Pack websites

There are many free sites available for hosting web sites. Before deciding on a webhost you'll need to know what you want to accomplish with your website. Will it be primarily a recruitment tool, a place for displaying pictures, a way for den leaders and/or parents to maintain advancement records, etc. Once you know that you will be better positioned to look at what each of the webhosts is offering in their service and determine which one best meets your needs.

One thing to be aware of with Free Web Hosting is that it often comes with advertising placed on your site and you will not have any control over the content of the ads. For our pack this was a key factor.

Another thing to consider is the technical abilities of the person that will have the task of maintaining the website. Some webhosts have great tools for doing this that requires very little technical ability. Others don't have these tools and will require more technical knowledge. Perhaps one of your scouts' parents has this knowledge and is willing to take care of setting up the website? For our pack, I setup the website using a Content Management System called Drupal and our Public Relations Chair maintains the content. This works well for us, but your situation may be different.

Below are some webhosts that cater to scout units. This is not a recommendation for any of them since I have never used them.

http://www.clubspaces.com/index.htm
http://www.scouttroop.org/
http://www.packsonline.com/
http://www.scoutwebservices.com/
http://www.scoutsonline.com/
http://www.scouter.com/hosting/

If you will be putting pictures of your scouting events on your website you'll want to make sure you get a signed release from the parents. Our pack has a form that new parents must sign either granting permission or forbidding use of their family's pictures on the website. We have only had 1 family not want their pictures used on the website. So we either don't use pictures that they're in or we blur them out so they are not recognizable.

This document from ScoutBase UK has more great information on setting up a scouting website.

Good luck on the website and if you need any more assistance, just ask.

This website has some good information also.

Here's another company that gives free hosting for scout units and has templates available to make it easy for the non-techie to create and maintain the pack/troop website.

http://decisiondesign.com/decisiondesign/scouts.asp

Our Pack has a site with Tripod, a free account has ads, but they are generally related to the site. I have had a complaint from a parent once because of a clothing ad.

They have Site Builder software that you can use, or you can code your own site. Point and click site builder is what I use, and we have an off-site account for a photo gallery (Flickr) to keep our 20MB of space free for info.

Anyhow, our site is at http://pack3097.tripod.com please feel free to check it out and let me know if you have questions about anything I've done on it.

I have our site up and running. http://pack3049.clubspaces.com/default_css.aspx

I used Clubspaces.com, free account with no popup adds. They have an online tool you build your site with. You start with templates and you modify from their. Some of it was kind of "querky" but I was able to get it completed. Not as much flexibility as a standard website building software, but it worked.  

 -Randy