Newsletter: 2024 September

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News List
Roll of Honour
Adult
Awards
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Dear fellow Scouter,

I hope you've had a great summer and are feeling refreshed for the new term ahead.

This year, the Scouts Online website platform has had some exciting developments and I am delighted to share some of the latest enhancements with you.

Many of these new features were suggested by fellow Scouts Online users such as yourself, and I would like to take this opportunity to extend my gratitude to Adam, Callum, Claire, Ian, James, Joe, Jon, Martin, Neil, Nick, Phil, Richard and others for their ideas and assistance.

If you know of any Group, District, County, Region or Area that could benefit from a new website, please do not hesitate to recommend Scouts Online to them. Don't forget that we are still offering a free trial.

Yours in Scouting,

Chris

Website Package Price Changes

As Scouts Online prices have remained unchanged for many years, and considering the significant inflation rate increases during that time, particularly in recent years, we will be updating our website package pricing.

This decision was made after careful consideration, with the new prices being set based on feedback from a cross section of website administrators. Rather than making a single price adjustment, most users consulted recommended an increase in January 2025, followed by a smaller increase in 2026.

The updated prices, shown below, will apply to invoices issued from 1st January 2025.


Price Changes

Package Level
Old Price
New Price
Group Package 1
£3.00/Month
£4.00/Month
Group Package 2
£10.00/Month
£11.50/Month
Group Package 3
£15.00/Month
£17.50/Month
 
District / County Package 1
£13.00/Month
£15.00/Month
District / County Package 2
£20.00/Month
£23.00/Month

I hope you find the new prices are a fair reflection of the high-quality service, platform, and the many features and functionality added to your Scouts Online website over the years.

I understand that price changes can be challenging, so please don’t hesitate to contact me to address any questions or concerns. Thank you for your understanding, and to the website users who kindly helped in this process. I really appreciate your continued support and loyalty.

Support Documentation

The Support documentation for the Scouts Online website platform has been completely re-written.

You can access the support pages at www.scoutsonline.co.uk/Support or by selecting any of the links from the menu bar at the top of this page. Documentation links are also included within this newsletter.

The support menu and documentation are tailored to your website package level, ensuring you only see relevant information. Before viewing the first documentation page, you will be prompted to select your website’s package level. For groups, your package level can be found under Admin/Group Details, while Districts and Counties can locate it in Admin/Global Settings.

After selecting your package level, the menu bar options will update to display only the pertinent information. The Introduction menu contains general information for personalising your website. The Admin menu offers documentation for each of the pages in your website’s Admin menu. The Modules menu provides links to documentation for the various modules that present information on your website's pages. The Hints & Tips menu includes additional useful resources.

The documentation has also been restructured to use a 'Use Case' approach. This presents basic information first, followed by more detailed instructions related to the specific task you are exploring. Clicking on a Use Case panel will expand it to reveal further details. This approach shows you the exact steps to accomplish a specific task while allowing us to quickly add more Use Cases in the future.

Adult Awards & Roll of Honour

It is important that we recognise the outstanding dedication and contributions of our volunteers to Scouting. When awards for Good Service, Gallantry, Meritorious Conduct, and Long Service are presented, many Groups, Districts and Counties proudly display a Roll of Honour board in their headquarters, buildings or offices to celebrate these achievements.

To further honour our volunteers, Scouts Online websites now include the ability to show a Roll of Honour page and display awards in Team Lists on Meet The Team and other team pages.


Add Awards to a User Record
Add Awards

You can add multiple awards for a volunteer by editing their user record in Admin/User Management. Simply select the award and enter the date awarded in the Awards fields. There is a Use Case demonstrating this process here.

Display Roll of Honour
Roll of Honour

The Roll of Honour pages, which are available on the About and Members menus, display a list of volunteers who have been received awards.

You can switch on a Roll of Honour page in Admin/Page Management.

The Roll of Honour module can also be customised. Learn more here.

Awards on Team Lists
Awards on Team Lists

Once you've added awards to your volunteer user records, the highest award medal will be displayed in Team Lists if the user record uses the standard adult profile picture. If they have a profile photo uploaded, it will continue to show that photo.

User Details
User Details

On any of the Team List modules displayed on your website, visitors can click on the user's profile image or name to view more details.

The user's details will include the badges for their awards.

