WordpressbyBMABA is a cutting edge self-hosting system set up by BMABA, which allows our clubs free access to award-winning CMS platform, Wordpress.
What Is Wordpress?
WordPress is a popular open-source content management system (CMS) that enables users to create and manage websites and blogs with ease. It offers a user-friendly interface, a wide range of customizable themes and plugins, and robust features for content creation, publishing, and management. WordPress is highly versatile, making it suitable for various website types, from personal blogs to e-commerce stores and corporate websites, and it powers a significant portion of the internet due to its flexibility and extensive community support.
Why is Wordpress a good option for my club website?
In our opinion, WordPress can be an excellent option for your martial arts club website for several reasons:
Ease of Use: WordPress provides a user-friendly interface, making it accessible for club members and staff with varying levels of technical expertise to update and manage the website's content.
Customisation: WordPress offers a wide range of themes and plugins specifically designed for martial arts and fitness websites as well as fit for a number of other 'high level' websites. You can customise the look and functionality of your site to match your club's branding and requirements.
Content Management: WordPress excels in content management, allowing you to easily add, edit, and organise post, content, pages and so much more.
Blog Integration: If you want to share articles, training tips, and updates with your members and the martial arts community, WordPress's blogging capabilities are a valuable asset.
SEO-Friendly: WordPress is known for its search engine optimisation (SEO) capabilities. With the right plugins and optimisation practices, you can improve your website's visibility in search engine results, helping potential students find your club more easily. You might want to see our SEObyBMABA for more information on this!
Community and Support: WordPress has a vast user community and extensive documentation. You can find support, tutorials, and troubleshooting help easily, which can be beneficial when maintaining and updating your website. Whilst not strictly part of the SLA for support, we have Joe - an incredibly skilled Wordpress 'Guru' on the books too, who can fix most issues!
Scalability: As your martial arts club grows, you can scale your WordPress website to accommodate new classes, locations, or services without the need for a complete redesign. You can use our ClubManagerbyBMABA to manage all aspects of classes, payments and users, or you can use your own preferred system and processes instead.
Cost-Efficiency: WordPress is open-source software, meaning it's free to use. While you may incur costs for premium themes or plugins, it's generally an affordable option for small businesses and clubs. We foot the bill for premium plugins, infrastructure, hosting, and so much more.
Mobile Responsiveness: Many WordPress themes are mobile-responsive, ensuring that your website looks and functions well on smartphones and tablets, crucial in today's mobile-driven world.
Integration: WordPress can easily integrate with other tools and services you may use for membership management, event registration, or payment processing, streamlining administrative tasks.
In summary, WordPress offers a user-friendly and cost-effective solution for creating and managing your martial arts club website. Its flexibility, customisation options, and strong community support make it a reliable choice to promote your club, engage with members, and attract new students.
Do I need to be good at coding etc to use Wordpress?
No, you don't need to be proficient in coding to use WordPress. WordPress is designed to be user-friendly and accessible for individuals with varying levels of technical expertise. You can create and manage a basic website in WordPress without any coding knowledge by using its intuitive visual editor and pre-designed themes. However, if you want to customise your website extensively or develop custom features, some coding skills might be beneficial, but they are not mandatory for basic website setup and management. BMABA provides lots of guidance on this, including a new course on building a Wordpress website.
Is Wordpress the same as a domain name?
No, WordPress is not the same as a domain name. They serve different purposes in the context of a website:
WordPress: WordPress is a content management system (CMS) used to create, manage, and publish website content. It provides a platform for designing and organising the layout, text, images, and other elements of a website. WordPress is software that you install on a web server to build and maintain your website.
Domain Name: A domain name is the web address that people use to access your website on the internet. It's the human-readable part of a website's URL (Uniform Resource Locator). For example, in the URL "www.example.com," "example.com" is the domain name. You need to register a domain name through a domain registrar to establish a unique online address for your website.
BMABA Provide access to premium domain names, if you need one. If you're a Gold member, it's included in your membership. Everyone using WordpressbyBMABA has access to a free subdomain under the .bmaba.club structure - so for example, readingkarate.bmaba.club or wandsworthtkd.bmaba.club - this helps you clearly show you're linked to BMABA, and should help hugely with brand presence and SEO.
You can start building a site on our free subdomains, and switch it to a premium domain name at any time if you're a Gold member.
