I only use a Facebook page for general public communication…and group emails for communication with league officials and my district staff. Kim Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef> ________________________________ From: Wadas <wadas-bounces@lists.rodeonetworks.com> on behalf of Melanie Heaton DA D6 via Wadas <wadas@lists.rodeonetworks.com> Sent: Friday, May 16, 2025 1:51:17 PM To: Washington DAs Discussion Forum <wadas@lists.rodeonetworks.com> Cc: Melanie Heaton DA D6 <Melanie.Heaton@dist6wa.org> Subject: [Wadas] District websites Hey, I am curious on if your district uses a website versus Facebook for all your communications or if you use a website who do you use for your website? District 6 website desperately needs to be revamped so trying to think of the easiest way to do that. Thank you for any inside. You guys have on us. [https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/mail-sig/AIorK4wBLZ_ndWypiq2CCsVCoZjACv8w_...]

Hi Melanie, We have a D4 and a Challenger website (separate from Sports Connect, yes, it's complicated). We created a Sports Connect account this season and use it as the website for Challenger. Our VP for Challenger also created a Facebook page but it is used for Challenger communications. We are setting up the Sports Connect site to disseminate emails and texts to Challenger families. That is a long answer for we use both but it depends on the 'what' (Challenger vs D4). On Fri, May 16, 2025 at 1:51 PM Melanie Heaton DA D6 via Wadas < wadas@lists.rodeonetworks.com> wrote:

Hey,

I am curious on if your district uses a website versus Facebook for all your communications or if you use a website who do you use for your website? District 6 website desperately needs to be revamped so trying to think of the easiest way to do that.

Thank you for any inside. You guys have on us.

_______________________________________________ Wadas mailing list Wadas@lists.rodeonetworks.com http://lists.rodeonetworks.com/mailman/listinfo/wadas

