This is a great idea. I already found a Shivworks course within driving distance I might add to my training plan for 2017. Thanks.
This is a great idea. I already found a Shivworks course within driving distance I might add to my training plan for 2017. Thanks.
I've been waiting for you to launch this; I love it. Yes, the map is slow. Probably will get slower as it fills out; it's workable. I note that clicking on the link closest to me reveals Craig's ECQC coming up.
In short, I believe the site has already served it's purpose.Thanks for that.
Refer potential instructors (eg. Greg Hamilton, Matt Graham) directly to you?
Glad it works for you.Originally Posted by Sidheshooter
I've been waiting for you to launch this; I love it. Yes, the map is slow. Probably will get slower as it fills out; it's workable. I note that clicking on the link closest to me reveals Craig's ECQC coming up.
In short, I believe the site has already served it's purpose.
This is a one-man operation, built from my kitchen table. That said, the Insights Training and AZTEC Training Services guys are on the list to be added.
All I really need from instructors, and groups like AZTEC, is the permission to use their intellectual property (instructor bios, course descriptions, logos and pics).
Last edited by David S.; 01-14-2017 at 05:41 PM.
David S.
Really cool resource David!
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"There is magic in misery. You need to constantly fail. Always bite off more than you can chew, put yourself in situations where you don't succeed then really analyze why you didn't succeed." - Dean Karnazes www.sbgillinois.com
Maybe it is there and I didn't see it, but you may want to put up some type of disclaimer that the site is not responsible for the safety or quality of any of the trainers listed. You are trying to do a good thing here and I would hate to see anything wacky happen. (Not that it would be an issue with anyone on it yet, but you can't control everything.)
Last edited by MVS; 01-14-2017 at 06:05 PM.
FWIW, here ya go:
Site: firearmstraininghub.com
Revision/Review Date: 15 Jan 2017
Reviewer: Rich Jenkins
Background: Amateur shooter since 2013. 6,000 rounds lifetime, no formal training. Self Defense and competition shooting (USPSA/Steel) interests, primarily.
Review Platform: Site was viewed on an iPad Mini 2 running iOS 10.2 using Safari.
Overall Comment: Site looks to be very useful. Specific comments are only intended to enhance the usability and reduce site maintenance. Very good job! Look forward to seeing this progress.
Comment Log
Priority: Comment
Low: On loading, overall impression of the site was that is was “sparse” and perhaps not fully populated. The rendering of the main site header “Firearm Training Hub” was off center to the right. The blue banner seemed large, relative to the content. Below the blue banner, the two circular images were low, relative to the content, on the page. Scrolling down led to the “Popular Training Options”. It seemed preferable to this reviewer to resite the “Popular Training Options” into a banner below the main “Home / Find a Class / All Classes / Trainers / Contact Us” list of links.
Low: I eventually realized what the symbol on the left of the main banner (target?) was i.e. home button. Given the lack of symbology elsewhere on the site, would prefer a literal “home” string here so as to resemble other commonly used web sites.
Low: The sub-banner on Popular Training Options might be enhanced if it were clarified by “Handgun Training” “Carbine Training” etc. to reinforce that these “options” are in fact training options.
Low: The top banner has “Trainers” but the right most circular graphic below states “Instructors”. Given consistency of noun names is important, should both either be “trainers” or both be “instructors”?
Low: The top banner states “All classes” so therefore should the next link not be “All Trainers”?
Low: The top banner contains “Contact Us”, just a suggestion but perhaps this might be better resited to the bottom common banner on each page (this is where I expect to see “site map”, “about this web site”, “contact us” etc. type of administrative links.
Low: Clicking on “Find a Class”, the resulting display of links includes “Weapons and Tactics”. These two words render on top of each other on the web page. (same comment for “Intermediate/Advance” under both handgun and carbine)
High: I find the biggest limitation to the site is the selection process. What I expected to see was some type of tiered dialog box and then a “search” button. What the site offers now is a geographically-based, user-intensive selection. The “map” contains the ability to do this, within the widget, but these are (on my iPad at least) not extremely obvious to the user. In fact I only noticed these sort options after the second day of site use. The problem here is that the selections are there, just do not stand out. In fact, I could only see them if I noticed the light gray “sort options” button and clicked it.
