Club Manual

The Club Website Manual

Plain English, no computer knowledge assumed

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The two sides of the website

The website has a public side — what anyone in the world sees — and a management side where the committee changes things. The management side is behind the Management link at the bottom of every page; sign in with your management email and password. A View public site link is always there, so you can check what visitors actually see after any change.

There are three kinds of management login, so people only see the pages that concern them:

• Content manager — the "news desk": pages, notices, calendar, photos, shop, winners, enquiries.
• Competition manager — competitions, entries, draws, results, tabs and fixtures.
• Super admin — everything above, plus members, logins and settings.

Five things to know before you touch anything

1. New things start hidden. A new notice, event, album, or competition is invisible to the public until you tick Published. You can prepare things in peace — nothing goes out by accident.
2. Almost nothing gets deleted. To take something off the site, untick Published (or Active for a person). It disappears from the public but nothing is lost, and you can bring it back later.
3. "It's not showing" is almost always the Published tick. Before phoning for help, check the tick box.
4. The site tells you what happened. After every save, a message at the top of the page confirms it worked — or explains in plain words why it didn't.
5. Every management page has a How-To button in its top corner. This manual is the overview; the How-To is the detailed recipe for that exact page, and it's always up to date.

Running a club competition, start to finish

The one big job of the season. Seven steps, in order.

1. Create it

   On Competitions, a competition is simply a section (Men's, Ladies', Mixed…) plus a format (Singles, Pairs…) for the season. The name makes itself — "Men's Pairs" — unless you type your own. Tick Published when you're ready for it to appear on the site.

2. Open entries

   Click Open on the competition. If WhatsApp is switched on, the members it is for (men for the men's, ladies for the ladies', everyone for mixed) get a WhatsApp saying entries are open, with a REGISTER button. Tapping it sends them their own season link, and they enter from My Club. If WhatsApp is off, tell members to send REGISTER to the club's WhatsApp. Only players marked paid on Season fees can enter, and in pairs everyone on the team must be paid.

   In a hurry, or running it on paper? You can skip public entries entirely — see steps 3 and 4; names can be typed straight in.

3. Sort the entries

   Entries is the inbox. Entries from My Club arrive as Pending; flip the valid ones to Confirmed. Someone phoned their entry in? Add entry types it in by hand — just the name is needed. There's also a chase list of members who haven't entered yet, with one-tap WhatsApp nudges, and a button to download everything as a spreadsheet.

4. Make the draw

   On Knockout: Import confirmed entries, then Randomize seeds (the hat draw), then Generate bracket. Odd numbers of players are fine — byes and play-in games are worked out for you.

   The one dangerous button. Generate bracket builds the draw from scratch — if you press it again later, every match is replaced including results already played. Only regenerate before play starts.

   One more quirk: importing takes a snapshot of the names. If a name needs fixing afterwards, fix it on the Knockout page, not on the entry.

5. Sort out who's marking (singles only)

   A singles game needs somebody neutral to hold the card, and on Markers the site works out who can. Mark up round 1 does most of it in one press: the games are taken in pairs, and each is marked by the two players of the game beside it. Whoever's left over — the odd game, and always the final — you pick yourself, from a list sorted by who has marked least this season, so the fair choice is at the top.

   A singles game with no marker cannot be given a play date. The round schedule refuses it and the scorer keypad won't open it. That's why this step comes before dates: a marker matters the moment a game gets a day, because that's when somebody has to turn up.

   Nobody in the list? That's normal, not a fault — everyone eligible is playing in the game. It's guaranteed in the final, and in any competition small enough that the entrants are the players. Just type a name: a visitor, a partner, someone from another club. That counts. It earns no turn on the fairness ledger, because you can't ask a visitor again next month.

   Competitions drawn before this arrived are only warned, never blocked — their dates still save.

6. Record results as they're played

   Each match is a card. Type both scores and press Save — whoever scored more wins and moves on automatically. You never pick the winner yourself, so the result can never argue with the scoreline. A tie is refused: play the extra end and enter the final score. A game nobody played — a walkover or concession — goes under Won without a score.

   At the green, use Match-day mode — the same thing, made for a phone: one card per game, a score box per player, nothing else.

   Made a mistake? Amend result fixes the scores, or Un-record puts the match back to unplayed. Once the next round's game has a result, the earlier one locks — un-record the later game first and work backwards.

   Handicap competitions. Enter the adjusted score — the one that includes each player's start. The site takes the winner from the numbers you type, so raw shots would send the wrong player through.

   Dates and venues: the Round schedule sets one date for a whole round; any single match card can override it when the players arrange their own time.

7. Crown the champion

   When the final is recorded, one click publishes the winner to the public honours board. The bracket page members see updates itself all along — with a find-your-name search, a print sheet, and a WhatsApp share button for the draw.

Prefer sections before the knockout? Knockout can also split the field into sections that each play a full round-robin — every score entered feeds live league tables on the site — and then promote the section winners into a knockout with one click.

