Non-league and women’s football is a fantastic area of the game to be involved in, and if you’re like us you might well have a burning desire to report on and cover the game. But getting something setup can be an absolute minefield.
So here at Football in Berkshire, we thought we’d put our nearly nine years of experience to good use and see if we can dispense some advice. There are plenty of free options to get started if you wanted to dip your toe in, but there’s also some paid for links if you are ready to make the next step – please note Football in Berkshire may receive a percentage of anything you purchase through links on this page, anything we make helps towards the upkeep of this website and the continuation of the Berkshire Football Awards.
Choosing a name – it’s maybe not the most important thing – but it’s fun AND you want to get it right
We started as Football in Bracknell because we thought it’d help with people finding us in search and it did what it said on the tin.
That was fine until we expanded our remit to the county. And while we’d never change how we started – it really helped us focus (see below) – changing the name and URL wasn’t without its pitfalls, so getting it right and maybe not tying yourself to one geography might be wise.
When you’ve chosen a name, you can sort out your URL which is one thing we do recommend you pay-up for. Most of the rest of setting up a website can be done for free while you figure things out. We get all our URLs from names.co.uk.
The most important thing? Choosing what football to cover
We had a stab at a bunch of different football blog type sites before settling on FiB including but not limited to – irreverant football blog (we’re not that funny, or indeed irreverant), covering the entire English non-league football pyramid and a Tumblr site of football themed mugs that last three posts.
The best advice then? Find your niche. The bit of the game you know and are passionate about. That could be women’s football in Brighton, non-league food reviews or grassroots news from your immediate area. Building up a back catalogue of content is the best way to make a name for yourself and build an audience.
Then you can think about the name.
Create a noticeboard and allow external post submissions
Want to allow people to submit content to your website without giving them full access? Or perhaps create a noticeboard function?
We’ve been using something called Frontend Post Submission Manager which is free in the basic level and allows a nice easy interface. If you want to go deeper and build something a bit fancier, then the Pro version is $25 for a ‘lifetime license’. We’re trying a few things out, and we’ll report back but you can see what we’re trialling here.
