In order to provide you with a website we first need some basic information from you. We recommend a standard format but you are of course free to put things in any order or structure you wish.
Club Name
We need to know the full name of the club that you want to appear at the top of the page, e.g. “Causton and District Probus Club”, and the short name that will be used in your website address, e.g. https://probusclub.net/causton/ or https://probus.org.uk/ambridge/
If you already have a domain name, or you want to start using one, then you can use that instead, e.g. https://ambridgeprobus.org.uk/
Probus Badge
You can choose either the traditional or modern badge variant to go alongside your club name on the page header:
Colour Scheme
We now offer a range of colour schemes for Probus sites. This mainly affects the menu bar and the colour used for links within the page text. Pick one from the gallery below:
Introductory text and photographs
A large, wide-screen photograph often works well at the top of the page. This is what we have used on the demo sites. This can be a single photograph or a montage of several photographs. Choose something that represents your town or area, a local landmark or an event that your area is famous for. We recommend using the best quality photographs you can obtain as modern displays show a lot of detail and you do notice when a photograph isn’t as clear and sharp as it could be.
Below this we’d suggest a short piece of text introducing your club and saying what you’re about. This is your chance to welcome prospective new members and make them feel this is the sort of club they’d like to find out more about.
If a large photograph at the top doesn’t work well for you, you can instead (or also) include photographs within the text. Generally though, this only works if you have quite a lot of text to flow round the photographs. It’s always possible to change things so if the page doesn’t look right first time round we can always move things around, add or remove text, change photographs, etc.
Venue
Tell us where and when you meet. The name and address of the venue, perhaps a photograph of it, the regular meeting times (first and third Monday of each month, every other Wednesday, etc). We will provide a map showing the location with a link to Google to get directions. Sometimes it is useful to provide contact details for the venue itself, in case someone needs to contact you while you’re there. You might also say something about the timing of the meeting, e.g. meet at 10am for coffee, finish by 12 noon.
Programme
Send a copy of your year (or 6 month) programme of speakers and events. This works best as a spreadsheet with columns for date, topic and speaker. Some clubs like to include columns for Host and Vote of Thanks as well. We can display extra columns on a PC or laptop screen but on a mobile phone screen things get very cramped so we suppress the extra columns on small displays.
We take the information from a Word document if that works better. We can even use hand-written notes, but these have to be typed in and there is a much greater chance of errors creeping in.
Contact
Prospective members, and perhaps existing members too, need contact details so they can get in touch with you to find out more. It’s up to you what you put here. Email and phone are usually the most useful.
When you have collected all the relevant information, email it to us at simon@skirridsystems.co.uk