Beth Floyd of Jackson, Tennessee’s Roe Graphics (roegraphics.com)
designs and host websites for clients like the Kentucky Lake
Tournament Trail.
She offered Bass Club Digest readers the following
information on building a website for their club.
Register a domain name -
yourbassclubname.com or yourbassclubname.org.
Create content for your site such as
calendar/schedule, tournament results, point standings, photo
gallery, club rules, news, members, sponsors, recipes, contact
info, etc.
Build your site using html software such as
Microsoft FrontPage or Dream Weaver or use an online
site-building tool with templates such as Roe Graphics Site
Builder program:
roegraphics.com/sitebuilder
Establish hosting service for your web
site.
Publish your site to the server. Most html
software has a built in “publish” feature.
Helpful hints:
Create an Excel spreadsheet for your
results and standings. This makes it easy to sort rankings and
to create a running total of results. You can then copy the
excel spreadsheet and paste it directly into your web page.
Photos should be no larger than 600 pixels
wide and 72 dpi. 150 to 250 pixels wide is a good size for
thumbnails. Large photos slow down page load time.
Offer banner ads to your sponsors.
Keep your website clean and easy to read.
It’s hard to read text on dark backgrounds or on top of
photos.
Keep your web site content current. Try to
post results soon after the tournament and keep your calendar
up to date.
Get The ’Net (And Keep Your Club Connected)
By Taylor Wilson
Admittedly, the oh-so urgent words, “Get the net!” are storied
in the long history of the sport of fishing.
Sure, those words are uttered daily wherever bass boats meet
water. The saying is woven into fishing’s fabric much like, “the
big one got away,” and “one more cast.”
However, a different meaning for “Get the net” has come into
play with the advent of the Age of Communication and the
Internet, or simply The ’Net.
In the last decade or so, bass anglers have also trailered onto
the World Wide Web’s Information Highway via their personal
computers. And there’s a ton of information out there to be
found too, from Bass Club Digest’s own website at
www.bassclubdigest.org;
to fishing reports; lake elevations; tournament results and much
more.
And there’s even added appeal for bass club members—a club
website.
Yes, a good website can be an electronic newsletter and save the
club money in postage, but hey, it can be much, much more as
well.
The lifeblood of a club of any sort is communication and club
members should look to a quality website as a constant way for
members to communicate—to know what’s going on within the club.
Many clubs do this via forums (“chat rooms” is another term
used by website users), an electronic bulletin board of sorts
for ideas and shared knowledge—yet more strength for club unity.
The Good
“There’s no doubt, websites and forums can act as a virtual
clubhouse,” said Craig Buddo, author of Fishing Online: 1,000
Best Web Sites (Stoeger Publishing, Inc.).
“(Website) Forums offer an easy way for members to stay in
touch with each other and the club’s officers. The ability to
post catch photos and link to maps and aerial photography
creates an unlimited bulletin board. They are a much cheaper
means of distributing news and information than a printed
newsletter. Properly set up, they can also cut administration
costs and act as a fundraising source.”
Randy Jones is a member of North Carolina’s Bass Buster Club
(www.bassbusters.net) .
He said the positive side to a bass club having a website is
that it keeps the members up to date on the standings for each
tournament.
“You can use the website to keep the standings updated for
not only members but for other folks that like to keep up with
these events as well. A well maintained ’site will shows that a
club is well-organized overall and will, or can, encourage new
members,” Jones said.
The Bad
OK, so where’s the hook? (Count on an angler to ask that
one.) There has to be a trade off for something like this. A
website can’t be all pro and no con.
True.
“The negative side is that websites require quite a bit of work
to set up and to be really worthwhile, they must be regularly
maintained,” Buddo said.
“Unless forums are conducted with a keen sense of communal
politeness they can degenerate quite quickly into name-calling
and pettiness.”
Key To Successful ’Sites
Sure, any club can set up a website, and many do, and well,
that’s about as far as it goes. The ’site is there, people visit
a time or two, it remains stagnant in a once-you’ve—seen-it kind
of way, and nobody uses it.
There are ways to keep this from happening and there are ways to
get the most use out of these great communication tools, and a
lot of it has to do with change.
As with most things change is good—not necessarily the most
comfortable, in that it requires more work, but a changing,
regularly-updated website is a thriving website.
“To me some of the keys to a good website include having a
good, well-run (i.e., polite and constructive) forum—because
it’s self-generating content for the site that will keep a flow
of people regularly checking in. The site needs to be regularly
updated with new material such as contest results, latest
catches, links to interesting news stories, tackle reviews, etc.
“Things that turn me off websites are broken links, bad
spelling and grammar, and bad design. Get all that right and
you’ll have a winner,” Buddo said.
Jones said club successful websites keep members updated at
all times with tournament information, directions, regulations,
size limits and/or creel limits, etc.
“It’s best to put tournament results and standings up the
same day as tournaments. Timely is key. Note any changes (say in
rules or tournament schedules) in a timely manner, so everyone
knows about it well in advance of an event.
“Keeping things in order will show you take pride in running
your club to make it the best it can be,” Jones said.
“Also, take pride in showing off your club’s sponsors to
members and the general public with links and phone numbers to
each sponsor, they will certainly appreciate the added
business.”
Start Up
So you are sold. You want to start a club website?
Buddo said one thing you need to do up front is establish
strong guidelines for the forum, if people want to participate,
then they need to play by the rules. (There has to be order,
otherwise you have no structure and nothing to benefit the club
or club members.)
“Require people to register their full contact information
before they can post on the forum.
“Also, it’s a pretty big job setting up a website and keeping
it going—make sure the person doing it is committed to it or
rewarded for it."
“For anyone who wants to learn general common sense
principles of user-friendly web design I highly recommend the
books of Jacob Nielson and his web site
www.Useit.com, which has
dozens of insightful essays about what to strive for and what to
avoid in the design process,” Buddo said.
“4 Star” Club ’Sites, Where Are You?
Are there top-notch websites out there on The Web that
showcase bass clubs?
If anybody should know, it would be Buddo, right? He wrote
the book (1,000 Best Sites), right?
Well, guess what? He said exceptional bass club ’sites are
limited, at best, on the ’Net.
“I honestly don't know of any bass clubs that have a really
knockout web site (and I did look for them at the time I wrote
the book). I think most are probably too small to put the effort
in, though it would really only take a hardcore of 50 members
regularly checking into a forum to begin to build a good
platform.
However, for an example of what's possible for even a small
club, have a look at
www.Flygirls.ws, the club site of a small group of
Federation of Fly Fishers female anglers.
In the research for his book, Buddo said he ran across
several general bass sites that he really liked and enjoyed.
Though these are not necessarily club sites, he indicated most
bass anglers should enjoy them and they are worth a visit if
readers are unfamiliar with them:
Get The ’Net (And Keep Your Club Connected)
