Guide to creating Pack and Troop websites

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Guide to creating Cub Scout Pack and Boy Scout Troop websites

by Cub Dad

Guide to creating Pack and Troop websites

Updated: October 19th, 2006

Introduction

I have been looking into creating a unit website for our Cub Scout Pack. There is lots of great information available to adult leaders on the Internet on how to do this. At the same time the information is scattered across the Internet.

As a contribution back to scouting, I thought a website to gather and link all this information together would be useful. This information should be useful to Boy Scout Troops, Venturing Crews, Sea Scout Ships, and Explorer Teams as well as Cub Scout Packs - we are all just scouts after all!

Please email me with any additional resources your find at cub_dad@yahoo.com.

Guidelines

The Boy Scouts of America doesn't seem to have any "official" guidelines for scouting units on the creation of unit websites. There is BSA advice for personal and Unit websites, which basically points to the Council to provide guidelines. Official BSA guidelines for Council websites is provided however - the majority of which will apply to Pack, Troop, etc.. websites.

Links to guidelines for Unit websites at various Councils: National Captial Area, Detroit Area 1, Detroit Area 2, Central New Jersey, Patriot's Path, Three Fires,

When in doubt, contact your local Council with questions !

After reading all of this information, here are some simple guidelines for a Cub Scout Pack (or Boy Scout Troop) website:

Create a Unit website for your Pack or Troop - Its a great way to promote your Unit and share information with your members.
Keep your Pack or Troop website up-to-date.
Provide a way for people to contact a few key ADULT leaders - email or phone number.
Seperate "marketing" content for prospective scouts from "private" content for members only. Make sure the private content is secure.
Use a reliable web hosting provider.
Link to other scouting content vs. reproducing it on your Unit website.
Contact your local Council for their specific guidelies for Unit websites.

DON'T

Use last names of any youth members - use initials if you must.
Have banner ads, commercial endorsements, sponsers, or any type of advertising.
Have pictures available for anyone to browse (secure it)
Have detailed information about your meeting locations and times for anyone to browse (secure it)
Link to site that are not scouting appropriate.
Have online chat rooms.
Use copyrighted or trademarked material.

Scouting Focused Hosting

We'll start off first with a list of places to host your website that have some level of focus on scouting.

Paid Web Services
Look ma, no HTML required. These providers have a "service" that lets you create a Pack or Troop website without the need for any technical skills at all.

Company	Units	Starting Price per Year
doubleknot Not scouting specific, but a number of units use them	Any type of scouting unit	$90+
eScoutz	Cub Scout Packs & Boy Scout Troops	$65+ (includes no ads option)
PackWeb	Cub Scout Packs	$100
PacksOnline	Cub Scout Packs	$150
SOAR myPack & myTroop	Cub Scout Packs & Boy Scout Troops	$69 - $99

Paid Web Hosting
These are web hosting companies with a focus on the scouting community that provide you space to build your own unit website - technical experience required. Because they are generic hosting, they are appropriate for any type of scouting unit.

Company	Starting Price per Year
BSA Troops	$25
Scout Hosting	$91
Scout Internet Hosting	$79
Scout Webs	$77

Free Web Hosting
The companies provide free web hosting space to scouting units. They are appropriate for any type of scouting unit and require technical experience to create a unit website.

Company	Hosting Space
Scouter Network	2 MB
Scouting Pages	25 MB donations for domain names & extra email accounts
Scouts Online	Unknown
Troops & Packs Online (TAPO)	15 MB

General Web Hosting

A listing of all general web hosting companies would be too large for this site. Below are the sites that seem popular among scouting units.

Sites without advertising or sponsors
- OrgSites

Sites with advertising or sponsors (that probably shouldn't be used)
- ClubSpaces, Freeservers ($48 per year for no ads), Lycos Angelfire ($60 per year for no ads), Lycos Tripod ($60 per year for no ads), Yahoo! GeoCities ($60 per year for no ads), Yahoo Groups

Other Resources

This section provides links to other resources useful in building unit websites

Clip Art
What is a website without cool graphics? Here is a list of places where you can get Cub Scout, Boy Scout, etc. graphics to use on your own Unit website.