Choosing the right web site

When deciding about what kind of site you really need, it's helpful to consider the following factors:

  • do you need a completely new web site?
  • how much site maintenance effort you can afford to contribute?
  • are your members mostly passive consumers of information, or you have members keen to participate and contribute content?
  • how much flexibility you need from a site?

The starting position of many potential customers is different. Some don't have a site at all, some have purchased a domain, but have no site. Some do have a site, but don't want to keep it. Some have a site that they want to keep, but would still like to use our other services, like results, calendar, matchmaking and others.

The maintenance effort is a big factor that many clubs tend to overlook when making decisions about the site. A site that looks flashy, but seldom changes, is like a glossy old magazine. If you can't afford to allocate time for the site maintenance, you should seriously consider a site that requires very little maintenance and very little, if any, skill to do it.

The next factor is the flexibility. Some sites allow you to provide a constant stream of news articles about daily/weekly happenings at the club, user comments, forums, and some are very simple, straightforward, where most of information is constant during the year and the only really changing part are results. Flexibility is great, but it requires more participation in updating the site content, so it's more suitable for clubs where you can have at least a few individuals that would contribute interesting articles, hand reviews, bidding tips, etc.