How to Create a Web Site for your Sports Team

As a volunteer coach or a parent wanting to do something fun for the team, creating a FREE team web site is a great way to share photos, videos, calendars, team rosters and more. Your site can be customized with team colors, can display team photos & videos, and can even be an easy way to create your team's "snack schedule". It's also a great opportunity to share team information with family and friends.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• computer with internet access
• a team roster
• photos (can be handled by another parent)

1. 
    

   Go to shutterfly.com and click on "Share Sites". You may be prompted to create an account with a username and password. You will then need to enter some basic information about your team, like the team name, the age group of the team, etc.

2. 
    

   From here, shutterfly offers an option of guiding you through the process of creating your site, which I highly recommend using the first time through. Your site can include a team roster with the email addresses of athletes/parents, a calendar with practice schedule, game schedule, and even a snack schedule if desired. You can also program the calendar so that it indicates for players to arrive a specified amount of time before the game starts, and to email a reminder a day ahead of time.

3. Once you have all the pertinent information included in your site, you can click on the "Customize" icon, then click on "Edit Site Permissions". From here you can choose to make your site password protected or available for viewing without a password. You can also choose to allow other parents the option of uploading photos and/or video to the web site.

4. 
    

   Lastly, you'll want to click on the icon that states, "Click Here to Invite Members". Shutterfly has created an email template that includes information about the site, which is ready to be sent out to team members and/or parents. As the season progresses, you can add photos and/or video to your site, add a "Photo of the Week", and even make announcements or comments. Shutterfly will automatically email everyone on the team when changes have been made to the site.

Tips & Warnings

• You'll need the email addresses of the teammates (or their parents) to really be able to get the word out, but when filling out the roster, you may choose not to include phone numbers. If you've chosen to make your site viewable to the general public (great for friends & family), such information will be viewable to everyone who visits the site. If you've chosen to keep your site password protected, only visitors with the password will be able to view any of the site contents.

[jasenlee]

on 10/19/2009 Good writing, thanks for the tips!