An easy guide to D.A’s and Sections who want to set up their own website.
Below is some advice that I have put together after finding out the hard way or by trial and error, and in response to various e-mails from other D.A’s asking for help with setting up a website.
Use a software package such as Frontpage, Pubisher, or even word will do to create your website, there are hundreds to choose from I recommend Frontpage as that is what I use for our D.A website as well as my own. If possible choose one that has a ftp package, or similar, to help you to upload your completed website to the server, this will make things easier for you.
When designing your website avoid lots of pictures on the same page and background music as that will slow the download time right down. Make use of meta tags, What are they? Click Here for more details and a Free Meta Tag Generator . I would also recommend setting up a mailing list that people can join to be kept informed of any important news for example Site cancellations, a guestbook is a good idea too as well as a counter so you can see how popular your website is, all of these can be got for free from various different sources one that does them all and a lot more as well is www.cgispy.com
Next get your website approved by your D.A committee, Region and the Club first before publishing it, as required by the Green Papers, your Section or D.A secretary will have these, you must ensure for example that the Clubs name, current logo and address is on the website and state that you are a D.A or Section of it, as well as including contact details for both webmaster and Secretary there are a few more things you must do too.
Open an e-mail/internet service provide account with someone like Freeserve (www.freeserve.co.uk) which is free, you don’t need to use it for email, with the account you will get 30mb of free webspace but you will have an advertising banner on the page. (Supanet give you 20mb www.supanet.com) Check the minimum use requirements and how much webspace you get in the terms and conditions. Make sure that the company is based in this country, as that will make the connection quicker.
When opening an account you will first be asked what email address you want, think about what name you need, lets assume your D.A is North Sussex and you are going to use Freeserve, you could choose the name webmaster to go before the ‘@’ symbol and northsussexda to go after the ‘@’ symbol. You then choose from several endings to add like fsnet.co.uk or freeserve.co.uk etc after what you have chosen, this would then make your e-mail address webmaster@northsussexda.fsnet.co.uk and your webspace, where the website will be located would be http://mysite.freeserve.com/northsussexda but to use your webspace you will have to register for this service.
The next thing I would highly recommend doing is to buy a domain name, this will be your only expense of around £10 for two years and will save you a lot of hassle and problems in the future. If your section or D.A is serious about using the internet they will agree that this small fee is well worth it, so again assuming your D.A is North Sussex you may want to choose www.northsussexda.co.uk, but you can do unlimited searches until you find a name that you like that has not been taken already, just type a name in the box. (www.caravanninglinks.co.uk/website_tools.htm)
Why do I need to buy our own domain name when we have just got one for free?
For several reasons the first one is that the name you buy, in the example above www.northsussexda.co.uk, is much easy to remember and can be redirected to where the website is actually held, in the example above that would be http://mysite.freeserve.com/northsussexda. What this means is that when someone types in www.northsussexda.co.uk into their web browser the company that is holding the name for you redirects the user to where the site actually is http://mysite.freeserve.com/northsussexda.
A second reason is that when you buy a domain
name, with most companies, you get the option for no additional charge to set up
some alias email addresses, check before buying that the company does this. What
this means is that you can make up some names for the various different officers
on the committee etc and point the name you choose to them for example lets say
your D.A is North Sussex and your secretary is called Bert, who has a wife
called Mary and therefore has the email address Bertandmary@aol.com you can make
the name secretary@northsussexda.co.uk redirect all of Berts emails to him at
Bertandmary@aol.com, when Bert changes his email address to berttie400@cwcom.net
all you have to do is change the alias so that secretary@northsussexda.co.uk now
sends emails to berttie400@cwcom.net this saves you changing the details on the
website and you don’t have to tell everyone that your Secretary has a new
email address, a similar thing will apply when Bert retires from the committee
and someone else takes over.
A third reason would be, when moving service providers it makes the process easier, lets say that you have had your website running for two years and you have worked hard at it and managed to get a link to your website on the Clubs main website as well as lots of other websites too, including all the other D.A’s, sections and some other caravan websites, and lot’s of your D.A members have the website address at home, you then give the running of the website over to someone else who wants to use their own webspace that they have got already free with their internet service provider, what do you do? If you have brought your own domain name www.northsussexda.co.uk you simply redirect it so that instead of sending people to http://mysite.freeserve.com/northsussexda it sends them to www.the-new-site .com/whoever.co.uk and that’s it done. If however you don’t own your own name you then have to contact all the websites with links to you asking them to change your link to the new one.
Buying your own domain name will also give a more professional look.
I would recommend www.easily.co.uk for this,
they are who we use .co.uk names are £9.99 for two years., again make sure that
the company is based in this country as it will speed up connection time,
probably not a lot but a little bit certainly.
Finally when your website is up and running contact all the other D.A’s and Sections as well as other Camping and Caravanning websites including my other website www.caravanninglinks.com and ask to exchange links with them, be prepared to add a link to them on your links page in return, after that visit www.caravanninglinks.co.uk/website_tools.htm and use the buttons to add your website to the major search engines for free. Also on this page there are several other free website tools that you can use to help you out.
I hope this has been able to help you a bit
and I haven't confused you too much.
I look forward to your D.A or section joining us online soon.
P.S Incase you are wondering, I have no connection with any of the companies mentioned above except that stated..
Please email any problems, errors or omissions
etc. with this site