Setting Up a WoW Guild's Web Hosting Site

From DKP to Raid Schedules, Getting the Right Website Helps

Jul 8, 2009 John Wu

For both guild leaders and members, a good guild hosting website can go a long way towards maintaining a successful World of Warcraft guild.

Building a successful guild requires much more than bribing ten WoW players with WoW gold to get a charter completely signed. Setting up a guild website is vital to the longevity of any World of Warcraft guild, especially one that does any sort of raiding. In particular, a website can help the leaders do the bookkeeping for loot as well as help members communicate with each other in a more open accessible way than with in-game guild chat.

Choosing a Guild Web Hosting Company

The choice of a good guild website means less work for the guild leadership. The cost of a guild website is usually free or very low. Some such as wowstead, Guild Launch, GuildOMatic, and Guild Portal are very popular with World of Warcraft guilds. However, there are many choices when it comes to guild web hosting. Some features to look for include DKP features (if you use DKP looting), message boards, raid scheduling, choice of templates for building the site, ease of customization, and the intrusiveness of the advertisements (if the guild hosting is free).

Using the Guild Website to Retain Membership

The guild website is useless if nobody uses it.

For example, making members sign up for raids through the website instead of the in-game calendar will drive members to participate more on the website. Having DKP on the website for members to view is another way to get members to log in. The message boards are worthless if members use guild chat exclusively. But it's easy to encourage the use of message boards, because most members can't log into World of Warcraft while at work, but can log into the guild website from work.

It is a good idea to make new members use the website from the very beginning. The new recruit can read about the guild as well as apply on the website. Once the recruit has applied for the guild online, other members can chime in, and determine whether or not to do a trial raid for the recruit. Because all new recruits have used the guild website during the initial recruitment process, it increases the chance that the guild website will be used regularly by all members.

Managing Loot

It does not matter whether the guild uses DKP, Loot Council, Suicide Kings, Ni Karma, or some other looting method during WoW progression raids. The guild website should facilitate all discussions and tracking regarding loot. Most sites do some form of DKP. Some guild hosting sites have very intricate and customizable DKP tools. For those not using DKP, look for a hosting company that supports the loot method being used.

With the right guild web hosting service and some work, a World of Warcraft guild can thrive a lot longer with a good website. Once everything is set up, the website gives the leaders of the guild extra convenience in administrative tasks so that they can concentrate on WoW raid progression instead.

The copyright of the article Setting Up a WoW Guild's Web Hosting Site in Video & Online Games is owned by John Wu. Permission to republish Setting Up a WoW Guild's Web Hosting Site in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Guild Using a Good Guild Hosting Company