Club Website 101 Part 2 - Tech Choices
There are a variety of ways forward with club websites, from managed services that hold your hand through the whole process right through to running your own server.
I’m going to focus on the three basic categories here. I endorse none - you need to decide what fits your club’s needs (see Part 1 - What should it do?), your budget and the available skill set.
- Static Site
- Content Management System
- Managed Site Builders
Host your own Static Site
This is the traditional route. Get some hosting and throw your site up. If it’s plain, static HTML and CSS then you don’t need a database or anything fancy - bare, bog-standard web-hosting will do.
How you produce that site is up to you. You could write it from scratch in Notepad (yes, really), or a more advanced editor like BBEdit or Notepad++. You could download a free template from somewhere like HTML5Up and edit it to your liking. You could also use a WYSIWYG design program like Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express, openElement or RocketCake.
A slightly different take is the use of a Static Site Generator like Hugo or Jekyll. Like a Content Management System, these take a collection of files on your computer and compile them into a complete static site which you upload to your hosting. They require a bit of fooling around in the command line and are not too hard to learn if you have some technical background.
As for where to actually host your site? This site is hosted with unlimitedwebhosting.co.uk on their basic Web Hosting Package at £32/yr and I’ve had good customer support from them, they keep their servers up to date and include one-click site builders and free SSL certificates. Shooter Neil Stirton can probably also do you a deal on hosting over at ikiji.com. There are many other companies out there though. The main thing to look for is:
Are they using a fairly current version of Plesk or cPanel, or are their systems abandoned and lacking investment?
Do they offer SSL for free via LetsEncrypt or are they trying to up-sell encryption as a “Premium” feature? In 2019, free SSL is a basic, standard feature. Walk away from any supplier telling you otherwise - they’re probably lacking in other areas too.
Are their servers physically UK-based? Your prospective members are probably in Britain. A server across the Atlantic will offer lower performance for a UK visitor than one in London or Manchester. If you plan to do anything more complex that could involve the Personal Information of members, GDPR will also come into play (but that is a much larger topic I’m not going to go into here).
Host a Content Management System (“CMS”)
You really have three options here - Wordpress, Joomla! and Drupal. These are all powerful systems with thousands of themes, plugins and extensions available - whether you want a news/blog section, image galleries or document management and download. You can create multiple user accounts with control over user privileges - whether they need full admin rights or just permissions to add news articles and upload images.
All three CMS platforms will require a web host who provides PHP support and a MySQl or mariaDB database (which almost all of them do). Most web hosts these days even include a site-builder which will run a one-click install of your chosen platform, so the technical demands have fallen and it’s almost as easy as using a Managed Site Builder. However, you must keep the site up to date with the latest version. The installer will normally help you out here, but it is possible for updates to the core CMS to break plugins you might have installed like galleries or file managers, so you always need to be aware of ongoing maintenance.
Managed Site Builders
These sites effectively offer a Content Management System - but as a fully managed service. You’ve probably seen TV ads for the likes of Wix.com. You pick your package, select a theme or template, push stuff around until it looks how you want, and go live. It requires no technical knowledge.
You can use these to build both “fire-and-forget” static sites that need little maintenance, or a more full-featured offering with a News section and galleries that you keep updated. The beauty here is that you can start basic and build it out as your confidence grows.
Without endorsing anybody in particular, major players include wix.com and wordpress.com.
If you’re confused by Wordpress.com - the .com is the profit-making bit run by the people who maintain the Wordpress CMS (which is open source at wordpress.org and can be downloaded and used for free on your own hosting). The .org is the software you can use freely. The .com is a fully managed service built on that software.
Most of these services operate on a freemium model - you can get going for free, and you’ll have a perfectly functional website at a subdomain (something like “ourrifleclub.wordpress.com”). The provider will probably also insert ads across your site.
You then have to start paying for extras, like using your own domain (e.g. “www.ourrifleclub.com”), at which point their adverts and branding tend to go away.
Although you cede a certain amount of control and sites can look a bit “cookie-cutter”, their popularity is clear. You don’t need to worry about security updates or managing either a server or even the site - just sign up and create your content.
I’m still not sure
That probably means a managed site on wix.com or wordpress.com is the route for you - or that you should turn to someone else in your club with a more technical background.