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Clubs want a more cost effective way to communicate with their members. After all over 43% of us are on the Internet and the Internet is a way to distribute Club information free. |
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Clubs want to connect more effectively with the communities that they serve. The most frequent request that I receive as the GSBF-Bonsai.org website is for information about clubs in their local area. They want to learn more about bonsai and don’t know where to go to find out what information and help is available. This is an important way for Clubs to bring in new members. |
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Clubs want to learn more about what other Clubs in the state are doing as well as what the GSBF organization has in store for them. |
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Finally, the GSBF needs a more efficient
and cost effective way to communicate with member Clubs. |
How
do we set up a website for our Club? This is the question that I was asked most
frequently at the Convention. The answer is simpler than you might
think. We have established website addresses for each of the state
clubs at no cost to the Club. The normal fee for registering a URL
(club website address) is $35 per year. In this case the URL for your
Club would be
www.GSBF-Bonsai.org/YOURCLUBNAME. For example, in the case of my
local Club, the URL would be
www.GSBF-Bonsai.org/MontereyBonsai. You can still use your own
unique URL if you wish by simply pointing the name to the location
that we provide.
How
do we create a website? The GSBF website has a sample website for you to download and
modify using a web editing software program like Microsoft FrontPage,
the most popular one in use today. Once you have changed the sample to
suit your Club’s needs, you can simply publish it to your Club’s
location and it will be available for all to see. Each Club will have
their own password so that only authorized people can access and
update their website. The sample will have such areas as a home page,
exhibition page, newsletter, photo album, membership directory and
Club history. But the beauty of the Internet is that you can place any
information that you want online so long as it is in good taste.
What
does it cost?
The price for
each Club to create a web site is a one-time set-up fee of $60 plus
$60 per year for the web-hosting fee paid to the web hosting company.
That’s just $5.00 per month for web site hosting, which is much lower
than what most Clubs said they were quoted by other hosting companies.
The Club member in charge of the website will also need a website
editing program. There are some free ones available online, but most
people will choose FrontPage since it is included as part of Microsoft
Office 2000, and it has the most templates available. If you want more
information visit the GSBF-Bonsai.org web site or email the webmaster
at
Webmaster@GSBF-Bonsai.org. Each Club website will also receive a
free email address to communicate with their members and other
interested parties.
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