Thoughts on a SDCCB club website

[brandon obrien]

Hey everyone,

Hope you're enjoying this snowy day and have some dark and strong beers to crack open tonight.  I've used the snow as an excuse to brainstorm ways to improve our presence on the web as well as provide a resource to brewers in NM.

When searching Google for anything related to a homebrew club in Santa Fe, our Facebook page doesn't even appear on the first five pages of results and there isn't anything pointing prospective brewers to the Sangre de Cristo Craft Brewers name. Alternatively, if you search for 'homebrew club albuquerque' the Dukes and Warthogs are the first two results.

What also became apparent during our last virtual meeting is, as a club, we individually have a huge diversity of brewing knowledge and information.  Things like brewing with kveik, fermenting in a keg with a spunding valve, how to handle aging in barrels, using Tilt electronic hydrometers, etc. Trying to get that information posted as a resource for other members in the club to reference would be a great way to help expand all of our knowledge.

With all of that being said, I started tinkering with a website that should help our internet presence and act as a knowledge base.  Right now it has a temporary name on wordpress, but we could get an actual domain name if this is something we want to pursue.

The temporary site is here: https://sangredecristocraftbrewers.wordpress.com/

I have a couple categories set up that I think would be fun:

* Brewing setups - this would showcase our individual setups and how we handle our brew days / fermentation / packaging.  I know my setup has changed tremendously over the last 5 years.  Being able to show other members or potential brewers how our systems are set up would be helpful.

* Recipes / brew logs - this would be a reference of recipes we've brewed that turn out really well or are kinda crazy (Jim's mushroom kolsch?).

I also made a couple other pages that still need to be fleshed out (found in the footer of the site):

* A reference for growing hops in Santa Fe. I know Gunter built a badass trellis which might be neat to show off.

* Turning your spent grain from mashing into bread.  I linked to some of the spent grain recipes I wrote for my bread baking website.

* A meetings / events page.  Obviously not much to happen on this page right now but once COVID is behind us and we can meet again, it can be a resource for meeting information.

There's also an About Us page where we could give a little more information about when the club was founded, some of the competitions we've done, collabs with Santa Fe Brewing Co, etc.

Anyway, this email ended up a little longer than I expected.  Take a look at the site and let me know if this is something you think could be helpful for the club.  If you have anything you want to contribute to any of the pages, just let me know too.

-Brandon

[Warren Lail]

Outstanding job, Brandon!  What a nice website and well organized as well.  Your Smash beer looks great, and sharing recipes and brew logs is the way to go.

The issue with our club not appearing on Google search has to do with search engine optimization (SEO).  I only know that our site has to be tagged with certain keywords so that when someone searches, our site pops up.  My guess is that David Gunter (or others in the club) knows more about this (certainly more than me).

Looking forward to our next meeting.

Warren

On Oct 27, 2020, at 12:18 PM, brandon obrien <brandon....@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Kevin Wohlmut]

At first glance that looks superb!  Love it!
The only thing is, we should give consideration to long-term maintenance.  I've seen way too many examples where somebody with good Web skills makes a great website for a recreational/voluntary type organization, and then after five years that person's gone and the website breaks down and vanishes.  Not saying Brandon is going anywhere, but I feel like it might be a good use of some small portion of our dues to set aside for web hosting and actually paying someone for website maintenance.

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"In a country well-governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of.  In a country badly-governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of." --CONFUCIOUS

[brandon obrien]

That's definitely a valid concern. Fortunately this is a Wordpress site which was built for everyday people to sign in and manage without ever having to look at a line of code.  I know the Dukes have a dedicated 'webmaster / social' position which handles all of their website and social media needs. 

I'm just trying to think of ways to keep the club active during COVID.  Putting a little time toward a knowledge and recipe database seems like a fun and easy way to keep some kind of engagement while we all drink alone haha.

Brandon O'Brien
bra...@clearcheckbook.com
https://www.clearcheckbook.com

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[Ed Williams]

This looks great thanks Brandon. I remember when I first moved to Santa Fe I looked for a local brew club and couldn't find any info online. I didn't learn about the Sangres till Stephen Bohannon invited me to a meeting.

Ed Williams

Reporter

Searchlight New Mexico

Cell: 505 699 6401

Signal: 505-699-6401

https://www.searchlightnm.org

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