Managing A Standard Site

Initial Setup

The content of the template web site is mostly controlled via web admin interface, accessible here. The first thing to do is to enter the basic information about your club. Click on Club Details link in the web admin interface and from there, you have a number of choices. You can edit general club information (About Us), regular sessions, fees, key people in your club, contacts etc. Pay close attention to hints provided on each page where adding and modifying of this information is done.

A brief video is available that illustrates the use of web admin to fill in some of the club details.

About Us information

The content of this section is the very first thing your visitor will see when they come to your club's home page. So its impact cannot be underestimated. Try not to put here too much information that is available on other pages, like your regular session times, or contacts. Use simple formatting facilities as described on the main editting page to logically subdivide information into paragraphs, with nice headings, etc. Using pictures can increase the impact. If you have the know-how of HTML, you could use it to better control formatting of the page.

One of the things you may consider to do is to provide location information for your club. One way of doing this is to upload a map picture that includes the location of your club. However, these days, there are many free mapping facilities provided on Internet with some really nice features. For example, Google maps will provide you with a map that can be zoomed in and out interactively, provide driving instructions from any location to your club and also, if you are covered, provide a satellite image of your club's location. You can tinker with it to some extent to set the location of your club more precisely and provide extra information on the map itself.

If you want to use this mapping facility, you could do something like this:

  • Visit Google Maps.
  • Type in the street address of your club (including suburb and state) next to the Search Maps button.
  • Click on Link to this page link above the top right corner of the map.
  • Press Ctrl-C to copy the location into the PC's clipboard.
  • Use admin interface to go to the About Us section, where you edit your club's information.
  • Insert something like:

    <a href="google stuff here">Click here to find us on the map</a>

  • Replace the text google stuff here with the content of the clipboard (ie. the link information you got from Google's page)
  • Save the content and then visit your club's site to check if the link is OK.

Practicing And Viewing Samples

If you are unsure about how to go about this, or would prefer to practice doing all this stuff BEFORE you actually do anything on your real site, you can always use the test site. Details on how to access this site can be found here.

Another good thing about the test site is that you can actually see what text needs to be entered to achieve various effects, like define headings, refer to pictures and documents, etc.

Managing Pictures And Documents

You can upload pictures to be used in other parts of club's site. The supported formats are JPG (or JPEG), GIF and PNG. Other formats will be rejected. Picture files bigger than 100000 bytes are not allowed (and normally not needed anyway). You can also selectively remove pictures already uploaded.

You should aim to have the smallest file size of the picture, while retaining the desired quality and size. Big files take longer to download and for web site visitors with dial-up Internet connections the access will be slower. Another important thing to pay attention to is the visual size of the picture in terms of pixels. There are many people who still use 800 by 600 pixels screen resolution, so if you upload a large picture it won't fit the screen. Viewers would have to scroll in order to see the whole picture. Scrolling is always bad.

You can also upload any other files. This was primarily meant to be used for documents in PDF, Microsoft Word, text or other formats that can be displayed using regular web browsers.

Using Pictures And Documents

Pictures and documents can be used in news items and in the About Us description of the club (for clubs that use the template site). When you upload the picture, you are asked to provide the picture name and caption. The caption appears alongside the picture when it's displayed. The name is important when you want to refer to the picture. The way to refer to the picture is:

DOC(xyz)

where xyz is the name you gave to the picture/document when you uploaded it. Let's say you uploaded the picture of your club, providing the name clubhouse and the caption Castalia Bridge Club. Then, you decided to use the picture in a news item announcing the forthcoming congress in your club. In the news text, you would type something like:


When coming from North, you turn left off the freeway and follow the road. After about 300m our club DOC(clubhouse) will be on your right.

On display, the text DOC(clubhouse) will be replaced by the picture you uploaded and the caption Castalia Bridge Club will appear.

NOTE: Picture/document names are case sensitive, so DOC(clubhouse) is not the same as DOC(Clubhouse). There can be no spaces added, so, for example DOC (clubhouse) (a space after DOC) would be wrong, too.

The Background Picture On Template Sites

If you are using a template site, you can customize the picture that appears in the background of the club name. All you have to do is to upload a picture with the name header and it will automatically appear when you reload the home page.

The vertical space for the header picture is 100 pixels. The maximum horizontal size that makes sense depends on the typical screen resolution, and nowdays it's about 1024 pixels. If the screen is smaller, the picture will be cropped, while if it's larger, it will automatically tile the remaining area.

When choosing the picture, do not include the club name, or there will be a duplication of it. Try to stick to pale-ish colour scheme, as strong and darker colours tend to make the club name text less legible.

If you changed the background picture and you're not happy with the result, simple remove it using the picture interface and the default background will be automatically restored.