Hello Everyone!
Just a random Youth Leader here in Scouting America, looking to see other troops websites to see what they did, to see if there is anything that I should propose for website changes for our own website.
Thank you!
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You should check out this article from On Scouting (an official BSA site) on creating good unit websites: Check out some of the best pack, troop and crew websites of 2019
Slightly more recently, our Council’s 2023 University of Scouting had a class on building unit websites. You can see the presentation here: Building a Unit Website/Webstore - Google Drive
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We’re currently on Google Sites, but I’m working on an entirely new design system for a modern site. My goal is totally free, or as close as possible, and static so it can be hosted easily.
Ours is at Troop 68. Disclosure up front so it’s on the table: I’m the founder of the platform it runs on, so weigh the example accordingly. Everything below applies regardless of what you build on.
Most troop website problems are structural rather than visual, so I’d start here:
Decide the public/private split before anything else. Public side: who you are, where and when you meet, how to join, what it costs, a contact method, and a high-level calendar. Behind a login: rosters, addresses, permission slips, financials, advancement, anything with a youth’s name attached. Get this line wrong and no amount of design fixes it.
Treat “how do I join” as your most important page. Most troop sites bury it. A parent landing on your site wants four things in under thirty seconds: do you meet near me, when, what does it cost, who do I contact. Put that above the fold and make the contact path work on a phone.
Audit what youth information is already public. No last names, no patrol rosters, no photos without permission on file, no “congratulations to [full name] on Life.” Worth doing before you change anything else, because it’s the one category of problem that carries real consequences.
Mobile first, genuinely. Nearly all parent traffic is phone traffic. If the site was built on a desktop and only ever checked on a desktop, that’s the biggest available quick win.
Do not hand-maintain the calendar. Every troop site I’ve seen with a manually updated calendar has a stale calendar within a season. Embed or subscribe from whatever your actual source of truth is, even if that’s just a shared Google Calendar.
Design for the handoff. The most common way a troop site dies is the webmaster’s Scout ages out and nobody knows how to log in. Document where the domain is registered, who pays the renewal, where DNS lives, and how to publish a page. Put that document somewhere the committee can find it without you.
Happy to answer questions on any of it.
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We use a google.site that is auto renewed to the unit, not a specific leader for transitional reasons. I think it cost the unit maybe $50 a year? If you are familiar with websites it pretty easy to maintain. The hardest part was creating the domain name and the DCN connection. I had to do a lot of research before I could get it to work.
@NathanBacheller made some great points above all new unit sites should follow.
Think first about a short and easy domain name if you need one. Its important that it says who you are and easy to shoot off during a conversation.
Branding your digital footprint for your unit should be a big part of the thought process too. BeAScout.org, google maps, and apple maps should show your location easily and the more people who put in directions pushes up your visibility. We created a “business” footprint to increase visibility and create insights into search algorithms.
Our site is now the foundation of our year round recruiting efforts as it is linked in all our socials, recruiting handouts, and referenced year round for parent self serve info.
