Running From Curry!

A friend of mine is into running, and just recently finished doing a running club website. Their site, the Hereford Runner is in blog format, and after thinking about it, I realized that a blog makes a great way to do a club site.

With a blog you can quickly notify your members through email or RSS subscriptions, it’s a natural method to share upcoming events, and it’s great for archiving. You can also very easily add static pages to list things like membership rules or contact information. Here is a quick example on how you can really work a blog as a club site.

Yum?

Maybe in Wye Valley they are big fans of curry, but in my book, I would be running from it, not for it.

Pictures

Pictures are a great way to go, and if you checked out their blog, you will find a great start with a picture of some of the members. Smiling faces are a good way to make a site feel good, and a great way to show your group is friendly.

A curry meal as picture number two? This may not be the greatest idea for a picture to include, but it is certainly a great way to make a prominent call to action. Sorry, I won’t be making the Curry run.

Recent Events

Groups commonly “do things” and having a way to show off their recent events could be a pretty big chore online without a good CMS. What better way to write about something, and have a date based archive. See highlighted item #1.

Staying Current

Another big deal for a club is to keep members up to date with current events and activities. Item #2 here shown just below the introduction message and picture. In this particular case the latest item is listed, but it also include a quick menu of a few other options. Starting to look a little complicated? Good news, all of this is done with WordPress.

Adding More

Looking at item #3 you can see recent posts from their main categories. New and returning member can see this home page as a complete update to everything they need to know. Current, past, and future events all right there on an easy to manage blog.

Blogging That Group

So you can see there are some great benefits of hosting a group based website on a blog. Here is a list those mentioned, and some more.

• Easy membership notification through RSS feeds
• Easy to highlight events
• Easy to archive past events
• Easy to provide static group information
• Content can be password protected (if using WordPress)
• Can support membership logins
• Adding media (like pictures or video) is extremely easy
• Can be easily managed by someone that is not a webmaster!

Better Than The Old?

Wondering if using a blog to manage this site is better than the old method they used? You tell me…If you forget the lack of design quality, you can see the difficulties you would get by not having an easy to use a CMS powered site. Content doesn’t automatically get placed, everything needs to be hand coded, and the primary current club message must be found, not handed to you on a curry plater.