UKC

As it says really,Which smaller climbing club has the best website, not interested in the Climbers Club or the FRCC who have more resources and guide books to back things up how about the small regionals with maybe 50 or less ACTIVE members, which of these has the best website.
Cheers Beds
Not sure which forun for this.

In reply to J1234:

Leeds Mountaineering Club - excellent website!

In reply to J1234:

How would you define the "best website". My club has a pretty informative website with club trips, photos and a forum for it's members. I'm not really sure what your after here?

In reply to J1234:

No idea as have only seen half a dozen, clubs are useless at promoting themselves.

Your club got a website, list it on here and let people know you exist, and you may get some new members, or that empty hut used when you are not using it.

In reply to sutty:
I tend not to link myself to our club on here, because my online persona may put people off, but we do have a presence on UKC.

In reply to J1234: York Climbers .com an internet based site with superb pictures ,and activitiesand used every day

In reply to J1234:
Ours is functional, but the technology is a bit out of date and i'm sure there's easier ways to build a website now.
Anyone recently refurbished their website, and if so, what software did you use?

I've heard that the BMC may have website software available for clubs shortly.

http://www.chestermc.org/

We rebuilt our's recently on Drupal.
http://thenmc.org.uk/

It's far from perfect, we still need to add a gallery amongst other things but most of our members are happy with it.

I know the BMC where offering cash to clubs to get websites up to scratch.. not sure how much of this got used though (if any). I'd be interested to hear more info about this software though.. I reckon it's more likely they'll offer a club section on the new community page http://community.thebmc.co.uk/ that people can add too.

In reply to victorclimber:

except of course it's Yorkclimbers.ning.com
and we have > 100 members an they are geographically diverse and its not a traditional club, its actually a website - like a mini ukc ....

Our club site is ok it serves its purpose http://yorkalpineclub.org.uk/

Fugly !!!! nice hut though

In reply to Anonymous:
I think ours may be one of the worst:

http://www.mkmountaineering.org/

In reply to odox:
Website looks good and sounds like Drupal is freeware too. Was it quite easy to set up?

In reply to Big Steve:
Well at least it's not as orange as ours!

In reply to daveyw (HMC):
oh link...
www.thehmc.co.uk

In reply to Dave Rumney (Chester MC):

drupal is ok but i didn't find it very intuitive initially
wordpress is widely used
joomla (my personal choice, loads of extensions and free templates for idiots like me)

all run on php and mysql and can be updated without real webdesign knowledge once the initial framework is built

and i think they all have lots of plugins you can add to make it do pretty much whatever you like.

In reply to Dave Rumney (Chester MC): It takes time to learn and configure, just like any other CMS in my opinion.
I've used Joomla and Wordpress too.
They all have pros & cons but i'd probably recommend Wordpress for the casual user.. it's easy to setup, looks good and has plenty of support behind it. It's not quite as flexible as the others but it's certainly fine for what most clubs need these days..

In reply to J1234: You could have a look at www.tuesdaynighters.co.uk.

This is not really a climbing club and not really their website but if you read 'Aboout this site' on the home page it will explain all!

I have set up the site so that you need to self-register to to get access. It should be clear what you have to do. Alternatively some parts of the site can be members only and some public. You will find this very hard (or very expensive) to do with conventional web solutions, but it seems to me to be something clubs might find useful.

The site can also have a forum. I haven't got round to enabling this but I will if you want to see how it works.

In reply to J1234:

www.unumc.org

In reply to J1234:

Reading clubs is pretty good

http://www.readingmountaineeringclub.org.uk/

In reply to Annette:
Using PHPBB for a gallery, great idea! Why didn't I think of that

In reply to odox:
I'll look into them too. Do you know any websites that use Joomla or Wordpress? I'd be interested to see.

In reply to Dave Rumney (Chester MC):

Well it looks like http://www.mkmountaineering.org/ is using wordpress and I actually like their design despite Steve's comment!
Hard to find specific climbing websites.. but for random examples..

Wordpress - http://www.tp-hire.co.uk/
Joomla - http://www.healthnorth.co.uk/

I'd focus more on the backend stuff and what you want it to do rather than how they look, that part is up to you

In reply to odox:
Thanks for that. I think the MKMC website well designed too - it feels easy to use.
I just tend to update content rather than build the backend stuff, but I presume they're all capable of providing forums, photo gallery, events dairy, basic pages about the club/contacts/hut?

