Building an Olympic Website

The Danish branch of IOAPA has designed an extensive and well-visited website to be used by its own members and as information source on Olympism. This article describes some of the thoughts behind ioapa.dk

IOAPA.DK
Founded in November 2003. Has 21 members – all are former Danish participants on IOA’s sessions.Previously involved in initiatives for the Danish Olympic Academy (DOA) and the Danish Handball Federation.Financially supported by DOA.

The website is divided into an internal and external part. The internal part is accessible to associate members only by the use of a password. Each member has an individual password. When you are logged on to the site, you have access to a number of features. The external part is open to everybody and contains lots of Olympic news and information.

Internally

The internal part of IOAPA.DK’s website contains a number of features accessible to associate members. The idea behind the internal part of the website is to create an e-based platform where members can communicate with each other, exchange information and communicate what kind of information the external part of the website should contain.

Message board: This is the backbone of the association as regards to the fact that most of the communication between members takes part here. It works just like a real message board where members can post and reply to messages. Whenever a new message is posted, it is automatically forwarded to all members. The advantage of this system rather than having email communication is that the whole historicity is saved on the website. This means that you can have a whole chain
of information saved here. Furthermore, new members are able to access all information posted earlier.

File sharing: Members are able to upload and download files, first of all documents from Olympic lectures etc, minutes of meetings in IOAPA.DK and with collaborators as well as pictures, films, etc. about Olympism.

Chat: A chat room where associate members are able to meet virtually and write together. This gives members living far away from each other the opportunity to hold meetings without having to travel far away in order to be physically present in the same room.

Profile: every associate member has access to his or her personal profile. Here lies a number of practical information about each member: address, telephone number, email, and the possibility of having a short description of his or her educational background, profession, interests, etc. Members are also able to upload a passport photograph.

Updating the website: When a member has logged in, he or she has access to writing text aimed at the external part of the website. This is just as simple as writing in a word processing program, and there is also the opportunity to layout the text within the framework of the website layout. This ensures an inviting appearance as well as an overall uniformity.

The online editor. Looks and functions are just like a word processing program

Externally

The external part of the website contains lots of information on Olympism. All associate members have access to writing text once they are logged in. Afterwards the text can be read on the external part of the website.

News: All news related to the association or of major interest in an Olympic context. Among the news is information on deadline and criteria for the NOA’s selection of young participants to IOA sessions, the selection of London as host city for the Olympics in 2012 and information on Olympic lectures.

Olympic News: A lot of small bulletins about Olympism – results from Olympic Youth Games, Winter Olympics, Summer Olympics, and Paralympic Games, news from IOC, NOC, The Olympic Museum and much more.

Articles: Longer articles with background information about various Olympic aspects. Some of the headlines are, “Can the Olympics Stop War?; “Olympism and its ethics”; Olympism – An Ideology?; and “The Lure of the Olympics”.

Olympic Encyclopedia: An electronic work of reference about Olympism featuring everything from Athens to Walsh. In addition, links to other articles when keywords appear in the reference.

Olympic Sessions: A collection of Danish reports from IOA sessions (Youth and Post Graduate).

Danish IOA Participants: A list of all Danish participants on IOA’s sessions from 1964 to 2005. Furthermore featuring IOAPA.DK member information (educational background, address, email address, etc.) and information on how to join the association.

Links: A collection of Olympic links – to Olympic host cities, IOA, IOAPA, as well as commercial and non-commercial websites on Olympism.

News feed: The website has an RSS news feed which ensures easy access to all the latest updates on the website.

A dynamic website
IOAPA.DK’s website works because all associate members are able to update the website. The major problem experienced with ordinary static websites is that all information needs to go through the webmaster. Thereby this person has a heavy work load to carry if there is a big information flow on the website, leading to a lot of unproductive work. Furthermore, it is demotivating to the other news contributors to find out that their news is not instantly accessible on the website because they have to wait for a (very?) long time for the webmaster to have time to upload it. Thereby a lot of news becomes outdated before it even gets published on the net.

Whenever logged on to ioapa.dk, every member can write text for the external part of the website. This text is instantly accessible for visitors to the website, and all bottlenecks are therefore eliminated from the process from idea to accessible text. Together with lots of interaction and many associate members who have embraced the idea, a successful website is established.

IOAPA.DK got 87821 pageviews as of the evening 17.10.2005.
The website has been googled more than 3000 times
It costs the danish association less than 30 euro pr. year

Translation: Claus Skovbjerg

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