Completed:
Challenge
CragCurxClimbers was like so many small communities, trying to leverage existing on-line tools to facilitate interaction. But those tools were full of the branding of the tool providers, not the club. They also didn't provide a good way to help club organisers manage the club.
Solution
ClearlyByDesign.com assessed the needs of the club, the club's longer-term objectives, and came up with a design that not only provided all the features of the former collection of on-line tools, but was CragCruxClimbers to control.
Benefits
CragCurxClimbers's new site now provides a single, club-branded site for its members to exchange information, ideas, plan events, and keep everyone up-to-date. The site does a lot of work for the club automatically. EMails are sent to club members who have specified they want them, triggered by simple creation of new content such as forum topics, comments in the forum, or events. And summaries of the days postings are also eMailed every night to members who subscribe to the daily summaries. This means the club is in control of its site's content, can change it when needed easily, and doesn't have to depend on outside resources to keep the site current. Specific advantages include:
- Club information maintained by club members
- Member profiles tailored to the sport, visible to other members only
- Forum facilitates exchange of ideas
- Member blogs provide areas where members can chronicle their climbing activities, travels, or discoveries of the latest cool gear.
- Event scheduling, with calendar displays of events, full event descriptions, iCalendar downloads to import events into any calendaring software that supports the iCal format, and sign-up capabilities for events, including production of sign-up lists.
- Non-registered members can be allowed to sign-up for events as well.
- Confirmation eMails sent at time of sign-up assure attendees that their sign-up has been registered.
- Reminder eMails sent prior to events, with the number of days prior configurable, helps to ensure attendees don't forget.
- Member photo galleries, with random member photo display.
- Resource pages for sport information, safety practices, etc., help ensure the club is not only providing good information to members and the general public, but also helps to cover any liability exposure.
- Sponsor advertising controlled by the club means it can decide whose ads it will run, not someone else.