Website Design for Clubs and Specialist Interests

  • Club websites require even more careful consideration of certain issues, particularly maintenance, than is generally the case for small businesses. How often have you seen a design, enthusiastically-created, which is out-of-date because the original designer has lost interest and there is no one else with the skills, interest, or enthusiasm to maintain the site?
  • Whilst most club websites are designed and maintained by enthusiastic amateurs, larger clubs (or those with a larger budget) generally employ professional web designers and are more similar to small businesses. But even these clubs should still ask themselves two fundamental questions:
  • Do you want a website that you can maintain yourself, or are you happy to pay others to do this when required?
  • Do you want the website to look as if it's regularly updated, or are you happy for the look to stay unchanged for months, or even years? There is nothing wrong with this approach, but the site should be designed on this basis if it is not to look unmaintained.
  • The Simple Website approach can work well for clubs thinking of starting their own website.

The Motor Cycling Club

www.themotorcyclingclub.org.uk

The MCC is Britain's oldest national club for the sporting motorist and had traditionally communicated with its members by postal mailings three times a year. This website, which replaced an earlier design in September 2004, has two main functions: to provide non-members with information about the club and its activities; and to keep members informed of the club's activities between the postal mailings. The design of the website integrates files in a variety of formats allowing non-technical authors to contribute to the content of the site whilst minimising the maintenance time required of the webmaster.

Wheelspin

www.wheelspin.info

This is my personal site, devoted to the history of classic trials. It is intended as an online information and research resource including photographs and scanned images of paper documentation. The 'information architecture' of the site allows for infinite expansion and accommodates files in a variety of formats
© 2005-8. www.andrewkb.net