Generic club website

[john lucas]

This is a question for our website gurus in the AAW. Our clubs are small it's hard to find someone to build or maintain a website for the club. A friend and I were talking last night and he asked if it was possible for the AAW to build some sort of generic website that clubs could easily just plug and play to have a website available to promote their clubs and publish newsletters. I'm not even remotely computer literate so I don't know what is involved in this sort of thing. His idea was that we might have a template or something that could easily be downloaded and information just plugged in. Neither of us has any clue about webhosting or any of the other things involved in this sort of thing so I thought I would just throw it out and ask you guys.

 

[Griesbach]

A wonderful idea, John. I'll be watching for answers on this topic and I hope it gets done. I'm guessing that Ken Grunke will have some thoughts on this.

 

[Ed Davidson]

Have a read of this short tutorial: So, you want to make a website...

After you've done that, and if you still want some help making a local chapter website, feel free to get in touch with me.

 

[Ken Grunke]

Sounds like a great idea. I personally have been looking for ways to set up our club website so members can add content and make the site a collaborative effort without needing the skills to build from scratch. There's a huge amount of free and otherwise server software available to do this kind of thing, it just boggles the mind. Anything would take time and effort to set up so if Ed can't be burdened with that, there are alternatives.

When I started as webmaster for our club, I opened a Yahoogroup to store newsletters, photos, and tie the club together by email. Yahoo groups has a lot more storage now than back then but you have the banner ads to deal with. MSN Groups might be better in this regard but I have never used them.

Google Groups would be my preferred choice--clean layout with no ads or only text ads. Google has a lot of services available that can all be used with one login. Cloud computing is the latest buzzword and Google is up in front with that.

Cloud computing means online applications that, in Google's case, can open and create Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents, plus PDFs, and even convert PDF to a webpage. So, you can have a spreadsheet of members with addresses, emails, etc., your newsletter, and even How-to presentations to supplement someone's club demo.

Other things they have to offer are the photo albums (Picasa) and blogs which can be adapted as a website for clubs but more suitably for individuals. After starting this message I see they now have free site hosting, plus a site builder but I have not looked into it. You may need a Google account to look into that,but I think it would be worthwhile to check out.

 

[Jerry Hall]

This might help

A couple years ago THIS was published in the AAW Best Practices. It is still sound. I do need to update it.

I set up our Chapter web site, http://www.geocities.com/goldturners/ using these methods and it has been successfully turned over to our new secretary, and misc. updates are made by other members on a case by case basis. It is the same set of tools I use to maintain the Mustard Monster web site. While Google Docs is a still excellent tool, as easy to use as a simple word processor, Geocities is no longer very good for a home page or port of entry. I suggest considering Weebly.com for a very simple way to set up a home page with an understandable chapter address (chaptername.weebly.com) and then use the best practice article above as a guideline to link to individual google docs. This does take a bit of effort, and PC savy, but it is similar to the effort of using a word processor, not becoming a web guru.

As far as a "template" goes, you could set up your own Google Docs account (all you need is a google mail address) and then copy the pages from our chapter as a prototype, then edit them to suit your needs. That wouldn't be hard, a few evenings work. And it could evolve and not be done all at once. If there is interest I will set up a prototype chapter site as a part of my update of the article. That is a good idea John.

I would be glad to help anyone who wants to get started.

 

[Bill Blasic]

If you have Microsoft Office it is very easy to make a website using Publisher. Easy to do with templates provided and can be easily transfered to another member of the group who has office.

 

[dmann]

If you need something free, Google has enhanced their "Sites" feature at http://sites.google.com , that might be worth a look. After one person creates a site they can give edit access to other users.

If the club can afford a web host I recommend using Content Management software for a collaborative site. Many web hosting companies offer one-click installation of Content Management Software packages. These packages let you manage content like blog posts, articles, and photos. Many have plug ins for advanced features like member lists. Bluehost costs $7/mo, Dreamhost costs $6/mo. Using a pay web host also means you don't have to deal with ads like Geocities or AngelFire.

My chapter uses a CMS called Mango. You can see their site here: Raleigh Woodturners Guild.

I recently set up a CMS called http://drupal.org which I like a lot. It is kind of plain out of the box, but is very customizable with themes, modules.

To get the most out of these packages you will need someone willing to administrate the software. Administration is usually turning on and off modules, picking the display theme, answering a few questions. Once it is configured you can hand out accounts and have people log in to create content, add pictures, etc.

-- Dave