Peter. After making my earlier post I recalled having seen somewhere that RIBI provide templates and non-technical website facilities for UK Rotary Clubs and Districts. If you are interested it might be worth having a look at www.ribi.org/tutorials

Thanks for your comments Peter. I am in complete agreement with you over the effort involved in maintaining a website that may have not be used much. Our club has only 27 members and 4 years ago when I created our club website only 5 or 6 members had email addresses. Now all our members except 1 have email addresses and therefore have access to the internet. That said I do not attribute the growth in the take-up of email addresses, to our club website. However by providing tools that support the 'Rotary experience', such as a repository for meeting minutes it encourages internet usage that may well extend further than just the club website. The trade-off, as you quite rightly point out, is one of effort vs return. We are fortunate in our District (1120) in that they provide web space free of charge to all clubs in our district. I believe that all Districts should recognise the value of club web sites and provide such a facility to their clubs. It need not be expensive. Expertise and time at club level is always an issue and the way you have tackled the problem is probably the best way to approach it. I am fortunate in that I work in IT and am prepared to put in the time as a sort of hobby. For those clubs who do not have the expertise or web space provided by their District, using templates and free hosting services is a good compromise and better than doing nothing! I think you have 'hit the nail on the head'. For those clubs that have the expertise available to them, the opportunity to develop services is open to them and they are who my post is aimed at. For the rest; well perhaps those clubs who do not have the expertise should lobby their District to provide better web facilities along the lines of templates etc.. At District level the economies of scale may just make this feasible. Regards David Kirsch-Mills

David, I know that many clubs use their website as an important communications channel but I question its usefullness in a smaller club. With only 30+ members, and around 80% attendance, it is hard to justify the work involved in posting weekly news & notices for the benefit of the four or five who may have been absent from a meeting. The other assumption is that every club has someone who is capable of maintaining a website and has the time and enthusiasm to do it. We don't. I have set up a simple website that uses a series of templates and is hosted free by our local newspaper. It requires no knowledge of the tools or programs that are required to create a website: that suits me! We have gained far greater benefits by setting our site as a recruiting tool. Three of our last five members have joined have discovered our website. Comments on www.communigate.co.uk/ne/guisborough... are always welcome. Regards, Peter Sotheran