Last October we announced that the "Put your Club Online" (PYCO) blog/website would be moved to a  new website.  It has taken a few months of research and work to turn that dream into a reality.

This announces our official launch effective March 15, 2013.  We are pleased to welcome you to our new Put Your Club Online website.

The Put Your Club Online with Blogger website remains and will updated over the new few days with fresh versions of our articles.  We will be adding new articles with videos to provide a tour and tutorials on how to use the new administration panel in Blogger.

We are looking for some help if you can spare the time and are interested in contributing:

• If you cannot find a tutorial, please recommend a topic you would like us to add.
• If you would like to write a tutorial, contact us with your ideas.
• If you would like to join our team, please contact us.

We wouold really like to get your first impressions on our site, so please leave a comment with your ideas and suggestions on how we can improve our new home.

You have the option to create a generic email account on any popular public free email service like Gmail, Yahoo Mail or Outlook Online (used to be Hotmail).  

Here are some PDF Guides that you may find helpful:

• Create a Generic GMail Account
  
• Create a Generic Yahoo Account
  
• Create a Generic Outlook Online Account (coming soon)
  

You will be using the generic email account to register for most of the available online services you subscribe your club to in the future.  It is critical that you always think about the sustainability ... what would happen if you suddenly were no longer available?  Would your club's online services and resources be locked up with no way to manage them or delete them?  This is an rarely envisioned when clubs first start out, but always presume that the worst could happen.

 At a minimum, always ensure that two individuals who trust each other and which the club executive trust, have the "keys to the kingdom".  Write down the login credentials (login name and password) and ensure that a copy is provided to the other club member you trust.  Ensure that a written record is maintained of all of the online services subscribed to and the login credentials used.  Both of you should be equally conversant with how to manage each service, or you may want to split the work load between both of you.

Once you have a generic email address, ensure that you configure it to automatically forward email to the real user email address so that you  will receive all the important notices fro your web services that you subscribe to.

Please refer to the tutorial "First Step" tutorial when it becomes available.  We will continue this discussion with a series of articles exploring each of these first steps:

• First Steps - Get Your Club Online
  
• First Steps - Create a Generic Email Account
  
• First Steps - Create a Website & Blog with Weebly.com (coming soon)
  
• First Steps - Create a Facebook Page (coming soon)
  
• First Steps - Create a Facebook Group (coming soon)
  
• First Steps - Create a Twitter Feed (coming Soon)
  
• First Steps - Tying it all together (coming soon)
  

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This article was originally published on the Put Your Club Online blog at Blogger.com and has been revised to include references to Outlook Online.  Our Thanks must go to jscreationzs and Ambro / FreeDigitalPictures.net for the free use of the artwork and digital photo in this article.

Many Optimist clubs have not gone online because they do not have anyone who is willing to undertake the project to create a website, a blog or some other web presence.  Most individuals think that it is too complicated, requires advanced web knowledge or is too costly.

That may have been true a few years ago, but with hosted web services, there are many easy-to-use solutions available.

Now, anyone with basic computer skills can create an put their club online using available free hosted web services. The first question is "How do we get started".

Before you can launch into building an online presence, it is important to engage the club members into a discussion to determine what kind of online presence is needed.

Most service clubs exist to deliver service to their communities for a specific purpose.  Optimist clubs, for example, focus on running community service projects focused on local youth, raise funds to sponsor local youth activities and programs and recruit members to run those projects and raise funds.  So when looking at online presence, ask a few questions.  Does your club want their online presence to:

• explain who you are and what you do? (website, blog, Facebook, Google+)
• help point out the community service projects you perform? (website, blog, Facebook, Google+)
• help recruit new members? (website, blog, Facebook, Twitter, Google+)
• demonstrate how active you are in our local community? (webiste, blog, Facebook, Twitter, Google+)
• explain what kind of help your club needs? (website, blog)
• allow your members to share in fellowship? (Facebook, Google+, Twitter)
• allow your members to share their volunteer experiences? (Facebook, Google+, Twitter)
• allow the community you support to comment on your club's activities? (blog, Facebook, Twitter, Google+)
• allow your members to communicate in a secure community to plan projects? (Facebook groups)

Keeping in mind that Optimist clubs are volunteer organizations, creating and maintaining an web presence will normally be done by a volunteer, usually with little experience and not a lot of spare time to dedicate to the project, let alone learning new technologies.

Whatever presence is created and whatever online services are used, it should focus on the following traits:

There are hundreds of available of online services.  The trick is to select those services that can be easily combined into a cohesive combination of services that will take the minimum of time to create and maintain.  It is important to remain focused and to select those services that will work best to build an online web presence.

As a guideline, you will probably want to focus on creating an online presence with those services that are easiest to create and configure, and ones that most of the club membership will use.  We suggest the following strategy:

1. Create a generic email account to use when registering accounts with online services.
2. Create a website with a blog.
   
3. Create a Facebook page for the public and a Facebook Group for club members.
4. Create a Twitter feed.

Once you have the pieces in place, all you need to do is regularly add new content and ask members to spread the word to their fellow club members, Optimists in other clubs, relatives and friends.

We will continue this discussion with a series of articles exploring each of these first steps:

• First Steps - Create a Generic Email Account
• First Steps - Create a Website & Blog with Weebly.com (coming soon)
  
• First Steps - Create a Facebook Page (coming soon)
• First Steps - Create a Facebook Group (coming soon)
• First Steps - Create a Twitter Feed (coming Soon)
• First Steps - Tying it all together (coming soon)

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This article was originally published on the Put Your Club Online blog at Blogger.com and has been revised to include references to Google+ and Twitter.  Our Thanks must go to jscreationzs and Ambro / FreeDigitalPictures.net for the free use of the artwork and digital photo in this article.