Fraternity and Sororities websites - A step by step guide to creating your chapter's website
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
New Greek chapters are established every month! This is a guide to help you set up your chapter's website with minimal hassles and cash.
1. Choose a hosting service provider. It could be free (e.g. Geocities) or paid (Yahoo paid hosting, ipowerweb etc). A very limited national greek organizations provide web hosting for their chapters, it maybe worthwhile to check out the national site to see if this service is available. Since most hosting services only charge a few dollars per month, it is actually more desirable to go professional especially you want to be able to run scripts on your site (more of that later) Blogger.com or Wordpress.com is a good place to start your chapter's blog if you have a small budget and have limited technical skills, the ads are not as intrusive as other free service providers. Try to stay away from Geocities or Tripods as they usually come with an excessive amount of ads on the pages.
2. Create content. No one wants to visit your site unless there is something for them. No one wants to read a 10-page essay too. The most common contents may include event photos and stories. If you use Blogger or wordpress then you don't even need html skills, you can easily post photos, add yotube video. If you decide to create pages from the scratch using html, css etc, try the tutorials at HTML goodies , they cover topics like how to align texts, create columns etc. There are lots of free web templates out there that you can use too, just search "web template" in google and you shall find. If you host your own site, you can install novelty scripts such as dating, quotes etc.
Regardless whether you host your own site or use a free service, you can always find free, third party hosted forums and galleries to add to your site. Flickr.com is a good photo gallery provider. Don't underestimate how powerful photos are for promotional purposes, if your chapter is engaged in building a new house, hosting a charity event or even planning a co-ed sleep over party, the photos can easily attract prospective members and alumni to be involved in what you're doing.
3. Get free links. Make sure you ask your student body to put a link up from their site, usually under the clubs and society page. Some colleges may be willing to help you promote your chapter by putting a link up from their faculty website, provided your site is related (e.g. if your fraternity is Chemistry focused you may ask the Chemistry department to put a link up for you, try to approach the "student activity coordinator")
1. Choose a hosting service provider. It could be free (e.g. Geocities) or paid (Yahoo paid hosting, ipowerweb etc). A very limited national greek organizations provide web hosting for their chapters, it maybe worthwhile to check out the national site to see if this service is available. Since most hosting services only charge a few dollars per month, it is actually more desirable to go professional especially you want to be able to run scripts on your site (more of that later) Blogger.com or Wordpress.com is a good place to start your chapter's blog if you have a small budget and have limited technical skills, the ads are not as intrusive as other free service providers. Try to stay away from Geocities or Tripods as they usually come with an excessive amount of ads on the pages.
2. Create content. No one wants to visit your site unless there is something for them. No one wants to read a 10-page essay too. The most common contents may include event photos and stories. If you use Blogger or wordpress then you don't even need html skills, you can easily post photos, add yotube video. If you decide to create pages from the scratch using html, css etc, try the tutorials at HTML goodies , they cover topics like how to align texts, create columns etc. There are lots of free web templates out there that you can use too, just search "web template" in google and you shall find. If you host your own site, you can install novelty scripts such as dating, quotes etc.
Regardless whether you host your own site or use a free service, you can always find free, third party hosted forums and galleries to add to your site. Flickr.com is a good photo gallery provider. Don't underestimate how powerful photos are for promotional purposes, if your chapter is engaged in building a new house, hosting a charity event or even planning a co-ed sleep over party, the photos can easily attract prospective members and alumni to be involved in what you're doing.
3. Get free links. Make sure you ask your student body to put a link up from their site, usually under the clubs and society page. Some colleges may be willing to help you promote your chapter by putting a link up from their faculty website, provided your site is related (e.g. if your fraternity is Chemistry focused you may ask the Chemistry department to put a link up for you, try to approach the "student activity coordinator")
Labels: college, fraternity, how to create websites, sorority, university, websites
