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I've been lurking around here for quite some time, but haven't posted before. I'm not currently racing any dogs, but I am hoping to get a puppy this year. Some people may know me through my mum & dad, who have been racing whippets for around twenty years - Ken and Heather How.
I just felt it might be worth chipping in to support those who have mentioned websites being an important factor for clubs. I'm a web designer & illustrator by trade so I know how important it is these days to have a web presence. It's doesn't cost as much as people might think, in fact there are a couple of ways to do it for absolutely no layout at all!
The best thing to do is to sign up to a service like Blogger or Wordpress, personally I recommend the latter, as it has more of a Content Management set up. Neither of these services charge for a basic setup, which should be more than adequate for any clubs needs. In Wordpress you can use plug-ins for calendars, allow or disallow comments, and have multiple site members with different levels of access. If you want to be more in control of it, you can download the Wordpress software and host it on your own web space.
Blogger is a Google owned product, so anyone with a GMail account will already have access to this. I haven't used it myself since around 2004, so I can't speak as to whether it's possible to have a Blogger site that allows multiple user logins. I doubt it, to be honest.
With regards to the Whippet Club not having phone numbers on their site mentioned earlier in the thread (sorry I keep scrolling up and now I can't find it!), I can understand that position... as putting phone numbers on a website leaves them open to be harvested by bots, it's a difficult one.... you need to be accessible without putting people's privacy on the line. The best way to circumvent that is by having a PHP based web form that people can fill in. But someone has to respond to people, or they'll get disenchanted and not bother to try again!
Just my two cents. Hopefully I'll have at least a club level dog of my own eventually, from a self-interest point of view I'd hate to see the sport decline. Sadly I don't think I count as 'young' at 46 though. :thumbsup:
I just felt it might be worth chipping in to support those who have mentioned websites being an important factor for clubs. I'm a web designer & illustrator by trade so I know how important it is these days to have a web presence. It's doesn't cost as much as people might think, in fact there are a couple of ways to do it for absolutely no layout at all!
The best thing to do is to sign up to a service like Blogger or Wordpress, personally I recommend the latter, as it has more of a Content Management set up. Neither of these services charge for a basic setup, which should be more than adequate for any clubs needs. In Wordpress you can use plug-ins for calendars, allow or disallow comments, and have multiple site members with different levels of access. If you want to be more in control of it, you can download the Wordpress software and host it on your own web space.
Blogger is a Google owned product, so anyone with a GMail account will already have access to this. I haven't used it myself since around 2004, so I can't speak as to whether it's possible to have a Blogger site that allows multiple user logins. I doubt it, to be honest.
With regards to the Whippet Club not having phone numbers on their site mentioned earlier in the thread (sorry I keep scrolling up and now I can't find it!), I can understand that position... as putting phone numbers on a website leaves them open to be harvested by bots, it's a difficult one.... you need to be accessible without putting people's privacy on the line. The best way to circumvent that is by having a PHP based web form that people can fill in. But someone has to respond to people, or they'll get disenchanted and not bother to try again!
Just my two cents. Hopefully I'll have at least a club level dog of my own eventually, from a self-interest point of view I'd hate to see the sport decline. Sadly I don't think I count as 'young' at 46 though. :thumbsup:
