SFBA notes on the website, daily emails and a future “Letters to the Editor”

I wanted to shift gears and provide a little background and update on what we are doing here and also to share some of the feedback that has been provided by members and subscribers.

In the spring, when SFBA was up for renewal with our previous website host, we were blind sighted by a renewal bill for approximately 3x what we had been paying since 2020. The reasoning provided was “operating costs” with no promise of any upgrades or anything else, for that matter. The host also informed us that we had 30 days to either renew or go dark.

SFBA officers agreed that this would NOT be a benefit to the club. We aren’t printing money over here and did not want to increase dues. This view was agreed upon by members at the following monthly club meeting. So, the search began for a new website home.

We landed with WordPress as the price was less than what we had been paying with the previous host BEFORE the price hike threat. The platform checked all of the boxes for things that we needed in a host. There has been a learning curve, but we are happy with the platform and hope that you are happy with the result.

I worked with members Bruce Mooers, Eric Vanderburgt, Clark Calkins and Ray Welter and blueprinted a website that was “good enough” to go live so SFBA could be found on search engines and linked to other social media accounts. Website updates are ongoing as free time permits.

A “happy accident” of choosing WordPress is that it is an open source CMS rooted in blogging. This allows SFBA to reach out to you easier through their newsletter style emails. Plug-ins allow for automated cross posting to our Facebook page and easy linking to Reddit and Instagram.

Note: I am by no means a programmer, IT person or consider myself tech savvy. Luckily, interfaces have become more welcoming to the average Joe and YouTube has come to the rescue more than once.

Interestingly, SFBA has gained quite a few new subscribers and members from the website who are not only new to SFBA and Corvairs but, in some cases, new to classic cars all together. If this is you, we want you to know we are happy you are here!

After looking over other blogs and discussing it with my wife (who has much more experience in the blogosphere than I do), I decided to send out a daily Corvair email and see what would happen. So far, early returns have been overwhelmingly positive.

• Some days, there will be important time sensitive information that won’t make it to a monthly Spyder Web newsletter.
• Some days, it may be a submission from a club member. We want those more than anything, so please keep sending your photos, stories, stuff you want to sell, hot leads on cars or parts & tech tips!
• Once a week, there will be an upcoming weekend event post (usually Thursday or Friday), so you have no excuse to not take that Corvair out! Big thanks to Tito Garrett and Tim Newey for the assist with this.
• Tech and FYI articles may look elementary. That is intentional. We want to present these posts as basic, easy to understand, bite sized articles. There is a lot of very detailed tech available on the forums, YouTube, in the CORSA Tech Guides and in the various Facebook “groups”. Our hope is that our easy to digest articles provide basic knowledge to those new to Corvairs and to inspire further education.
• We will continue to put the latest Spyder Web newsletter up at the end of the month. Again, we want YOUR submissions. If you have anything you think is of interest, email sfbacorsa@gmail.com with what you have and we will share it. This club is a co-op, after all.
• We want your input and feedback. When you rebuild an engine, it needs adjustments and tweaks here and there to run well. No different here. We want to hear what you think, positive or negative. This feedback lets us know that you are reading the articles and you are interested in what we are putting out there! It also helps to streamline what works and get rid of what doesn’t.
• On that note, we will do a digital “letters to the editor” from time to time to keep us honest and accountable for the Corvair content we post.

Thank you all for your continued club support and keep driving your Corvairs!

~ Josh Deitcher, SFBA CORSA