The week-to-week jobs

Social bowls — the tabs box, online

On Tabs, create a session for the day (date, start time, and if you like a "names in by" cut-off). Members put their own names in from home on the public tabs page; walk-ins get typed in with Add walk-in so the screen matches the physical box. When the list is complete, set the session to Closed (ready to draw) — the Draw rinks button appears once there are at least four names. The draw deals everyone onto even rinks (13 names in fours comes out 4-3-3-3), honours front/back-end requests where it can, and publishes who plays where instantly. Don't like it? Press Redraw rinks. If part of the green is closed, lower Rinks on the green and the draw plans around it; extra names become reserves. Once drawn, the list locks — a latecomer is sorted out on the green.

Inter-club fixtures and the team sheet

On Fixtures, add the match: opponent, league name, date, home or away, venue. Members then answer Available / Maybe / Can't play with one tap on their My Club page — the Ask the group for availability button gives you a ready-made message for the club WhatsApp group, and the answers collect themselves. On the selection screen you see the live tally and who's free, pick the side from the membership (or add a borrowed or guest player by name), give positions, and tick Publish the team sheet to put the side on the public fixture — with a WhatsApp share. Afterwards, enter our shots and theirs; the public noticeboard shows Won / Lost / Drew automatically.

Visitor enquiries

When a visitor fills in the call-back form on the Contact page, it lands in Enquiries (and shows a counter on the dashboard). Tap the phone number to open WhatsApp with a friendly reply already typed for you. Mark each one Contacted or Closed as you deal with it, so the committee can see nothing slips through.

Keeping the site fresh

News, photos and the shop

Notices

Club announcements. Pinned keeps one at the top; an expiry date quietly takes it down afterwards — no stale news.

Calendar

Club events. Never delete a cancelled event — set its status to Cancelled so everyone sees it's off. Tick Visitors welcome on an open day and it gets highlighted on the homepage.

Galleries

Photo albums. Create the album, then upload photos into it — big photos are shrunk automatically, and the first photo becomes the cover. Deleting a photo is permanent; albums themselves are unpublished, never deleted.

Home Cards

The feature blocks on the homepage. Plain text plus a picture; the sort-order number decides who comes first (lower = higher).

Pages

The fixed pages — About, Contact, the homepage introduction, Come Try Bowls. Take care here: the body is raw website code (HTML), and whatever you type appears exactly as typed. If it looks broken after saving, undo your change or ask someone comfortable with HTML.

Winners

The honours board, going back through the years. Usually filled by one click from a finished final, but any year and any competition can be typed in by hand — teams go one name per line.

Shop

Club kit and merchandise. Leave the price blank to show "price on request". Published decides if the item is listed at all; In stock only changes its label.

People

Members and management logins

Members are the players — they log in to the public site to enter members-only competitions, see My Club (their next match, their entries, fixture availability), and keep their own phone number and password up to date. That phone number is where their WhatsApp messages arrive, so encourage everyone to check it. You can add members one at a time, or bring the whole club in at once from a spreadsheet with Import CSV (download the template first). If public registration is switched on in Settings, new sign-ups wait for your approval on the Members page before they can log in. To block someone, untick Active — never delete.

Users are the management logins described at the start — the committee side. Same rule: untick Active to remove access, which takes effect immediately.

WhatsApp

What the club's WhatsApp number does by itself

The club has a dedicated WhatsApp number that the website itself sends and receives on — separate from the club's everyday WhatsApp. When it's switched on (in Settings), the site handles the repetitive messaging for you:

• Entry invitations — opening a competition messages every active member with an Enter now button that opens the entry form ready-filled.
• New-entry alerts — the organiser gets a WhatsApp the moment an entry comes in.
• A self-service menu — any member can message the club number and gets a menu back: 1 upcoming fixtures, 2 competitions open for entry, 3 latest notices, 4 ask the club a question.
• Questions reach a human — choosing 4 forwards the member's message to the staff numbers set in Settings. A staff member replies from their own phone by typing @ then the member's number, a space, and the message (for example @0821234567 See you Saturday at 9). The member sees the reply come from the club number — staff phones stay private.

If an action ever says "share manually" instead of sending, WhatsApp is simply switched off or not set up on the server — everything else still works; you just pass the message on yourself.

Once a season, once ever

Starting the new season

On Season Rollover (super admin only), one button starts the new year: it copies every competition across as unpublished drafts with no PIN and no dates. The public competitions page goes quiet until you publish the new drafts — that's expected. The button refuses to run while any competition is still open or live: finish the season first.

Getting found on Google — one-time setup

Two free jobs, never repeated: claim the club's Google Business Profile at business.google.com (category Lawn bowls club, add the address, phone, website and a few photos — the management How-To has the click-by-click steps), and fill in Town / suburb under Settings so Google knows exactly where the club is. The site keeps its own sitemap up to date for Google automatically.

Settings

The club's identity in one place: name, tagline, contact details, address, the default WhatsApp number (the club's everyday, human-answered one — used for the "chat to us" buttons and as a fallback for alerts), the town/suburb for Google, the public-registration switch, and all the WhatsApp switches above — including a test send button to check it's working without bothering the members.

When something looks wrong

Printed copies go out of date — the How-To buttons inside the management area are always current, and every management page has one.