Dwight Watt Georgia Kiwanian Article

September 2008

Website contest and district website

As we finish one year and start a new year in Kiwanis lets look back and forward. I look forward to the new year with more technology improvements coming.

Congratulations to the winners of the website contest in 200702008. The judges of the event were again webmasters from other districts. This year the judges were from the New York, Kentucky-Tennessee and Illinois-Iowa districts.

The winners were:
Gold Division – Marietta
Silver Division – Peachtree City
Orange Division – Albany Golden K
Blue Division –Cumming
White Division – Dawson County
Division Website – Division 23

Now is the time to be updating your website. The judges found a number of websites that listed officers from 3-8 years ago and old or missing information.

The website competition will change slightly in 2008-2009. I judged the websites in three other districts and have taken some items from their contests to make our contest better. The rules for 2008-2009 will be:
All sites listed on the district site in Club Links will automatically be entered.
Required items to be in competition:

  1. Link to the Kiwanis International website (www.kiwanis.org)
    2.   
  2. Link to the Georgia district site (www.gakiwanis.org)
  3. Meeting time and location listed

The sites will then be judged on following (assuming they have all three of above)
  1. 1. List of officers
  2. Projects - planned and completed.
  3. Usability of the website
  4. Contact information.  How to contact an officer (phone or email), although not all need to be listed as some may not want phone or e-mail listed, but someone to contact if viewer is interested.
  5. Pictures
  6. Support of youth organizations
  7. Easiness of navigation for website and all parts are working
  8. Friendliness of website.
  9. Currentness of site.

We will award certificates to the top three sites over all in clubs and the top division site. In addition all clubs who score 80% or higher will be recognized as having distinguished sites. I will supply a graphic file to the winners (overall and distinguished) they can put on their website permanently showing the award.

This spring we implemented a new feature on the district website that has gotten me the most feedback of anything I have done to the site in five years. Almost all has been positive, and some of why is my club missing. The feature is a map on the main page showing where clubs meet. If your club does not show on the map or your meeting location has changed, I need you to e-mail me (Dwight@DwightWatt.com) with your club name, meeting location including street address (ex. 123 West Main Street) and I will add you to the map. The map uses Google Maps and I have to have the street address with location number to get the latitude and longitude for the map to show it. I appreciate everyone’s help.

If your club has a website but is not listed on eth Club Links page, I need you to send me your club’s name and the URL (ex www.GAKiwanis.org) of the website and I will add it.

Dwight

Copyright 2008 by Dwight Watt