Applies to Group package 3 and County/District package 2 websites
News Stories and Lists

The software for creating news stories, displaying story lists, and viewing individual stories has been rewritten, and additional features added. The changes are detailed here.


News List Styles
News Display Types

The lists of news stories displayed on your website have been replaced with a News List module.

This module lets you customise the appearance of news lists. For more details, click here.

List Specific Types of Stories
News Types

The News List module lets you specify which types of news story are displayed by ticking/un-ticking the Story Types.

For example, you could choose to show only Trustee Board news stories on your Trustee Board's page. Instructions for this can be found here.

Show News Stories from your Groups/Districts
News Types

You can now show news stories from other local Scout Groups and Districts within the news lists on your website.

District and County websites can include news stories from any of their groups that have a Scouts Online package 3 website. Counties can also show news stories from any of their Districts that have a Scouts Online package 2 website.

These news stories are added to the news lists in real-time, directly from data on their source websites. See here for more details.

More News Story Types

More news types, such as 'Hall', 'Campsite' and 'Leadership Team', are now available to help to showcase specific categories of news stories on your own pages.

You can select multiple 'Scopes' for a news story when creating it, to ensure that the story is shown in all applicable lists. For more details, click here.

If you want an additional news type to use for a specific purpose, please Contact Us.

Add Attachments to News Stories

In addition to attaching images to display on a news story, you can now also add other file types E.g. pdf or docx). When the story is displayed, viewer can click on the files to open them in a new browser tab.

Personalise the Layout of a Story

You can now change the layout of individual stories to better suit the text and images. To learn how to change the layout, click here.

The available layouts are depicted below:

"Scouts - Embedded Header Images"

News Management: Scouts - Embedded Header Images

"Scouts - Separate Header Images"

News Management: Scouts - Separate Header Images

"Classic - Embedded header Images"

News Management: Classic - Embedded header Images

"Classic - Separate Header Images"

News Management: Classic - Separate Header Images
News List added to Member Team Pages
Team News

You can now create news stories specific to individual teams (E.g. Trustee Board, Leadership Team, etc.). News List modules have been added to the 2024 members team pages to show these stories.

For Districts and Counties: Why not empower your Team Leaders by making them website Content Contributors, so they can create their own stories and events/meetings? For more information, click here.

Add News Lists to Your Own Pages
Edit Toolbox

In addition to customising news lists on existing pages on your website, you can also add News List modules to your own pages.

The Page Designer has been updated to include the 'News List' module in the 'Edit Toolbox'. When editing your own pages, open the toolbox, select the News List module and select a place on the page to place it.

You can find out more about user-definable pages and the Page Designer here.

News for a Specific Group

For District or County websites that have any groups with a Scouts Online package 3 website, you can modify your Group Details page (which appears when a visitor clicks the [More Details] link for a specific group on the 'Groups' page) to display news directly from that group's website.

To enable this feature, a Site Admin user can login, open a Group Details page and switch on the 'Group Details News Panel'. For more information about activating hidden feature panels, click here.

Image Titles on News Stories
Image Title

If an image added to a news story has a Name set in the File Manager, the name will appear as the title for that image inside within the news story. To learn how to set the name form an image, see here.

Applies to Group package 3 and County/District package 2 websites
General Website Updates

Sub-Domain Security

If your website uses a domain name similar to YourGroup.scoutsonline.co.uk, you may have noticed that HTTPS security has been added.

Applies to all Website Packages
Send Form Details to Applicants
Details in Auto-Reply Emails

When someone completes a contact form on your website, an automated 'auto-reply' message can be sent to the person who completed the form.

Additionally, each contact form module can now be customised to include the details entered on the contact form within that auto-reply email.

To change the Contact Form module on one of your web pages, see here.

Applies to Group package 2 & 3 and all County/District websites
NAN Form Changes

A copy of NAN forms is sent to the Group's Lead Volunteer. To ensure this happens, functionality has been added to pre-populate (and then hide) the GLV Email Address field using details held for the selected group. This applies to nights away events for Squirrels, Beavers, Cubs and Scouts.

On County websites, the DLV will be pre-selected, if set within the website.

