fonts and spacing of the layout. He really made it look easy with his professional publishing software. His work is more proof that sometimes it's a good idea to pay someone to use the right tools instead of trying to hack your way along with something that may not quite work. Next time I need to redesign the brochure I'm going back to Loren and pay him to do it instead of fighting with it using software I shouldn't be wasting my time with. After Loren had finished fixing my mistakes I emailed the finished product to Robert to put on the webpage.
I hope that everyone has a chance to take a look at LOCAL's new website. We want to thank everyone for their support and hope that LOCAL can continue to be a positive voice for gun rights in Louisiana and for Open Carry into the future. We hope that this new website will help us fulfill our Mission of educating the public about our rights and our organization.
Steve Raacke,
Secretary,
Louisiana Open Carry Awareness League (LOCAL)