COG's Online Evolution

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COG Micapeak.com Email Listserver

The COG list on Micapeak.com has been around since 1995, and is a throwback to the time of when internet listservers were a common thing. It provided an internet based discussion and chat among owners and fans of Kawasaki Concours and GTR-1000 motorcycles. It is NOT exclusively for members of the Concours Owners Group, nor is it supported directly by them, although it is associated with our organization. It  The COG list still exists here, although only a small number of users are still active.

Original Concours.org Website

A group of COG members, including Rick Hall, launched and administered the first COG website concours.org on March 28 1996.  The domain name was registered in COG’s name and the initial registration payment made by COG.

• Concours.org Domain Registration 1996 (PDF)

Initially coined "COG-Net," the story of the inception and volunteers involved are covered in the following 3 articles from the Concourier archives:

• COG-Net article by Rick Hall, Volume 8 Issue 4 1996 (PDF)
  
• COG-Net article by Dereck Buchler, Volume 9_Issue 1 1997 (PDF)
  
• COG-Net article by Rick Hall, Volume 10 Issue 1 1998 (PDF)
  

Improvements and changes continued on the Original site:

• In January 2001 a SNITZ powered user forum "ZG Fanatics" was added
• In May 2008 the forum was upgraded to the current Simple Machines  forum - A wealth of content was provided by members and non members alike
• In May 2011 the original COG website and forum was retired and ta new ZG/GTR Forum moved to a new domain owned by Rick. This is explained in this this 2011 Joint Statement. Rick is commended for his hard work, time and dedication in supporting the concours.org website during his position as webmaster between 1996 and 2008.

COG-Online.org Website 

As the popularity of the WEB exploded, so did the number of member requests to take COG's membership registration, payment, event, and merchandise 'online'. In addition, the proliferation of community websites like MySpace, Facebook, Webshots, and others allowed users to create their own web pages, post images and create blogs, etc., raised the bar on what members are looking for in a community website.

A Web Committee formed in August 2007 following a COG Board of Directors meeting held at the 2007 National in Canaan, West Virginia. It was agreed to “form a team by September 1^st, to perform online membership registration, merchandise, purchasing, and payment option analysis and report back to the Board with options by November 1^st 2007." Then paraphrased: “Areas would find the team members who could do this and funnel them back to Guy who would set up a conference call."

2007 Committee Members:

The committee investigated 9 initial candidates and selected a short list of 4 that included:
Two Software as a Services (SaaS) solutions Memberize and ClubExpress, a Credit Card payment processing plug-in to current Concours.org website, and lastly creating a custom built membership management within the then current COG (Concours.org) website.

The Cogmos Committee detailed report was presented at the November 2007 COG Board of Directors meeting, where the directors subsequently ratified the Committee's recommendation to use the SaaS solution from Memberize. The SaaS build-out progressed and went live early 2008. A general announcement was provided to members in the following Spring 2008 Concourier magazine article "COG On-Line to Make Major Changes," by Colin Prior.

COG-Online Forum Upgrade 2010

In October 2010 a new web forum was rolled out and introduced to members. The forum was based on the lastest Simple Machines Forum, a popular and very powerful forum software. All posts from were migrated from the forum integrated within Memberize before it was was disabled. 

COG Online Upgrade 2020

In 2015 a committee was formed to begin researching and evaluating web services upgrade options as Memberize was unsupported and becoming long in tooth. The project began to move forward in 2017 and led to the choice of Wild Apricot as the member services SaaS and Xenforo as the web forum software. In 2019 the forum plug-in bridge to integrate user authentication was outsourced and project managed by Brian Heiple. Over time several members have participated on the committee. As part of this migration the club once again began using the concours.org as its primary domain for web and email services. This is the final team vital to bringing this complicated project to completion and who were part of the August 2020 web migration:

• Mike Ward (IT Officer 2015-2020)
• Steve Smith (NEAD)
• Fred Boothe (Membership Officer)
• Keith Williams (member)
• Brian Heiple (IT Officer 2020-present )
• Fred Harmon (member)

Social Media

COG has entered the realm of social media in 2008 and created accounts as additional options for members and friends to network and communicate. These social media pages also provide an opportunity to expand the marketing of the club, with the hope that more Concours enthusiasts will learn about the club and become paid members.

• Facebook: COG Page and Group

Page:    www.facebook.com/concoursownersgroup 
Group:  www.facebook.com/groups/ConcoursOwnersGroup

• Twitter

COG Twitter handle is: COGRiders

• Google+ (deprecated by Google)

Future

The COGMOS (COG Members Online System) is still like any website/system in the process of evolving and as the current IT Officer, I welcome suggestions for improvement. 

 

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IT Officer, Concours Owners Group.