Organisation

Bromley Common Golf Society (BCGS) is a golf society that meets weekly in the summer months. The Society plays at Farleigh, near Croydon.

The challenge

My husband is one of the founding members of BCGS. Back in about 2001 I created a simple HTML website for the Society, which my husband used to then update with the latest scores.

It was mainly text and was never going to win any design awards.

After some WordPress training in 2011, and later having built two websites for myself, plus two for clients, I decided it was time to update and overhaul the now rather dated BCGS website.

Solution

With a completely free reign to build what I wanted, I was able to develop and build the BCGS site very quickly. I built in on a great little theme called Etherna. Such themes are great when not much customisation is needed because they are simple to tailor and usually only cost about $35.

I’ve kept the content largely similar, but I’ve added a blog section so that the members can all contribute and engage with each other via the site; and I’ve added a gallery and more visual elements.

The site is hosted on a frame-forward from one of my own domains, but because it’s mostly an internal resource for the Society members, BCGS is not worried about search engine rankings, so I’m happy to leave it that way on purpose. Without too much traffic to it, it also avoids the inevitable spam that a WordPress blog usually attracts.

Results

The feedback from the members has been very positive and there have been lots of favourable comments made about the new design and layout.

My husband has quickly mastered WordPress, which is a bonus because (so far) I haven’t been called in to sort out a problem that he’s created – which was often the case when he was updating tables and results using HTML!

So, all in all, the site is now much more visually appealing and is much easier to maintain.