Hi Melanie We use both things (Facebook and a website, but not Sports Connect or the like --) and MORE… Our Facebook page is used for marketing and sales type things… like broadcasting messages and advertising to people that are not on our friends list. We use it like sending flyers to someone in the mail… but we target areas and demographic types. By using things like ‘Facebook Marketplace” and “Message Boosting” through Meta Business tools in Facebook we drive people to our Webpage or to our leagues. Our webpage on the other hand is used to “Market and Sell” generally to the “Little Leaguers” or people we have captured on Facebook through our contacts page or have interacted with us in some way or those wanting to get in touch with us “Outside” of Facebook… without going into a ton of boring detail here in the forum - the social media side of what D13 does is connected to the website for better control of interest in Little League in our area and communication that FB, Instagram, and X don’t control or determine how we communicate to those people once we have captured their information. We also use tools like Instagram, X, and Telegram to do the similar things regarding the capture of people and information and directing them to our website. The D13 Website itself is built on WordPress. I greatly dislike the Sport Connect tools for promoting websites. They most likely are skimming information for their own purposes and I am philosophically opposed to that. I think if you read the small print Sports Connect/Blue Sombrero can do all kinds of things with what they are collecting from your families and board members when using their platform. We chose Wordpress because it’s very simple to run/use/build pages with and there are a ton of “free plugins” that do pretty cool things. You simply connect your domain to a Wordpress instance and you are off and running. There are tons of great plugins for Word Press. One such thing is our “contact form” and tools we have that show wherever someone accesses our page/site from. (Stuff Facebook won’t tell you). Something that is pretty useful is when someone wants to talk to us, but doesn’t want to provide us with their contact info, they use a plugin that has real AI behind it and they can ask questions and interact with the AI. Most of the time people have no idea they are really talking to a machine, but in that process we can track them anyway. We have several useful plugins and one we are going to implement in the future is full “e-commerce” which we will have LL related products and services people can buy from the District… what kinds of things you might say? How about sponsor banners cheaper than most people can produce, or coaching lessons from local baseball “consultants” and coaches. We will connect them with local coaches/consultants through our website and take a piece of the transaction… of course everyone is vetted…(I know some people are thinking that). We are thinking of setting up a permanent “Equipment Swap” through our Wordpress tools that have built our website as an example of something else our Worpress site can do that Sports Connect can’t. Our goal is to make “Little League” the hub of all things baseball and we use tech to drive that effort. I don’t know how successful that will be but I think we do a good job at capturing and manipulating information necessary to foster league growth and develop Little League in our District. WE also can track how people move around our website so we can see what’s most popular/needed by the general public and this lets us focus more directly on capturing that for our leagues and feeding them information to better reach their families and businesses in their boundary (or other boundaries). There are all kinds of things like “Tournament Bracket builders” and various plugins that help create an environment where can control the capture of interest and focus attention on what we think is important. Another tool we use is our distribution list platform. It’s not part of Wordpress but connected to it. That too is tied to our website, not Facebook or Sports Connect. Most places like Google or some of the hosting sites have these really cumbersome rules in distributing information via email. The same tool that we are communicating over right now via email IS that tool. It’s called a listserve and since we run it, we don’t have to follow rules everyone else does on Facebook or the like. And Sports Connect has something similar, but they too have rules they make you follow when using it. We can set up lists for umpires, for boards, for coaches, and anyone else who we capture information on and we can do all kinds of things with a list serve that is more “controllable” than what either Sports Connect or Facebook provide. This too is tied to our website. Finally we can generate a post from our website that is automatically posted to Facebook, X, Instagram, Telegram etc. This saves time and effort and can create a “blog” on our website. And we can choose where we want to post to… Finally our phone system. It’s connected to our website where it provides It provides us a number that ALL district staff can answer… not just one person. It also has AI features that do things like record and summarize all calls so that if we are dealing with a problem we have written documentation. It is connected to our website so that the information from calls is collected and stored for review or analysis later. This is most expensive tool we have. It costs us $24.95 a month, and you “overlay” it on your cellphone. It’s essentially VOIP (A fancy acronym for “Voice-Over-IP” which is internet telephony. But everyone can use the same number and it has tons of things you can do with it… like everyone on the district staff share a number and answer calls, make calls, etc. Plus it works anywhere in the world and you don’t have to pay international long distance. It also provides SMS services from the website (if we want to do that). That means text messages from and to the website. Do these tools cost a lot or does it take a “super techie” to run the things? Maybe to set it up is a bit time consuming, but once done, Anyone with a pulse and metabolism can run your tech. You don’t have to be super-techie. Set up took us a couple of weeks “part time” figuring out what we wanted to do and then building or integrating it. The framework of the website was done in about 2 hours. http://www.wadist13ll.org . We do spend time updating it which is minimal each month. My problem is that I am not a graphics or designer person so I refer to someone else for making it look “pretty”. And beauty is in the eye of the beholder I guess. My art abilities ended in first grade with finger painting. Everything I did was brown and looked like a pile of mud was thrown at the wall. Our website looks simple on the outside but from the instant someone contacts us through any outlet we begin funneling where we want them to wind up. How much does it cost for these tools and website and stuff? How do we set it up if we want to go this route? Well… usually your domain provider (where your domain is hosted) provides Wordpress for a very affordable rate or free. Wordpress is NOT the “be-all-to-end-all” tech tool for websites. However, it’s widely used and easy to work with. I work with several website deployment systems, this one is cheap, reliable, and well supported with hundreds of thousands of plugins that are free. Plugins replace having to have web developers and are by-and-large free to use at some or all levels depending on the plugin. A plugin is a pre-packaged piece of software that attaches or embeds in your website and does a task, like drive a contact form. I think our Wordpress cost is $100 a year or thereabouts. Some places offer it for free. The plugins we use on our website are free. We pay $24.95 a month for our phone stuff. The server our list serve runs on costs us $12 a month but even that can be found for free. But we can have “unlimited” lists. The software for the listserver platform is “free” (the WADAS list is running on this same server) and we have dozens of custom lists on this listserve. We donate a spot to Little League for the WADAS list as part of the lists we run. Everything in our tech is usually free because I am cheap. But our tech does way more than Sports Connect OR Facebook. We didn’t re-invent the wheel so that we could have our own system, we implemented tools and methods the other platforms didn’t offer and we could use to promote our District and Leagues better. I estimate we probably spend less than $350 a year on tech. It did take a bit to get it up and running, but anyone can operate it/change it/update it/interact with it once it gets up and running and we capture way more info and have more real contacts with people. I was thinking if a District wanted to “update” it’s tool set and build a better website, we could help out with that (for free)… a league however is a different story. We would charge a league for that. Not sure how much, but not much – just something to give our folks a little “love” for their efforts. But I’m guessing too they might just do it for free for a league… if they really needed it. I’d have to ask who on our District Staff or our volunteers would work on a league for free. So the shorter answer is 1. No we don’t rely on Facebook for our communications – it’s another tool in the tool box 2. No we don’t use Sports Connect/Blue Sombrero. They are limited platforms and not that great (I’m guessing they could be a WordPress system but not fully implemented – I don’t know what’s actually driving their website platform) I just know I don’t like it and it’s a limited feature set. It’s OK for someone who isn’t into tech stuff, or doesn’t understand how much more they can engage a casual “browsing parent”. 3. We use multiple tech platforms to try and drive the parents or info seekers to the places we want them to be. 4. We use non-techie people to support and interact our platforms once they were set up. Now aren’t you sorry you asked! Sincerely, JP District Administrator (DA) Washington Little League – District 13 E: dadist13@wadist13ll.org<mailto:dadist13@wadist13ll.org> T:509-995-4200 http://www.wadist13ll.org Follow us on Facebook@wadist13ll [cid:image005.png@01DBC6F5.1C8ECF50][cid:image006.jpg@01DBC6F5.1C8ECF50] From: Wadas <wadas-bounces@lists.rodeonetworks.com> On Behalf Of Melanie Heaton DA D6 via Wadas Sent: Friday, May 16, 2025 1:51 PM To: Washington DAs Discussion Forum <wadas@lists.rodeonetworks.com> Cc: Melanie Heaton DA D6 <Melanie.Heaton@dist6wa.org> Subject: [Wadas] District websites Hey, I am curious on if your district uses a website versus Facebook for all your communications or if you use a website who do you use for your website? District 6 website desperately needs to be revamped so trying to think of the easiest way to do that. Thank you for any inside. You guys have on us. [https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/mail-sig/AIorK4wBLZ_ndWypiq2CCsVCoZjACv8w_...]