Skip to main content

Home | tutorial home | Common tasks

There are several elements common to the different areas of the template website - club or districts, member or administrator. Issues such as 'how to add a link to a file' or 'how to embed a picture in a page' to name but two.

Note that some of the buttons available may be slightly different - a club administrator, for example, has more options available (a member cannot upload files/pictures, but can add pages).

Many of these tutorials have been written by club administrators using the template - if you have something you'd like to see, please contribute!

Uploading images and files

Images can be uploaded to all pages, but some care is needed before you try to upload;

  • Pictures should 800 x 600 pixels
  • .jpg format.

Files - .pdf, .doc, videos etc must be less than 2Mb, if they are larger, consider using YouTube for videos or 'Yudu' for pdf files (many districts put their magazines on Yudu).

  • if uploading a text only file, e.g. council meeting minutes, youdon't really need to be uploading a fiel anyway1 Copy and paste the text into the body of rhe page. people don't need to wit for an attachment to open
  • Convert Word files to pdf format if possible; .docx, for example, will not load - and many people can't open them, whereas pdf is the standard file format for the Internet.

Planning:

Firstly, it is important to address the question of ‘who is the website for?’

Is it for club members, other Rotarians from the district/RIBI/worldwide or for non-Rotarians? It’s really a combination of all three. The members area is where information that is only relevant to club members should be stored – an area that non-members can’t access. All your public pages should be addressing the other two audiences, but mainly the non-Rotarian general public – most of whom will be in your locality (where your potential members can be found).

Know your club and the likely audience from where you may get members. If your club meets at lunch-time, you may be appealing to people who work in the area, but live elsewhere and know little about the area as a whole. If you are based in a town where the population changes frequently information about your locality can be useful and accompanying text can give useful insight into what club values are.

It exists to inform the general public about the activities of your club. It might also act as a tool to attract new members, a 24-hr advert for your club. There are many more reasons to have a website, but that is not the purpose of this article.

This begs the question – ‘is my site attractive and likely to be of interest to non-Rotarians?

Visual Impact is important

Before writing your page to the web, decide on content and design.

  • As well as preparing text in a word document, it can be helpful to make a rough sketch as to how you would like your page to look.
  • Headlines and strong images attract attention, so choose both carefully!
  • "a picture speaks 1,000 words", but only positively if it is a good one!
  • Most visitors to web pages will scan the page for a couple seconds before deciding whether or not to hit the ‘back’ button. You have to grab their attention in that time.