Discussion: Recommendations on web hosting tech

We are looking at upgrading San Diego Orienteering's web presence to something vaguely modern.

Can this hivemind help with recommendations on suitable hosting technologies that would most easily enable basic orienteering club features like events and results?

BAOC appears to use a wiki-based tool, while many smaller clubs seem to be using WIX-style WYSIWYG commercial editors.

Is everyone now simply using OUSA's event tool for local meets?

I am sufficiently technical for most options, but am most interested in getting the basics stood up quickly and easily.

All guidance most appreciated!

NEOC has its own system for local events, where you can a QR code and it takes you to the registration site. I've used it a few times, and it seems to work quite well, but I don't know any of the details.

NEOC's QR system works very well indeed, but if you are already a club member and your SI-card is in the system you can register with an SI punch and declaration of which course you are running and be on your way. (Club members run for free under NEOC's membership model). Non-members or members without personal SI cards register via the QR codes posted at the event site. Either way its a pretty neat system and eliminates the common bottlenecks at the registration table.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, OUSA has made EventReg free for local club use and has been updating the codebase over the past few years to streamline its use for local club events. Feedback and suggestions for continued improvement are always welcome.

I can confirm we're not using OUSA's registration system.

SMOC is using a combination of whyjustrun (with a custom domain) and OUSA EventReg -- far from perfection but mostly free and does not require a dedicated webmaster.

The results are posted to AttackPoint, and maps to Livelox. The events are crosslinked between AP, smoc-runs.com, and Facebook.

Cascade Orienteering Club, noted on AP recently mentioned as a good website example in this thread was "Design[ed] by Rebecca Jensen of Fox Jump Design". While I find no reference to that company anywhere, Rebecca seems to be an active COC club member, and is Run_Bosco on AP. She wrote a bit about UX here, as well, but the link to the blog is gone.

And that WhyJustRun resource is awesome, thanks igor_!

A number of clubs (Tucson, GrizO, MNOC, Navigation Games) all use wix.com. Seems to be quite adequate and easy enough to use. The events module in Wix works fine for creating event listings, and at least Tucson uses EventReg for all event registrations.

I'm using squarespace for my website (not an o-club site). I'm not a web developer but it has been easy to use. It has a bunch of stuff built in to help with SEO as well. It can link easily to email lists and social media for sending out info. I just recently added an events page to my site but I may change it up. There are many options to choose from out there. It's hard to weed through it all. Good luck.