Wishlist #8: CAMRA branch website templates
Of all the websites that ought to be good for updated brewery news / pub opening times / crawl ideas / festival info, local CAMRA branches should be at the forefront. But not every branch will have a technical maestro who's able to give up the significant time it takes to keep a website up-to-date and looking fresh. And it's frustrating when one branch offers excellent gen in an accessible way, yet others seem to bury news or are slow to refresh the content.
So how about CAMRA developing a website template that all branches could take advantage of? So branches can concentrate on content? Where core info could be found regardless of branch? With an emphasis on collaborative working? For instance; group-authored blogs, Twitter updates on branch meetings and socials, Facebook pages featuring 'Pub Of The Year' pics and reports?
It seems a shame to have a brand like CAMRA that's then diluted at local level. Let's not heap misery onto the shoulders of one put-upon 'webmaster'; share the joy, give all the sites consistency and let members Tweet updates about good beer whilst they're down the pub.
So how about CAMRA developing a website template that all branches could take advantage of? So branches can concentrate on content? Where core info could be found regardless of branch? With an emphasis on collaborative working? For instance; group-authored blogs, Twitter updates on branch meetings and socials, Facebook pages featuring 'Pub Of The Year' pics and reports?
It seems a shame to have a brand like CAMRA that's then diluted at local level. Let's not heap misery onto the shoulders of one put-upon 'webmaster'; share the joy, give all the sites consistency and let members Tweet updates about good beer whilst they're down the pub.
Good point. They can use WordPress, as easy as it gets.
ReplyDeleteAs knutalber said wordpress is as easy as it gets, the alternative would be lots of little "micro" sites that each branch could have, but that would be a fair bit pricier.
ReplyDeleteeven something like using ning.com would probably work.
luckliy our local one isn't too bad although it could defo be improved.
This is a great idea.
ReplyDeleteSurely an organisation as large as CAMRA could implement this easily at very little cost.
Let's not stop there though, how about some consistency with regard to the naming of the sites too.
Could we not have a seperate subdomain under camnra.org.uk for each branch?
Having been briefly involved in my local branches website I found the following things:
ReplyDelete1) the Good Beer Guide is seen as CAMRAs main income generating tool and so listing all the good pubs on your branches website is seen by some as a potential threat to sales.
2) There are very few guidelines for creating your branches site and no standard look-and-feel template
3) if a site does list pubs it can't make any reference to whether they are in the Guide or not (that's one of the few edicts from the centre)
4) Not everyone in the branch sees the benefit of "new technology" like the web
So in short, it's very dependent on the outlook of your branch as to what you get on the branches site. I suppose that's the thing that surprised me most; CAMRA appears to be a collection of branches not a centralised organisation.
I'm not knocking CAMRA or my local branch in any way as I think they both do a very good job, and in the case of my local branch, they do it as volunteers. Good on 'em.
Now I wonder which CAMRA branch was the first with a Twitter site ;-)
ReplyDelete