Put Your Club on the Internet

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:

1. Talk to your club's board and get its support.
2. 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.
3. See if a domain name is available for your club. Often putting together your location and the word Kiwanis will work.
4. Determine where you want to post your web site.

Choosing a Posting/Hosting Method

In the past, clubs were on their own when deciding how to go about creating a web site. That has now changed.

Kiwanis International is offering a free service which will allow your club to get on the web quickly and with no cost. It also does not require you to know how to program a site.

The KI option utilizes use WordPress, which is the most common "content manager". It's been estimated that more than 400 million web sites use WordPress.

See the steps necessary to use the KI option on a a separate page.

Going It on Your Own

Here's what you'll need to do if you want to post a site on your own:

Determine 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.
• Join with other clubs in your division to share a web hosting account.
• 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. With specials and longer agreements, you may be able to find a site for less than $5 per month.

Once you've accomplished that, you can turn to the nuts and bolts of creating a web site.

Creating a Web Site

You have two basic options when planning to build your site:

Use a web site creation service:

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 and do include the hosting as well, provide varying degrees of services behind the scenes which can be used not only for a public web site but to assist with the management of your club.

Club Runner provides a public web site as well as features designed to help clubs manage their activities online. Cost depends on club size.

Or Build Your Own:

You can prepare web pages by writing them in HTML. You will need some expertise to do this.

One warning if you choose this option: make sure that once the site is posted that you will be able to update it as time goes on. If the person who builds the site is not part of the update process, it can quickly go out of date.

Questions?

If you have additional questions about club web sites, you can e-mail the district webmaster, webmaster@kiwanis-ny.org and we will try to help.

Kiwanis is a global organization of volunteers dedicated
to improving the world one child and one community at a time.