Free Website Application Form

FREE WEBSITE for your team, club, school, or governing body

... or we'll host your existing website for free. Podium would like to help you develop your internet presence and can provide you with hosting, online sitebuilder, tutorials, and a help forum ... all for free.

'Supporting your sport' initiative - websites
What's it about?
What can we do to help?
Who is the scheme for?
Rules?
What to do if you're interested.
What's it about?

Websites. A decent website for your organisation or club is ...

A great way to communicate with members, families, and prospective recruits.
An effective marketing tool to develop your 'brand' and a sense of ownership and belonging among members.

A big attraction to potential sponsors, as it gives them more visibility.
Key features of your web presence:

1. Site content: might include ...

About us: a page to state who you are and what you do. A useful guide for anyone considering joining your organisation (including parents).
Fixture lists: vastly reduce those phone calls on a Friday night to tell everyone where the match is, and when.
Rules: of your organisation - no more 'I didn't know' excuses!
Downloads: e.g. for rules, registration forms, child protection policy, first aid guide, pre-season training tips, etc. Everyone can keep up to date and view or print documents whenever they need them.
Photo gallery: always a favourite. Upload images from your PC straight to the website - the sitebuilder will automatically format and size the images to ensure they are suitable for the web. Team portraits, big events, Christmas parties (ok, maybe not always a good idea).
Who's who: pictures and some information on who does what.
News: results, articles, stories (including pictures if appropriate) - many of which can be contributed by members.
Contact us: lets people know who does what and how to contact them. Use an online contact form so that people can contact you even if they don't have an email account themselves.
... and more.

2. Email

Set up your own organisations email accounts.

If your domain was say www.podiumfc.org you could have email accounts for paul@podiumfc.org or secretary@podiumfc.org for example. This helps you separate relevant emails in your email application and of course looks a lot more professional.

3. Participation

encourage members to help with running the website and submit stories or pictures, and they will become more involved, enjoy it, and learn useful skills in the process.

What can we do to help?

There are 4 key elements to getting a website online:

A domain name
Somewhere to host the site
The pages that make up the site
Help and advice to get you going

Podium will provide items 2, 3, and 4. You only need to purchase a domain name (if you don't already have one). Thereafter you just need someone to maintain your site, add content, etc. to keep it fresh and up to date. This is quicker, easier, and less expensive than keeping paper versions of the information up to date.

Domain name: if you don't already have a domain name you need to do this bit yourself, as the domain should be registered to your organisation so you retain ownership of it.

This can be purchased from any domain registrar you like. We recommend www.ourdomainsite.com as any domains purchased there will cost you only £10 a year and be automatically configured to work on our server by default. All you have to do is register the domain online (5 minute process, £10 by credit card) and everything else is taken care of. You can of course host it anywhere you wish in the future - it's your domain and ourdomainsite.com provides you with a control panel to manage that should you ever need to.

Free hosting of your website: this will be on a fast and reliable, high specification web server located in a top professional datacentre here in Northern Ireland. You will have you own online Control Panel from which you control your website files, email accounts, etc.

Sitebuilder: if you need help putting the website together we provide an easy to use online package to do that for you. Launched from within your Control Panel it will allow you to create and publish a professional looking website in a few hours - even if you know nothing about how websites work. You can then update it quickly and easily, as often as you like.

A sample website put together with the sitebuilder (in just a few hours from a blank page to published on the web) can be viewed at http://www.supportingyoursport.com. Have a play with a demo of the sitebuilder HERE (if you have a popup blocker you will have to enable popups for the sitebuilder to open). NB Your live sitebuilder actually has more features than the demo.

Use of the sitebuilder is your choice. If you already have a website and just want to host it for free - fine. If you have someone who can build a site for you and you'd rather do that - also fine. Or start with the sitebuilder but add to it as you want.

Help: is available in four formats.

Website control panel demo: (user:demo_user password:demo)will let you see what can be done, and how easy it is to do it.
Online video tutorials: to guide you through all the key tasks required to develop and maintain a web presence, including your Control Panel, the sitebuilder, plus other related tasks such as setting up email accounts.
Online text and video tutorials: deals with more than the basics covered by the video tutorials for those who want to dig deeper.
Forums: within the overall Podium forums there is a section specifically for users of the website initiative (only visible to users of the scheme). This includes a 'How to' topic where users can discuss any problems they're having with their site, features that work for them, and help each other.

Who is the scheme for?

Initially, it's open to governing bodies or clubs involved in just about any sports.

Are there rules?

Of course, but they're basic common sense stuff and straighforward. The full Terms & Conditions are available HERE. These are by necessity quite detailed, so a bit of a grind. However, the key bits in layman's terms is that our part is ...

It's entirely free, apart from your domain name.
We're using a high spec web server, fully managed by a professional local company. In fact it's a twin of the one we host our own site on, including the maintenance contract, so it should be fast and reliable.
While it is our intention that this entire service remains in place and free for the long term we reserve the right to make any changes to it we feel necessary.

Your bit is ...

Be sensible with the content of your site - keep it friendly, suitable for a wide sporting audience, and legal.
Play fair - put Podium links on your site and don't promote someone in competition with our business.

In the unlikely event of a problem with your website we'll try to help don't try to sue us please. That would be a bit rich in the circumstances. Basically you acknowledge that we are not liable for any loss as a result of anything to do with your website.