A New Look for the BWA Website!
Hello BWA family!
This post is an announcement of our new website, the current updates this provides, and some great ideas we have to make our member experience better. The biggest change is that we’ve moved to a much more stable and user-friendly host with Squarespace. This allows us to provide a better long term solution to hosting our site that is both much easier to maintain and provides more services at a lower cost.
How will these changes affect you?
In the short term, don’t be surprised by some minor hiccups as we get used to our new platform. However, we expect any growing pains to be short lived. The following are some of the immediate changes you’ll notice:
Better membership management. We’ve received complaints in the past regarding the confusion that our current system creates. Now, membership is managed on an annual basis from when you pay, can be checked easily in your member profile, and will allow us to send Elkhorn parking permits more reliably each month.
Creating a member profile. The first time you sign in to the new website, you’ll need to create a membership profile and pay for your annual BWA membership ($20 for a single member, $25 for family membership). After you create this profile you’ll be able to access the member only content, such as gear and retailer discounts, event discounts, and much more. If you sign up before July 1st, you’ll receive a 1 month pro-rated discount (8% discount) to account for the previous fixed annual renewal occurring in July.
A better calendar. Our new event calendar makes it easy to add items to your personal calendar, as well as sign up for paid events such as roll sessions and the beginner’s clinic.
A better commerce system. Going forward we will be using our new web store to handle any commerce, including payment for roll sessions and BWA related merchandise. These payments can be completed online or in-person.
We have a blog! The new BWA blog (the one you’re reading right now) will be continually updated with news and featured articles about our members and activities. If you’re an avid reader of our long running bimonthly newsletter Bowlines, don’t worry, it’s not going anywhere.
Fresh ideas!
As we get more comfortable using our new platform, we want to add more features for our members. Many of these features are just now in their brainstorming phase, but include ideas such as a boater resources page, member river log and map, beginner steps program, and an online accessible lending library for gear.
We’d also love to hear your ideas on what you’d like to see going forward on the new website? Send an email to info@bluegrasswildwater.org to share your ideas!
See you on the river!
From your steering committee and webmaster, we look forward to seeing all the new and familiar faces going into the rest of 2021!
Author:
Michael Williams, BWA Webmaster
