Ripon Rugby Club Website Project
It’s odd how things change and how situations develop, but today we have been asked to take down the website that we created for Ripon Rugby Club which was part of our long standing support for the club that spans a decade.
Ripon Rugby Club is an amateur club that relies on the help and support of many individuals and businesses to be able to provide the coaching to the players and to run a successful club. Bronco got involved with the rugby club back in 2000 (before Dave and I even owned the company) and Dave & Ben built the first web presence for the club. Back in 2000 it was quite rare for a sports club to have a website, let alone one that could record the fixtures and match reports, and for an amateur club they have always outstripped the online presence of any other club in their league.
Back in 2007 the club website was given a major overhaul that coincided with the big expansion of the club house and facilities. The new site included blogs so that there could be a community formed around match reports and comments, as well as a great backend that allowed for fixtures and scores to be updated. Over the years the various website developments, the domain name renewals and the hosting have all been done free of charge for the club as a gesture of our support to a local sports club, running into thousands of pounds in cost to Bronco.
But it now seems that the committee has take a u-turn and decided that it no longer wants the support, goodwill or expertise of Bronco to carry their web presence into the future for free! It’s left myself and Dave very confused about the move of a club rejecting a perfectly good website that was just in need of the new team information adding and a few new pictures. Bizarre!
13 comments
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lol… most probably .. or they may end up with something above and beyond anything that we could have created. We’ve had to take back the domain names though as they belonged to Bronco so they will have to start again from scratch I suppose.
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Becky Naylor, Bronco. Bronco said: RT @BeckyNaylor Local sports club decides to go "web-less" http://bro.gs/uayf [...]
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It really surprises me that as a follower and supporter of the RUFC that they have rejected the help and support of Bronco that we have enjoyed for the last decade. You have provided the club with a great site and have done a great job over the years. A real shame!
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I’m not at all surprised by this. The club itself has taken a massive U turn by letting go some of their finest coaching staff during the last year and then broadcasting this on the site (for other teams to see that there is instability within the club creating a sense of low morale throughout the teams).
The website was brilliant and professional – It’s these little things that make you feel proud of playing for the team. It’s a real shame that it has been taken down. Great work and thank you.
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I am a supporter of RUFC and have been for many years. It certainly sounds like the club has made some odd decisions over the last 6 months and this is a real shame that they are now potentially losing their fantastic site.
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I ought to say that I am surprised, but Ripon RFC have done many strange things over the years, albeit mainly on the coaching side. It makes one wonder, did they know that they were getting such a good package free, or has another company offered some vague promises. It does sound a bit like a friend of a friend scenario. We await the new site with interest!
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Looks like the Rugby Club has built a new website … http://www.riponrugby.org . Not being biased, but I think they have ended up with a website that takes them back about 5 years on the web unfortunately.
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It always surprises me when people don’t know how good they’ve got it and on some whim do something stupid.
The grass isn’t always greener…
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If the Rugby Club dont want to use your help, I’ sure other sporting clubs around the area would be chuffed for a bit of help, in creating their websites and advice/software to keep it updated throughout the season. I know Ripon City Football Club would be chuffed with a revamp; a large club filled with histor that is hopefully going places.
Just a thought?
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@footballer, thanks for your comment and I’ll be in touch. I’m sure we can help the Ripon Football team out somehow… I mean we have a perfectly good site, with an admin backend thats sat on the shelf as it were. With a reskin it would be the perfect solution.
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Have you checked the new site in Chrome?
That top menu doesn’t render at all well.
Think Dominic Rich is designing to standards?
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If you keep promoting Rugby maybe you can get tickets to Rugby World Cup in NZ 2011 – brother and I have a big house for the length of the tournament and expect visitors
Perhaps they’re getting someones Dads’ brothers’ friends’ milkmans’ next door neighbour who once spent an afternoon learning FrontPage to take it over…….they’re in for a bit of a shock.