Build a Club Website 7
- Forms, Emails, Maps & Videos

If you have looked at http://midlands-movies.weebly.com you will have seen not just the revised version of the "Home" page and the "Coming soon..." page we have been creating, but some other pages with interesting things ... in order to familiarise yourself with them, work through these steps to give your own embryo website similar features.

"Contact us" page

The more ways you can give people to get in touch, the better the chance of catching new members.

Forms

The safest way of allowing people to contact you is through a form. They fill it in on the website and behind the scenes it is processed, then an email is sent to you. The enquirer never knows your email address - at least until you reply to her or him.

Putting the contact form on the page is just a matter of dragging the "Contact form" element down to where you want it.

• Form Options presents the forms toolbar
• View Entries opens a new page to show you all the messages that have been sent through this forms system to you. (Of course it will be empty to begin with.)
• Close shuts down the form controls leaving your form on the page.

Click Form Options and the forms toolbar appears above it.

• Form name lets you change the title of the form.
• Email submissions to is where you type in the email address that you want messages to go to. Weebly fills in automatically the email address you used to register with them, but you can change it. Here you see my email address as IAC Assistant Webmaster.
• Confirmation text is what people see on the page after they have sent their message. You can edit it to something friendlier or more appropriate.
• Advanced lets you tweak a few more things. One you might consider is changing the name of the button on the form from "Submit" to "Send" which more people will understand.

If you visit http://midlands-movies.weebly.com you can try out the form by writing something and giving your own email address.  I don't promise to answer every time! 

Emails and Spam

Spam (unwanted advertising emails) is a plague. There are programs which scour the internet for any email address they can find and add it to lists for spammers to use.

Using a contact form (as above) stops those programs finding an email address. That is why we recommend you to use a form if you are at all worried about spam.

Having said that, many people have little trouble with spam.

If you do want a club email address

Remember that even your rough website will be visible on the web.

The majority of Internet Service Providers  now have efficient filters which stop most spam reaching your mailbox. You can also get programs to run on your computer which will identify spam and deal with it before you see it.

Nevertheless, we recommend that if you do put an email address on your website you make it a special one for club work and not your normal address.

You can get free email services from (among others) Google, Yahoo, Windows Live and GMX. Set up email with one of those and you can probably choose an email address like "midlands-movies@gmx.com"

You should share the username and password of this special email account with a few other club officers, so that if you are away, they can handle any enquiries. Do not share your normal personal email sign-in details!

Setting up an email link in Weebly

You can type in an email address and make it a link. That is you can click on it and in most computers it will start the email program running with that address in the TO box.

Click  Weebly's text toolbar "Link" option.

The four choices on the left are:

1. Link to another page on your website.
2. Link to some other website - like the IAC one ... hint ... hint !
3. Link to a file like a pdf of competition rules
4. Link to the Email program on the user's computer

When you pick one, the right side of the dialog box presents a suitable choice or field where you type in details. Here it is asking you to type in the email address to use.

"How to find us" page

This page starts with the Weebly Element "Paragraph with Title", so drag it into place and type in a title and some words about how to get to your venue, nearest bus-stop, train station and parking areas.

Drag the "Google Maps" element onto the page under your first paragraph.

Guess where the Weebly company is based !

Click on the map itself.

That presents the toolbar near the top of your page ...

• Address type in the name of the town where you meet - or better still the postcode of the club venue.
• Width and Height decide the size of your map. Position lets you place the map left, right or centre in the space available.
• Marker leave this to show a mark on the map over your venue (or at least your town).
• Zoom the map can be zoomed in or out. This helps users to start with a wide view showing the general area, then they can zoom in to street-level if they wish to see exactly where your club hall is.
• Advanced - don't bother with this!

The settings used for the example website were:

"See our work ..." page

Start by dragging the "two column" element onto the page. This is a useful way of presenting a lot of text. Readers prefer short lines to long ones ... oops that is advice I have not  always taken myself in these tutorials !!!

Add some video

You will need to know the YouTube address for the video you will put here.

If you do not know it, open a new window on your browser and go to YouTube to find the film. Below the video on YouTube click the "Share" button. That brings up some information, including the link to that video. Copy it.

Return to the Weebly window ...

Go to the top left of the Weebly screen and choose to show the "Multimedia" elements. From them drag the "YouTube" element into the right-hand column.

There are other video hosting sites, but for the moment stick to video your club members have put on YouTube. If you need to know how to put a movie onto YouTube read our notes - here.

A little confusingly dropping the Weebly YouTube element onto the page makes it turn quickly into a real YouTube movie ... but not the one you want!

Type or paste the YouTube link you copied earlier into the first field of the toolbar, choose the "small" size option and position it "right" ...

Almost immediately the correct video appears in the box.

Have a look at your website live

Click the friendly orange Publish button at the top right of the Weebly page. When the "Congratulations ..." page appears, click the link and look at the website you have created on the web.

Now you really do deserve to congratulate yourself on the first draft of your club website.

Go back to Weebly, click the "Close" cross at the top right corner. When the start screen appears click "Logout".  Go and have tea, coffee or something stronger if you wish.

Next time you ask your web browser to go to Weebly and you login, you will see the name of your website listed there along with three buttons.  When you click Edit you can revise any aspect of your site.

To boldly go ...

This exercise has produced a very basic website. The next step is to have a long, hard think about what should be on it.

• Do not work alone. You are the webmaster and boss, but other people can bring useful insights and ideas to you.
• Read the articles on content, style, layout etc. being published in Film & Video Maker magazine (This valuable magazine is only available to IAC members.) Much longer and more detailed versions of these Film & Video Maker magazine articles are also being reproduced on this website.
  • Is your club website a waste of space? points out weaknesses in existing club websites
  • What should the content be? covers the tricky issue of what to put in
  • Navigation talks about menus and how to prioritise content
  • Choosing the Right Words - offers a little help with writing
  • Pictures deals with choosing, preparing and using images
  • Colours offers ideas on how to use colours to good effect
  • Layout discusses the look of your website
  • more are in the pipeline
• Set about taking - or asking someone else to take - suitable still pictures.
• Consider commissioning (without a fee!) people to write about aspects of our hobby and about their own skills as movie makers, actors, writers, designers and so on.
• Explore all the other options Weebly offers and which we skated over.