Web presence for a paintball field.

[punkncat]

I have worked closely with and play at a local paintball field and have for years. Among helping out with tournament practices and things such as reffing, running the field while the owner is away and such, I have also 'admin' a page that is the Facebook presence of the field.
We hold regular events we call "Eat and greet" where we invite players to come out for a day of semi competitive mostly for fun games of paintball and have everyone chip in on parts of the bit to have barbecues and such.

For many years the platform that Facebook is was well suited to having the place page there. There were lots of users of Facebook already that were patrons of the field and by and large FB themselves had no issue with paintball and specifically the markers. Another aspect of paintball has to do with a bit of "trash talk" and within the last year ended up crossing over some rule/regulation/opinion of the machine that FB is where the trash talk was hate speech, and that selling paintball markers specifically was in violation of their rules concerning "firearms".
The page (and myself) were warned a few times about it and the end result being that the page simply cannot live there and maintain any semblance of what it truly represents. A fun sport, but a combat sport.

I am not really updated on the various social media sites out there, but am aware enough to know that we can't live on FB with the page, and so far as I am aware something like Instagram isn't suited to it either, aside from the negative aspect of being owned by the same company.

Would love input about a place where there is already a good user base, something people are familiar with that allows "place" pages with a combination of text/photo/video content. IE, if there is "the next Facebook", what is it?

As an aside, the field does already have a ".com" but no one goes there and is terribly outdated to boot.

 

[Ralston18]

This:

"As an aside, the field does already have a ".com" but no one goes there and is terribly outdated to boot. "

Who controls or is otherwise responsible for the ".com" paintball website?

Players, members, lurkers, etc.. all need to understand that that is the applicable website and must enroll, sign-up and otherwise participate with respect to the Paintball club rules, etc..

If FB is filtering or otherwise censoring paintball players websites then go elsewhere. Host an independent website.

Where that might be I (full disclosure) do not not know.

I play chess, I help with kids and archery. I fish for bass. I like helping with (and sometimes fixing) IT problems.

If FB , or other like sites, decide that they are going do dictate my involvement with such online activities then I will go (and have gone) elsewhere.

Actually, I am already no longer using any social media (e.g. FB) all that much anymore. Family and friends all now being informed to email me directly with respect to sending family photographs, updates, etc..

Fix the .com website.

Objectively, Facebook is not needed. Subjectively - that has become a personal matter. Possibly, for many people at many similar websites -addictive.

🙁

 

[punkncat]

I fully understand the suggestion to utilize the .com but something about "these kids nowadays" is that you tell them a .com and they instantly forget it. Tell them the twitters (etc.) and it's instantly memorized.

The page is along the lines of some of those old 'free' build your own websites. I think the owner bought the/a domain long ago and his mother used Dreamweaver to create a page that still looks amazingly late 90's. It's terrible.
I don't code, or know how (or have interest) in maintaining a website and to pay someone to do it would just add more overhead that field owner is going to balk at.

I understand the not knowing aspect as far as where to host the page place. It's why I asked. My latest "return" to FB was only to help along the lines of maintaining and keeping fresh pics and events to the page. We noted that it made a significant difference in the open play turnout, but had no change in private party numbers. With them slowly tightening their grip on things like gear sales, or messing around telling someone you are going to shoot them in the face (with a paintball) while funning around earning bans it just got too much for my desire to follow up.

Here, if you would like to giggle a bit:

home/Dansland Paintball,,directions, i want to play, open play, private games, photos