Club Website 101 Part 1 - What should it do?

This seems a remarkably simple question, but it is vital to sketch out what you want a site to contain and do. This will inform your choice of technology in Part 2.

Give us a Clue

A website is likely to contain two types of content.

Long Term

• Home Page
• About Us
• Disciplines
• How to Join
• FAQs
• Contact
• Links to Social Media accounts

These are all pages which are unlikely to change regularly. You might upload a new membership form once a year or occasionally change your opening times, but that’s about it. Note that all this information is primarily aimed at non-members.

Transitory

• News

If you’re going to have a news section on your site then you must make the commitment to keep it up to date! There is nothing worse than a “News” section which hasn’t been updated in three years. It leaves the visitor wondering whether this is an interesting club that they want to join, whether the other information is accurate or whether the club even exists anymore!

Having a News section broadens the scope of the site to make it useful to members as well as non-members. This is especially relevant to larger clubs with many disciplines where some sections may never really meet on the range but nonetheless have an interest in each other’s successes. A News section demonstrates some of your activities to non-members, whilst informing members of things going on in the club.

Who is serving as webmaster and the time commitment they are able to make will determine whether you have a simple static site with information about the club and contact details, or a more dynamic site - probably using a Content Management System - which will be updated on a monthly basis (or more).

Photos and Galleries

Images and Galleries can fit into both categories. You would expect to find photos within your Long Term content - a picture tells a thousand words. Of course you might also have a News Gallery with images from competitions, the club’s Christmas Party, prize givings, etc, etc.

In terms of Long Term content, images will probably just be embedded with the text. If you want to have lots of photos however, then this tends to require gallery plugins or frameworks to display them elegantly. This is not onerous and CMS platforms have many offerings to do this. But it’s important to note that a simple page full of pictures can often look rather dated as well as taking time to load. Users expect something a little more polished and interactive these days.