Obviously this would be additional implementation work to move these sort (selection) options off the map widget.
Medium: These all relate to the “sort options” on the map widget:
“Sort Options” as a title, perhaps they really are “Selection Options”?
“Event location:” This selection seems to extract the “location” as “city” from the database of classes; As a usability comment, this is not helpful to me. Perhaps an addional field in the dB could be associated with the event, and this used. Something like USPSA Region? Or groups of states?
“Event Organizer”: Again, terminology, this looks like the training class owner field in the dB?As a selection field, though, this is not too useful to me. Assuming I know nothing about training, the ability to select by trainer is not useful, for me. Actually, clicking “Organization” seems to pull up exactly the same list. Are these different fields?
“State” - This is pretty useful, and I think the most useful field, besides the missing “date range” (see below)
“Date Range” (or all dates) is missing from the selection process.
Apply / Do not apply geographic widget (this would enable you to use the map widget or not)
Low: The ability to list the search results in graphical (i.e. the map widget) AND tabular form would be a real plus.
Low: Clicking on “Trainers” shows a similar sparsely populated banner requiring scrolling down to see content.
Low: Clicking on “Trainers” and scrolling down shows quite a lot of text about e.g. Greg Ellifritz' Active Response Training” web site. The point I am making is not that this is a problem, but what if / when Greg (or any other trainer) changes their content? The issue is one of site maintenance; it would seem that firearmstraininghub.com is setting up for a recurring maintenance task to keep this current for each and every trainer? Perhaps an alternate (and less maintenance heavy) approach would be to provide a concise synopsis and then a link to the Trainer's own web site?
Rich,
Thank you very much for your comments. I'll address the "low priority" as best I can. Some immediately. Some over time.
Let me know if this is better..
This is a high maintenance heavy site. The events themselves have to be manually entered until I get enough traction to convince instructors to build their own profiles. That's a whole 'nuther issue. In the meantime, most instructors have fairly stable bios and course descriptions.
I am looking for a solution for these problems. I'm looking for a plugin that does it all. . . I just haven't found it yet. As a previous poster suggested, I really want a plugin that allows the user to search within a certain radius of a zip code. While that is available for real estate and car dealerships, strangely it doesn't appear to be available for events. [/whining] I'm working on it.
It's doable. My question is, how is that helpful when you have the ability to see the whole map in one glance? Thinking out loud: the filter might be useful if I put the listings below the map. On the other hand, the category maps having dozens or hundreds of listings, would make for a very long page. Personally, I would ignore that sort feature and just zoom the map in on the desired area.
Also doable. It would not be too much work to add a sort category for month or quarter, similar to the "sort by: state." Would that solve this problem?
Again thanks for the feedback. I'll be working on improving it.
Last edited by David S.; 01-15-2017 at 01:25 PM.
David S.
Thank you very much. Going to register for 2 classes tomorrow.
Hey David, I know this is a work in progress, and you're going to be slowly polishing it up over a longer time frame, but I did just put my deposit in on an ECQC right in my own backyard that I may or may not have seen in time to get a slot without your site. My gut tells me that I might have missed getting a slot if not for this site launch. So thanks again.
David - Tabular result looks awesome. Like it.
Only comment is 'for me' it would be better is the Month was both larger and more visible than 'the day of the month'. Or at least they were the same size? The Month is a bit hard to see.
PS I hope the volume of comments didn't dissuade you. I have a career in and have trained to provide inspection reports in a corporate aerospace environment starting at IBM in 1983. I also appreciate how tricky web development is; I was the chief engineer for a U.K. Defense Logistics Organization program involving web-enabled asset tracking for the entire British Army on an Oracle-based back end. I 'get it' in terms of the effort to make a good usable web site.
I think this has fantastic potential across the firearms training industry.
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