Websites

[coalgirl]

I am considering creating a website for our tennis club. We have an offer of �100 plus �100 a year to maintain. This seems expensive. I have researched Amazon for programmes and a simple one looks about �40. BUT are there hidden costs such as paying a host for the site or even a fee to join the web? Basic advice would be appreciated, I am keen to have a go but do not wish to end up 'with egg on my face!' Thanks in advance to the experts.

[fo3nix]

Cost of a domain name (your .co.uk): about �5.

Cost of hosting for a year: about �25 (for what you want).

So it'll be �30-40 per year in fees for keeping the website online and running.

Cost for actually making a site: anything. If you're feeling adventerous, use iWeb on a Mac, or Expression Web (or whatever it's called) on a Windows machine.

[VHG]

Why not set up a blog. A blog is an online "diary" that can include words, pictures, videos etc

FAR FAR easier to do than a website. No cost involved, and no programing knowledge required.

Here is a couple of tennis blogs as examples

http://topspintennisblog.blogspot.com/

http://craighickmanontennis.blogspot.com/

more.....

[VHG]

You can create a blog here for free

http://www.blogger.com/start

You can do it in about a minute (if you already have a Google userid and password. If you dont it will take you about 2 minutes).

So if you called your Blog "coalgirl_tennis" the blog would be called

www.coalgirl_tennis.blogspot.com

Updating a blog is easy (no coding involved), the blog itself will keep your updates in date order, it will also manage the indexing and managing the searching of the blog.

You can control the "look and feel" of the blog (colors, fonts etc), again with no coding involved.

You can limit who looks at your blog, or open it up to everyone.

And as I said, you can add text, pictures, videos, images and more.

more...

[VHG]

Here is a blog that someone has created about a word war 1 soldier (as an example)

http://wwar1.blogspot.com/

This man really existied, and each blog entry covers a letter that he sent home from the front to his family (80 years since he wrote it).

And here is a golf blog which is similar to the sort of thing you could do for your tennis blog

http://texasgolf.blogspot.com/

The white area in the centre are the various updates in date older (newest first) and down the right the various topics are indexed by both subject such as "Armchair golfer" etc and also date, such as March 2005 onwards.

As I said, the indexing down the right is controlled by the blog program automatically (you just have to put "tags" on each of your entries and the blog indexes them automatically).

There is a Blogging for Dummies book below (which uses entensive examples from Blooger so it is very helpful)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blogging-Dummies-Susan nah-Gardner/dp/0470230177/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s =books&qid=1235331551&sr=8-1

It is very easy to create and delete a blog, so you could create one with a temporary name, then play around with it, then when finished just delete it..

I think you will find it MUCH easier to do a blog than a web site.

[VHG]

Forgot to say.

You can also specify who can create new updates on the blog, so you could share the "work" round a number of people.

Also you can allow people to comment on a blog entry.

If you look at the world war 1 blog, you can see at the end of each update there are a number of comments that have been added.

You can limit who can make comments, so it could be limited to only people in your tennis club for example.

[coalgirl]

Thank you both, fo3nix and VHG, your answers are very helpful. I will digest the info you have given me and then will decide what to do next.