English Chess Forum

I have noticed that many tournaments still do not have a website, but do have an email address for contacts.

A website is essential to promote your event, it is a free and easy way to spread information quickly.

Here is a simple way to set up a site for your event, and I reckon it will take you less than half an hour! You don’t have to know anything about website design. Use Posterous. Now, Posterous is unusual. Posterous lets you post things online fast -you email [email protected] and it gets formatted and posted! Anything you attach (Word, pdf, anything) gets posted and people can download it and print it. You can include photos.

1. Sign up for an account at http://posterous.com/.

2. Choose a logical name based on the event, e.g. http://goldersgreenchess.posterous.com/

3. Email the details of your tournament to [email protected] - attach the entry form to the email and a photo if you want - and that’s it!

You can edit the details afterwards, but it’s easier to get them looking the way you want first time in the email.

Now, everything you email will appear as the latest post, and will have a unique link.

TIPS

* add your web address to your signature when you email and post on the Forum
* please make sure the link to your site is on the ECF calendar!
* use the same site to promote your simultaneous display or club championship
* link your Posterous account with your Facebook or Twitter account. Then when you post it will be sent to all three! (this is called ‘autopost’)
* why not set up a page for the club? You can add your club mates email addresses to any Posterous site you control. Then they email [email protected] to post to it. They don't need to create an account.
* http://www.blogger.com is another site you might want to explore if you have a bit more knowledge; you can customise it - e.g. http://goldersgreenchess.blogspot.com/

If you have any suggestions for making this process even easier, or corrections, or ideas for promoting weekend tournaments - let me know! And if you use this tip, send me your link!

Adam Hi i like what you have posted on here about website for Chess Tournaments however the actual one you are talking about is more of a blogg than a website design. So I am listing an alternative which is www.spanglefish.com which will give you a website for free. They will also design the banner and this is more of a website than a blogg site. It is really easy to do and add funtions to the site and different pages. It also has a good calender system and feedback. you can upload pictures documents etc and they bend over backwards to help with the sites own forum.

Please have a look what I have done for Upminster website on here at http://www.spanglefish.com/upminsterchessclub . This took me approximately one evening to do and it is really easy to update and you can give different people access if you want to change certain pages. I am now helping to organize the next Essex Chess Congress and intend putting the congress site on here in the near future. You can easily buy a domain name as well and point it the site for around £25.00 which is money well spent as you can have it as www.chesscongress.co.uk or something along these lines if you want.

I hope this helps and although yours is good for a blogg type site I think this is better for an overall site look. Please feel free to pass this information on to the main site if you want.

Thanks


David Brock