In reply to J1234: Our club site uses Joomla; I set it up aboput a year and a half ago. It's not hugely used by the members, but it does seem to attract a steady trickle of new members.
http://www.carlislemc.co.uk

In reply to Dave Rumney (Chester MC):

we use wordpress for out blog

http://yorkalpineclub.org.uk/blogs/

In reply to J1234: wymc.co.uk
too drunk to update often but not bad for a novice

http://www.wymc.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

In reply to Dave Rumney (Chester MC):
They are all capable of providing basic pages - again how you present this is up to you.
Forums, gallery, dairy - those sort of things are usually not included with the 'basic' package. You usually need to install 'plugins' or 'modules' depending on which CMS you go with.
Some CMS have some of these included, but they are not always up to scratch.. again it depends on what you're after, do a bit of research on each CMS they all have examples on their websites.

In reply to J1234:
Clearly
http://www.guildfordmountaineeringclub.org.uk/

Excellent banter opportunities to be had on our Gallery

In reply to J1234: Probably one of the larger ones in what you consider to be small.

In reply to Big Steve:

Very easy to be critical of others efforts, how about contributing a article?
G

In reply to J1234: the eumc
the chat page is so funny

In reply to J1234: The difficulty with club websites is finding people with the time and knowledge to set them up, and the interest to keep them going.

In reply to J1234:

Just had our website re-done. The Worcester Mountaineering Club looking better than ever!

www.thewmc.co.uk

In reply to lithos:

It's a bit rubbish really (wonder what cowboy 'designed' it?!) but at least it's simple

Someone should compile a list of this lot for some sort of section on the site

In reply to J1234:

Believe it or not - Cambridge Climbing Club.

http://www.thecccc.org.uk/

Not the best website but a seriously active club with a great range of talented climbers.

We love the 2 1/2 hr drive to the Peak every weekend!

In reply to J1234:
Ours is pretty good - has some advanced coding

http://www.southamptonrats.org/

In reply to Dave Rumney (Chester MC): When I set up yorkclimbers I did a survey of club sites & Chester MC stood out as one of the best.

Issues I had with many club sites were, use of dated technology, lack of visual impact, the general impression that there was very little activity going on.(Please note this survey was in Dec 2008 & may not be current)

Therefore my objective was to try try make yorkclimbers very visual & make it look busy.

I hooked the site up to google analysis & its shows a steady increase of internet traffic each month.

Just over a year later we are far from perfect but have over 180 members, averaging internet 800 hits a day, averaging over 10 events a week, with many members contributing on a daily basis.

yorkclimbers.ning.com

In reply to Tom_Harding:

Well, it's HTML Transitional, and table-based, with a lot of the styles awkwardly embedded in the HTML rather than in separate style sheets, and just one little bit of javascript, so I'm not quite sure what you mean.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth: Its a hell of alot better than.... http://www.gordonstainforth.co.uk

In reply to Tom_Harding:

Well, I asked for that, if you don't like the way it looks - it's certainly very long in the tooth now. Mostly because I have been very busy designing other websites, and have not updated mine. However, underneath, it uses all the latest CSS techniques and layout/positioning, plus PHP templating, which means for example that I just have one file for the menu, whereas your menus are embedded in each page - I'd really hate to have to update it. A real nightmare.

In reply to J1234:

Not sure how you judge best but our website gets praise from new members and from our members point of view is very funtional. We have 50 ish members with 30 of those being active.

http://www.mercianmc.org.uk/

In reply to Gordon Stainforth: Fortunately members of our club actually go climbing rather then sitting around being obnoxious.

In reply to Tom_Harding: And if they do sit around, they talk about how good the coding on their website is.

Gordon was pointing out some things about your website in response to your comment about its advanced coding. It's not being obnoxious; there are those who may think it helpful.

T.

Chill out guys, this isn't supposed to be a slagging match on websites! Just think of it a good way of sharing ideas between clubs and what you can add/adapt on your own website

In reply to Annette:
I'd be interested in what http://www.unumc.org uses as the gallery plug-in..
I'd guess at the phpBB Gallery module but would like more info if someone can share!

In reply to Pursued by a bear:

Thanks. (Really it was because he started off by saying it was 'advanced coding'). Now the York Climbers one really is good (I'm talking about under the bonnet, as well as the way it looks)::

http://yorkclimbers.ning.com/photo/albums/moss-ghyll-scafell

In reply to midweekmountain:
Well you must have got it right as it looks like your site is getting well used.
Our site gets used, but it would be good to make it easier for people to contribute more and easier to manage the content.
The forums work and are easy to see from the home page, but the photo gallery isn't quite as straight forward.
We change the front page photo quite often and it encourages members to send in photos, but thats a manual process at the moment which skews all the text and I'm sure there are more automated ways to do this now.
Also i'm sure there must be a way to encourage people to divulge what they've been climbing that isn't necessarily just forum chat.
Anyway, this is an interesting thread and has given me plenty to think about, but i'm off to the climbing wall now.

