You can put your club on the Internet, thereby increasing the communication among club members and between the club and the community that you serve. And you don't need to spend any money or have any special skills to do it.
The job does require some planning and investigation, and a long-term commitment to keep the site up to date once it's been put online.
Here are the steps you need to take to put your club on the Internet:
- Talk to your club's board and get its support.
- Find a person or small group of volunteers willing to build and maintain the site. Sites, once posted, must be kept up to date in order to maintain credibility, so an updating method must be part of your plan.
- Decide if you want to get a domain name for your club or make use of an existing web address. This issue has several components:
- Your own domain name gives you a more easily remembered address, such as www.yourclub.com, instead of www.ispname.com/~yourclubname.
- While getting your own domain name can cost as much as $35 per year, it also can make it more difficult to find free space on a web server for your site.
- Locate space on a web server where your site will be posted. There are many options available, and it is not necessary for it to cost money:
- A site belonging to a club member.
- Several web server companies will allow not-for-profit groups to post sites for free. Talk to your local Internet service providers, which may be willing to aid a local community group.
- See if another organization in your community provides free hosting of web sites for community groups. In some areas, Chambers of Commerce or local newspapers offer web hosting as a service to community groups.
- Purchase space on a web server; fees would range from $5 to $25 per month depending on services provided, length of contract and other factors.
- Consult the Kiwanis International Web Site Guidelines for requirements and approved practices.
- Determine what the goals are for the site. Do you want to inform club members? Members of your community? The world at large? All of the above? You need to determine who your audience will be before you design the site.
Once you've accomplished that, you can turn to the nuts and bolts of creating a web site. You can put your club on the web without having to spend months learning HTML or hiring a graphic artist.
You have two basic options when planning to build your site:
There are service providers with web site templates in place ready to accommodate your club's web site. They eliminate the need to know how to write web pages, and make it easier for several club members to individually contribute content to the site. These services, which will cost more than simple web hosting, also provide varying degrees of services behind the scene which can be used not only for a public web site but to assist with the management of your club.
There are three main providers of this service which are tailored to Kiwanis clubs:
- Club Resource LLC is the provider which has an active relationship with Kiwanis International and with most of the Kiwanis districts in North America to provide monthly reporting service, which clubs in the districts involved can use at no charge. Clubs have the option of purchasing services which include both club management and your public web site.
- Club Runner provides a public web site as well as features designed to help clubs manage their activities online. Prices range from $24.95 to $36.95 per month depending on club size, with a $429 setup fee for new accounts.
- Satori Content Manager is focused more on a club's public web site than club management, but a membership roster is available. Costs range from $240 to $360 per year depending on services used. There is a a $100 setup fee for new accounts.
Graphics and other assistance in building a web site are available on the Kiwanis International Web site.
You can prepare web pages by writing them in HTML. Or, you can use one of many software packages - including one you may already have - to prepare the pages.
Major word processing programs, such as WordPerfect or Microsoft Word, also allow documents to be exported in HTML format, although the results will not be as clean as with programs designed to create web pages.
Microsoft Publisher also has the ability to create web sites. Microsoft Front Page may be the most common program used for web site creation, and it is less expensive than the programs used by web site professionals.
You also could use HTML Kit, which is available in both free and professional versions.
Look at your help system in those applications for tips on web page building. See the HTML Help Page for lists of helpful sites, including some offering web page writing tutorials.
You also can seek help from other Kiwanis web site authors who probably will be willing to help.