Glasgow Archers 1948 Website

The current Glasgow Archers website is nine years old this week but its been quite a journey to get here.

Our original club website back was created in the early 2000's with a "here we are" style website that fell into disrepair, got forgotten about, end up hosting naughty things when the domain name wasn't renewed .. and required then GA committee member Andrew to tussle with the domain name people to get it back around 2010.

The next iteration of our website was a little more unique. Created and paid for around 2011 by a club member (Gary) who was more interested in playing with the software package the website sat on. He let another member of the club write articles and competition reports and moderate the chat site. The competition reports were fairly sensible but the articles were slowly starting to show a certain oddness. Like "how odd?" you're asking. How about a request to World Archery to replace the "coaches box" at the Olympics (where the coach must stand during the match) .. with the coaches hammock and the coaches piña colada OR the article about attending an archery retreat in France led by a mystical archery Gecko. Yeah, things were already getting a little surreal. Pretty sure (if you are a GA member) you can guess who was writing these articles. This website ran fine until around 2015 when the software started to fail. Gary had long since quit archery and the software support license had expired. We didn't own the site so were unable to get things renewed and the website was slowly succumbing to system errors.

In 2016 a new website was started to replace the failing old one. Created by the then club treasurer .. it was a classic "here we are" website with a total of 20 pages giving location of the club, shooting hours, a page on club badges, a contact page and some info on rounds/competitions. The website wasn't rolled out to the public until 2018 gaining some 3500 views and 1000 or so visitors in that first year. Much of the website was copy and paste but it was a web presence aiding club visibility. However, as the website was not dynamic, 2019 didn't bring in many more visitors. That second year had 4000 page views and 1100 visitors with little real growth as there was nothing to bring people back for repeat visits. The website author left the club in early 2019 and the website lay moribund til the end of that year.

One of our current members, who had just returned to the club after an extended huff (for GA archers .. yes, its him .. again!), was unemployed at the end of 2019 and he was bored. If you know this archer, him being bored is the equivalent of a hand grenade with the pin pulled. With permission, he took control of the website December 2019 and started to write. January 1st 2020, having gutted the existing pages, he rolled out 30 new pages with a style that was, to put it mildly .. well .. unique. It combined archery facts, advice, reviews, technique with humour that was a little eccentric to say the least. The renewed website was barely up and running when COVID hit.

With people house bound, the new editor took it on himself to keep GA archers interested in their sport during lockdown. He created an archery crossword so hard only one Scottish archer ever completed it. One archer's wife bitterly complained to the website it was too hard. The editor had the club chair moderate a caption competition for archery related pictures with Amazon voucher prizes and wrote articles about bizarre archery subjects intended to make people laugh. The current GA website developed its soul during those dark days. It would highlight archery stuff but in a unique way. Sometimes described as facetious but always looking to be pertinent, funny and helpful. Several club members said it saved their sanity during the worst of lockdown. In that first year under new management, views doubled to over 8000 with visitors quadrupling to over 4000. The google algorithm started to take notice ...

... and so the site grew. By 2024 the website hit 33.7K pages views with over 16K visitors. Total figures to date .. 53,000 visitors viewing 110,000 pages. Numbers more in line with a national archery body's website than a club one. Over the last five years, the club website has grown to more than 200 pages/articles and has made itself into something very different from the norm. We've looked and there's nothing like it anywhere. Banter, reviews, complex archery facts, technique and hotfixes. It collated and presented the confused facts when Team USA was unfairly disqualified from the World Cup, has at least one page listed as a reference on Wikipedia, its been cited as a source by several US newspapers in their articles, been partially cloned by a Chinese website and has been blessed by having coach and author Steve Ruis write inciteful articles for us. It definitely delivers an archery experience that's not dry or boring.

To sum up .. Glasgow Archers 1948 website is a unique blend of archery facts, insight, advice and flagrant tomfoolery that the founding fathers of GNAS (1861) would probably not have approved of. We're not sure their AGB descendants approve today.* ;o) But we hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoy writing for it.

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* Rules of Shooting: Rule 6 .. Club Websites: Archery club websites must treat the sport of archery with respect and not diminish the dignity of archery. They should not indulge in mockery, derision, contempt or vilification of any archer, judge or style of archery .. especially compound even if it does deserve it.  (draft legislation to be added to Rules of Shooting - autumn 2025)

Piña colada image by Alexa from Pixabay