A Club With No Bottleneck
Ilkley Harriers is Ilkley’s inclusive running club for all ages and abilities. Tuesday club nights, hill sessions on Thursdays, a busy junior section for ages 8 to 16, and four races of its own every year, including the Ilkley Moor Fell Race and the Pete Shields 10k.
For more than twenty years the club’s website was a labour of love. A former Harrier built it, their son Sam took it on, and Sam’s mum looked after a separate junior site. It was a real family affair, and it held the club’s history going back to 1999.
It also meant every change queued behind one busy person. Race reports had no web address of their own, so nobody could share them. Uploading a photo meant waiting for every previous image to load first. Updating the race league meant emailing the changes to the one editor who could make them.
So I moved the club onto a WordPress website that any Harrier can update, brought juniors and seniors together, and carried the history across with it.
The Challenge
One Person, Every Change
A bespoke system only one volunteer could maintain. Content editors waited on him for everything, and he had a life of his own to get on with.
Race Reports Nobody Could Share
News and race reports didn't have their own links. Celebrating a Harrier's result on social media or in the club groups meant sending people to the homepage and hoping.
Two Sites, One Club
Juniors and seniors lived on separate websites built in different ways, so parents and new members had to work out which one they needed.
Decades of History
Earlier attempts to move had stalled on one question: how to keep the race reports, records and results the club had built up since 1999.
What I Built
A club website where the volunteers who know the content are the ones who update it.
News That Travels
- Every report gets its own page: more than 1,700 news posts and race reports, back to 2021, each with a link that can be shared anywhere
- Major announcements: up to three sticky posts sit at the top of the homepage for the big news, and the section disappears when there aren’t any
- Photographer credits built in: a caption added in the media library appears under the photo wherever it’s used, so photographers get their credit
- One inbox for news: members send results and photos to one club address, and the news team turns them into posts
The Club’s Own Races
- A page for each race: Ilkley Moor Fell Race, Ilkley Trail Race, Pete Shields 10k and Ilkley Incline, each with race details, sponsors and a results archive
- Ordered by date: the homepage lists races by their start date, so the next one is always first
- Race League: rules, the season’s races with their type, date and results, and the league’s history, with a new season set by changing one field
Records and Documents Without a Developer
- Club Records: committee members add age categories, distances and new records themselves
- Committee, AGM and policy documents: upload a file, choose who it’s for and the year, and it appears on the right page automatically
- Junior notices: the same system puts notices on the juniors’ homepage
Juniors and Seniors Under One Roof
- One site, two audiences: Junior Ilkley Harriers has its own section for training times, races, notices and joining, linked from the homepage
- Shared news: junior and senior reports appear together on the homepage, so the whole club sees what everyone is up to
A Clean Handover
- The old site, kept: everything from the previous site lives on at an archive address, with a link from the club menu
- Domain and email moved: the club’s domain and email addresses moved across, with forwarding set up for each role
- Training and a runbook: sessions with the senior and junior editors, plus a written guide for every common task, from adding a race result to setting up a new committee member
The Results
The Volunteers Run It
News editors, the records keeper, the junior team and the committee all update their own sections, without waiting for anyone.
Results Worth Sharing
Every race report has its own link, ready for the club's social media and members' groups the moment it's published.
One Club, One Website
Parents, new runners and long-standing members all start in the same place and find their way to the right section.
History Kept, Burden Gone
Five years of reports on the new site, the rest safe in the archive, and the hosting, security and email handled for the club.
What the Client Says
“It's so nice to see news articles with actual urls of their own!”
Looking Ahead
The site went live in July 2026, and the club has been running it ever since. The committee keeps a shared list of improvements, and I work through it with them: a relays page, an annual awards page each January, and more for the junior cross-country leagues.
Key Takeaways
For any club, charity or community group run by volunteers:
- Remove the single point of failure: if one person holds the keys to the website, everyone waits on them
- Give every story its own link: members can share a race report the day it goes up
- Build for the people who’ll update it: forms with clear fields beat page builders for volunteers who edit once a month
- Keep the history, but don’t let it hold you back: bring across what members use and archive the rest
Running a Club or Community Group?
If your volunteers are stuck waiting on one person to update the website, let’s talk.
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- Web Designer in Ilkley: Websites for Ilkley businesses and organisations
- Visit Ilkley Harriers: See the site live
