Not much one for giving out that much information online, but I can answer the general info here:

Our current troop site was built by a boy in 7th grade who acts as webmaster (he did this before there was any such leadership rank). He was not elected, he volunteered for the job. I'm not sure how you would elect a troop webmaster.

We mostly use the council site to get access to the training pages from national. Its won an award for one of the best sites in the country, but its still a pain in the neck to use.

We do use meritbadge.com

Troopmaster is swell.

I'm a little confused as to why you are gathering the information. Are you looking to build a pack/troop site, offer a product to packs/troops, or just curious? Knowing the aim of the information may make me a little more comfortable with sharing it.

That being said, I am our pack's webmaster because I'm the one who knows how to build websites. I used Wordpress on my own hosting account to do so, because Wordpress is awesome and whoever inherits the website duties from me can quickly be shown how to update it--even if they have never seen a computer in their life.

I use our council site all the time, primarily for the calender and to keep abreast of the latest happenings around here and at national.

ScoutLass,

This whole thing was actually born out of trying to decide how to approach my own troops needs for a website. I am one of the adult leaders for the troop, and the one with the highest technology IQ, so I've been the one spearheading a lot of the research.

After looking around at what people were doing it felt like there had to be better options, but it also felt a little like there were some things missing. Part of the reason for conducting the survey is to see if the current options are adequate, and whether something better/different can be offered. I haven't decided if that means that I go and try to create something for people to use, or that I try and work with existing offerings to improve them. By gathering this information I'm looking for it to help me make that decision. The other part of the reason was to try and gather up some information to share with others about what options people are using, and whether those options are meeting their needs.

One thing that I would suggest is that (mainly if you have boys setting up and maintaining the troop site) is that you put a "policy" in place to keep the admin. postion functional. What I mean is that when one scout ages out of the program just don't count on him to devote the time to be a consistent admin, but that it passes to someone else, Pronto!. We have had a good site with qualified and eager scouts doing the work over the last 5 years, but we have had a couple of gaps in service that have gone for several months due to weak transition. A site that falls even a little behind in updating info., fixing functions, etc., can become useless very quickly.

Thanks for the info Troopgeek! I went ahead and did the survey.

If you need any other information feel free to ask me.

Websites can be a pain especially if they are built by a parent who then moves on! Been there done that.

I created sites for my Cub, Boy and Girl Scout then melded them all into one.

www.smdscouts.com

I started out charging, but found I gave away more free sites as I couldn't turn anyone down because of size!

So, free for all, not a free trial!

Please check it out and let me know what you think!