Additionally, the following changes have been made:

  • The list of groups has been sorted
  • On group websites, the group name field will be pre-selected
  • The Section drop-down-list now only shows the sections that the group has
Applies to Group package 3 and County/District package 2 websites
AGM Forms

Two new contact form template types have been introduced to help you gather Trustee Nominations and Trustee Applications before an AGM.

You can use the 'Trustee Nomination Form' and 'Trustee Application Form' form types on your own pages, or anywhere where a Contact Form module is displayed. To see how to change the Form Type see here.

Applies to Group packages 2 & 3 and all County/District websites
Website Speed Up

As part of our ongoing improvements, the website software has been assessed and updated to reduce page loading times. These enhancements not only benefit website visitors but may also boost your search engine rankings.

Applies to all Website Packages
Section Time Formatting

The formatting of section meeting times in the list of sections for a group within the Admin pages has been updated to remove the seconds.

Applies to Group packages 2 & 3 and all County/District websites
Reply to Contact Form Emails
Reply Button

Contact form emails are sent to you through the Scouts Online email service, so simply clicking your email client's reply button will send the response back to the Scouts Online no reply mailbox, rather than to the person who submitted the form.

To enable you to respond directly to the person who filled in the form, a [Reply] button has been added to the top of the contact form emails. Clicking this button will open a new email with the 'To' and 'Subject' fields automatically filled in, ready for you to reply as required.

Applies to all website packages
Auto-Tick Teams for Roles

Since many of the new 2024 Scouting Roles logically match up with the new teams, a change has been made to automatically add users with certain roles to those teams, when the user is added in Admin/User Management. This ensures they are displayed in Team Lists across your website. For example:

  • On a Group website, selecting the 'Group Lead Volunteer' role will result in the 'Group', 'Leadership Team' and 'Trustee Board' teams being ticked
  • Selecting 'Beaver Team Member' will tick all the Beaver Colonies
  • On a District or County website, selecting 'District Chair' will tick the 'Directory', 'Meet The Team' and 'Trustee Board' teams
Applies to Group package 3 and County/District package 2 websites
More Images in the Inventory
More Branded Images

We have expanded the image inventory in the Scouts Online Files with more branded images from scouts.org.uk.

To use these images in your events, news articles and website pages, you may choose images from the Scouts Online Files by navigating through the inventory folders.

Add Scouts Online Files
Applies to Group packages 2 & 3 and all County/District websites
Group & Unit Website Updates

OSM Integration Updates
OSM Integration

Online Scout Manager have changed the data formats for several integration points, so we've adjusted our integration to ensure they continue to operate correctly.

Additionally, a monitoring routine has been added to check if integration authorisation fails on any group website. You will receive an email if it fails.

Applies to Group package 3 websites
District, Area, Region & County Website Updates

Event Times in What's On
Events List

Event times have been added to the Events List module on the About/What's On page.

Applies to County/District package 2 websites
New Teams Added to Members/Directory

The Members/Directory page has been updated to include the 2024 transformation teams and show the members within those teams.

Applies to County/District package 2 websites
Groups List - Remove Un-Used Sections

If a District or County does not offer a specific section (e.g. Scout Active Support), the column for that section will no longer appear on the Groups page.

Applies to all County/District websites
Group Details Packs Names
Multiple Packs

When a website visitor clicks 'More Details' for a group on the 'Groups' page, they will see detailed information of the group.

For groups with multiple colonies, packs, troops or units, the name of each 'pack' will be shown along with the meeting days and times.

Applies to all County/District websites
Help Grow the Community

The Scouts Online platform benefits from a growing website community base, and we believe that the more websites we supply, the better the platform will evolve through new ideas for everyone's benefit. As such, we would greatly appreciate your assistance by recommending Scouts Online to neighbouring Groups, your DC, other Districts and your County/Area/Region. Thank you to those who have already done so - your help is sincerely appreciated.

To further promote Scouts Online, we would appreciate it if you would add a link to www.ScoutsOnline.co.uk in your upcoming District/County/Region/Area newsletter, or recommend the platform to your fellow Scouters. Additionally, consider subscribing to the Scouts Online YouTube Channel and liking any videos you find useful. If you use Facebook, please follow the Scouts Online Facebook Page and like/share any posts that interest you.

Scouts Online specialises in constructing websites for Scout Groups, Units, Districts, Regions, Areas and Counties and also includes OSM integration for Group and Unit websites.

Thank you for your help in anticipation.