In reply to Big Steve:
Interesting...

We are always happy to accept any help and contributions for the website, as you know, from my past requests.
As I am sure anyone who is out there trying their best for their club is well aware, it is hard when it is the same people who things always fall back on.
By the way, I'd be happy to accept your overdue membership fees so we can register you as a current member of the club.

In reply to Removed Usersmile42: FFS when will people get a sense of humour

In reply to J1234:

We have some snazzy graphics on http://www.solihullmc.org.uk

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

As we should be when considering whether any website is 'good'!

In reply to J1234:

here's ours...

http://www.notsotrad.org

In reply to J1234: In reply to J1234: Thanks for the replies, ones I like are The Lincoln Mountaineering club, The Rucksack club, solihull and Notsotrad all clean and crisp and not trying to do too much which seems to be the downfall of a lot of smaller club sites.
Cheers Beds

In reply to J1234:
Not that I have any vested interest but my vote goes to the bristol-based AMC club!
http://www.avon-mc.org.uk/

In reply to J1234: http://www.peterboroughmc.org.uk/ and home of fenland mountain rescue.

In reply to J1234: rockhoppers.org.uk - nice design but a bit crap under the bonnet (coding is in tables and uses flash for gallery + slideshow on homepage)

However it does get a lot of positive feedback from new and existing members ...

In reply to thommi:

That's a superb one.

In reply to J1234:
SAKMC have less than 50 members, unlike some of the clubs posting here, and the site seems to attract a fair bit of SW London climbing fraternity.

Unfortunately all the best bits are on the password protected Members Only bit like club dinner photos but some of us have job where its best not to share every detail of our climbing existence!!!

Websites are usually dependent on the enthusiasm of the Club WebMaster and we've been lucky to date.

www.sakmc.org.uk

In reply to J1234: http://www.gumclub.co.uk - glasgow uni mc!

In reply to swhitinguk:

Another great one.

In reply to J1234:

I still keep up with the goings on at my old club at

http://www.evmc.co.uk/

despite not having seen any of the members for years.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

both your "superbs" are built on drupal interestingly enough

In reply to rallymania:

Ah, yes, I hadn't noticed that. What can one say except that it's a superb advertisement for using Drupal.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:
or just clever template picking

In reply to J1234: I agree with Gordon about the yorkclimbers site having it 'under the bonnet', though it's hardly a small club anymore. It seems to grow on a daily basis. CH

In reply to J1234:

It's got to be Reading University Mountaineering Club's. Fantastic website but an even better club;

www.rumc.co.uk

In reply to J1234:

Best websites have good content that is kept up to date, good presentation of that content, enable potential and current members to easily find and navigate that content, and allow committee members to easily maintain the content.

The web masters role should be reduced to just enhancing / revamping pages or introducing new features (if you've got it right).

To enable this essentially your website needs to hold the content on a database with admin pages (requiring log in) for the committee. Ours runs off an Access Database (with the data being returned as XML) which is perfectly fine for a club of approx 120 members.

Keep your club site focused on what information really helps to attract new members and also helps members connect, find out about club events, and perhaps arrange informal days out (forums are good for this).

Then they can actually get on with maximising the amount of socialising and mountaineering they can do through the club. (which is important part

In reply to J1234:
Worcester Mountaineering club: http://thewmc.co.uk/

In reply to J1234:
Now it has an on-line calendar, the south Devon one is very useful:
www.southdevonmc.org.uk

but I guess I'm biased.

In reply to J1234:

I'm biased but I think the SWMC website is pretty good:

http://www.southwalesmountaineering.org.uk/

Drupal is a powerful tool, hugely rich in functionality, but setting it up and maintaining it is not for the faint-hearted. My company uses it professionally when building commercial sites.

However, I chose http://ning.com when building http://southdevonmc.ning.com/" club site because it comes with the features a club needs and is very easy to set up and maintain.

I would recommend Ning as a better starting point than Drupal for any club considering how to set up or improve their website.

In reply to springwood64: I am not really very computer literate, some say barely literate at all, It took me about 2 hours to set up the http://yorkclimbers.ning.com/ site.

Then I just added a few things later on at my leasure. Since then I have had a handfull of minor problems but the site has attracted some IT proffesionals & they have been able to advise me.

There have been some debates about the layout & not everyone is happy with it but at the moment its achieving it prime purpose of providing a free community website for anyone interested in climbing or walking in the York/Leeds area whether you are a member of a climbing club or not.

Any group that can organise over 500 events in its first year is not doing to bad.

In reply to springwood64:
Having read your post some time ago I finally got round to creating a ning site last night in only an hour and wow, how easy is that!!??
I just need to spend a bit of effort now making it more presentable and adding additional menu options etc