Hello.  My name is Stan Ward, and I'm a Geek.  Worse yet, I'm a Web Geek.  And now, I'm the Region 4 Web Geek, and that means ... Bwahahahaha! ... er..., ahem.

Where was I?  Oh - Geek.  Web.  Right.  As such, I have geeky goals. And my goal is for Region 4 to have the best web presence in American Mensa.

Today, there are eleven chapters in Region 4.  Of those, the web sites range from Pretty Darn Good (including several PRP awards for Web publications) to A Good First Attempt.  Five chapters have no presence on the web at all.  It's to this last group that I'd like to focus on.

To repeat the statistic on the home page - Mensa estimates that over 50% of its new members now come from the web.

Now, I know what you're thinking.  Or, if I'm wrong, it doesn't matter, because I have the floor and you can't rebut me.  Anyway, I'm thinking you're thinking "Stan, we haven't got time to tackle that.  We're a small chapter.  Our one college student sort-of web-person moved.  Our ISP went out of business. Our email address was hijacked by a firm selling herbal growth enhancements for men.  And our dog ate our homework."

Enough silly excuses.  From here on out, I'm going to talk about what I think is important to a chapter website, how easy it is to set up and maintain, and what we can all do to communicate better with our chapters and the public via to the web.

The primary purposes of a chapter website are to:

Advertise your local chapter to the public, including potential new members and transplanted members from other areas;

Provide timely information to your members on such matters as calendar of events, local officers, SIGs, newsletter submissions, last minute changes, breaking news, etc.

Build a sense of community within the chapter and beyond by sharing news, ideas, pictures, success stories, etc.;

Contribute to the overall image of Mensa as an interesting, vibrant organization that's fun to be a part of.

Setting up your site:

You don't need expensive software to start out. Probably half the Mensa websites out there are maintained with basic tools such as Notepad or MS Word. There are any number of packages that run from free to $39 that will make a presentable site. I personally use Microsoft FrontPage, probably the dominant mid-priced product, but that is because I have access to it at work. DreamWeaver is the high-end software favored by professional web developers, but it is by far the most expensive, and far more difficult to learn for a beginner.  For any group just starting out, I'll be glad to help design a page or two that you can then maintain and expand upon by hand or with very basic tools.

Don't get hung up on fancy graphics, Flash animations, and other gee-whiz web features. Think of a web page as being like a newspaper.  Make a list of the key information you want to make available and make sure it's presented in a clear, easy to read fashion.  If you do get to the point of wanting to tackle some fancier stuff, make sure it doesn't get in the way of your site's basic message.

Don't try to do it all at once.  Building a web site is like furnishing a house - you can get some basic tables & chairs in quickly, but will never really complete the 'finishing touches'.  Real web sites are constantly updated; growing, changing, and adding pages over time.  Truly finished web sites are better known by another name - 'CobWeb' sites, because they are essentially stagnant.

Use the free web hosting provided by American Mensa (AML) if you don't have a good reason to do otherwise. The bulk of the chapter sites reside there, and it is quite easy to set up. Using an individual members web account makes it more difficult to transfer the task to another, which will inevitably happen at some point.  And, it's far better than using one of those 'free' hosting services where your visitors must put up with annoying pop-ups and banners.

Use the us.mensa.org domain name.  Your chapter is allowed to use the URL localgroup.us.mensa.org, whether the web page is on AML's server, your ISP, some free service, or your home PC.  (As I write this, Region4.us.mensa.org is running on a home webserver I can put my feet up on).  Once your LocSec has designated a Web Contact for your group, that Web Contact can email to either establish a hosting account on the AML server, or to direct all localgroup.us.mensa.org traffic to some other service.  That doesn't mean you can't continue to use the pre-existing URL, like www.yahoo.com/~StanWard/Mensa, but why would you want to?

Stan Ward

©2006, American Mensa - Region Four
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