Club website hosting and forum - options?

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Does anyone run their motorcycle club website/forum? I have proposed to my fellow MC club members that we should have a website for our club with a public facing page, private member only pages (with club calendar), and a private forum to post meeting minutes and host various discussions.

I'm talking to two local riding club webmasters about how to host a website and a forum, so have a couple of good suggestions, but figured I would ask here for any ideas.

It seems like the prevailing opinion is to use a host that can purchase a domain with WordPress for the website itself, and then use a phpBB forum software, for the intra-club discussion groups. The suggestions so far are siteground or hostgator for hosting, and phpBB or wpforo for forums.

Any thoughts from the webmasters out there?

 

[Yinzer Moto]

Is it safe to assume it is for trials? The number of members is usually not that many. It seems a lot of clubs just use private Facebook groups. Then supplement with an occasional email. The New Mexico club seems to mainly use the ADVr New Mexico thread, with some emails. They do have a site, where results and a schedule are posted. A forum seems like something that is not needed at a club level because there are many alternatives already.

 

[fprintf]

Is it safe to assume it is for trials? The number of members is usually not that many. It seems a lot of clubs just use private Facebook groups. Then supplement with an occasional email. The New Mexico club seems to mainly use the ADVr New Mexico thread, with some emails. They do have a site, where results and a schedule are posted. A forum seems like something that is not needed at a club level because there are many alternatives already.

Not just for trials. Our motorcycle club does street, enduro/hare scrambles, trials and sometimes ice racing, approximately 90 members.

Mostly now we have an email that comes from the President with official updates/notices, and then have weekly meetings. But if you don't go to the meeting, you'll have no clue what is going on. There are some group texts each of the subgroups seem to have, but it is a complete pain in the ass to manage those especially as riders come and go - it takes a while for folks to transition over to the new group text and not use the old one missing the new member. And if you need to get in touch with a specific person, well you have to figure out their email or ask someone for their mobile number.

We thought about Facebook, and have a private group there but quite a few of our members are (correctly) averse to getting on Facebook. I'd say maybe 1/2 of our members have FB accounts. Personally I dropped off FB due to a security scare in 2020, but then got back on FB with a new profile last year just to join the club site and post on marketplace - so I dislike the idea of forcing people to get an FB account to participate.

The idea of the website and forum is to post to a public page what we want people to know about the club, usually fairly limited content as we are very private. Then private pages where the club secretary can load calendar events and any proposed event dates, and then a forum where folks can coordinate street rides, poker runs, upcoming moto or trials events either that we are hosting or we are traveling to.

I do worry that any forum will be a ghost town. I see it happen with New England Trials Association, the forum launched with some fanfare and there is maybe 1 or 2 posts per month. Maybe most motorcycle guys just aren't that into forums and we here, who are comfortable with forum communications, are the minority?

 

[Yinzer Moto]

I understand people’s concerns about FB. I just view it as another forum. Give up as much info as you feel comfortable.

The regional part of this site could be a good place to try and have an active exchange of information. People do not need to be members, to view it.