A couple days ago at the District Web Committee meeting the subject was the initiative by National to have a unified look and feel for Council and District websites. I was the only one there that wasn’t a District or Council webmaster. One of the gentlemen there said that it often come up that units ask him what to do/use.
WARNING: Nerd-ness Ahead!
Last month I posted an article with the themes we were using for the Pack and Troop websites. There were also a lot of great comments and examples from other Scouters using Google Sites for their unit. It’s not flashy but for $10 a year you can run a unit website using Google tools. A Scout is thrifty after all. Turns out though that since the themes were built under a Google Apps/non-profit account (my Pack email) when I shared the templates they could only be used by other apps/non-profit accounts.
So I took the “National initiative” and went back to Google. This time I made sure to do the design using my primary gmail account. This theme, based on the Words to Live By campaign is available to all Google/Gmail users.
Here’s a link to the theme: https://sites.google.com/site/bsaunittemplate/ (You can also find it by searching for “BSA” in the public theme templates.)
The theme should take care care of all the coloring/branding aspects. Bring your own Google Calendar and Picasa accounts.
You’ll also want to customize the header graphic for your unit. The ugly but effective solution is:
☑ Download the PowerPoint slide here: (DropBox)
☑ On the title page modify to the text to suit your unit
☑ “Save As Picture”
☑ Crop
☑ Replace existing header graphic in Google Sites.
I’m looking to put together some documentation to share but it hasn’t happened yet. If you want to use the template and have any questions post them in the comments and I’ll do my best to help you through.
By the way…. That was my Day 51 literally into 52.
Dave Kotch
October 30, 2011 at 11:15 am
Great advice here! I started with this post and your template and in < 12 hours I have a decent site with a custom domain name for a den of 10, complete with Google Sites, Docs, Mail, group mailing lists, Photo Galleries, a den calendar, a voting page, etc.
All free, considering the core Google Apps are free for teams of 10 or less. And all under privacy controls that are reasonably secure for a bunch of 1st graders and their activities.
The Tigers now have a secure domain where, in years to come, they'll be able to gradually take over ownership of site news and collaboration. And for now, I have better tools for parent wrangling and communication.