If you're not a Gold member, currently there is no option to use a premium full domain name.
How Secure Is My Site?
Our entire network is secured by a SHA-256 With RSA Encryption which means the connection between your browser and our service is secure. We then force SSL on all Wordpress websites, meaning your interaction with us as an administrator, and any visitors to your site, are all in that private connection too.
We enforce high security protocols on our server also, which ensures a huge range of specialist security provisions, from DDoS prevention to IP masking - rest assured we're using the best-in-class provisions for security to keep the WordpressbyBMABA system as safe as possible.
It's never possible to guarantee a 100% safe hosting environment, as it's often user error which leads to exploitation but we take every precaution, run frequent scans and stress-tests, and will react quickly if we ever detect concerns.
What Hosting Is My Site Running On?
You'll enjoy the very best hosting money can buy. You'll be hosted on upto 24vCPU SSL server, managed by Amazon AWS and WPMU hosting infrastructure which means it's rapid, secure and comes with a 99.99% uptime as standard. We have data-centres based in Germany and UK to help with CDN deliverability too.
What Limits Are In Place On My Site?
Hosting for us is very expensive, so we tier access to certain provisions based on your membership. You'll never have a slower website or one with lesser security - that all comes as standard. What we do is limit bandwidth (the amount of data you can transmit per month, which usually translates to the amount of traffic - website visitors and interaction - you can handle), diskspace (how much content you can host) and certain other features - such as users, posts, pages and products.
You'll see a breakdown of what's included when signing up at bmaba.club and you'll see usage from your Admin Dashboard too.
I Already Have A Wordpress Site - Can I Import It?
Not as standard. We have a VIP hosting platform for fully managed migrations, if needed, but this does carry a 'per site, per month cost'. This can take care of a like for like switch without downtime. Unfortunately there's no guaranteed way to move an existing site into WordpressbyBMABA, although it is usually possible to export posts and pages from your current site and re-import the into your new site.
Do I have to have my own domain name to use WordpressbyBMABA?
No, you don't. We'll by default provide a free subdomain, under the .bmaba.club setting. For example, yoursite.bmaba.club. You can register any available subdomain when setting up your site. The full subdomain is yours to use as you wish, and provides a professional, SEO enhanced, high reputation domain name for use.
If you're a Gold member, you can redeem a free domain or hook up your own domain name. Please see https://mybmaba.org.uk/redeem to activate your membership-inclusive domain.
If you have a domain hosted elsewhere, look on your dashboard for 'use my domain name' and follow the steps there to automatically set it up. We can help, if you get stuck.
How do I setup my account with WordpressbyBMABA?
Head over to https://bmaba.club/register and setup access.
Remember to visit mybmaba.org.uk/redeem first, to access your codes needed to sign up free of charge!
Whilst this video is designed to help clubs setup ClubManager by BMABA, it does also cover the activation process so you may find the first section helpful;
I've signed up, but my site won't activate?
After activating from the above URL, you'll need to confirm your email address. This can from time to time go to junk, so please do check there. The entire process is automated, meaning it works without our office getting involved but if for some reason you can't access the activation email, do let us know and we can have it resent for you.
Upgrading/Downgrading
Your hosting package will downgrade if you change membership downward, for example, from Silver to Bronze. Depending on how much use you have, this could have an impact on content and provisions on your website. Unfortunately we can't advise you in advance of this happening, so please do double-check usage before making the decision to downgrade.
If you've upgraded your membership, please contact our office to ask us to upgrade your WordpressbyBMABA membership - we'll be happy to activate that for you asap.
What happens if I don't renew my BMABA membership?
If you don't renew membership, per our terms of membership your site will be suspended from as little as 1 day post-expiry. We reserve the right to terminate the site immediately, however this is usually not done for up to 28 days. You shouldn't bank on this however, as it can be much faster. When the site is deleted, all data is lost. We can't recover purchases, student information, club manager information or anything else. It will be deleted without any specific notifications or confirmations - the termination of membership, or failure to renew, per our terms of membership, constitutes notification of scheduled deletion. You should speak with us asap if you are concerned about this.
This is no option to use this service or to port the site outside of WordpressbyBMABA if you decide not to renew.
ClubManagerByBMABA
ClubManagerbyBMABA is automatically installed by default. You'll need to setup a free licence, and setup the plugin per the instructions here if you wish to use the platform. Please see https://clubmanager.bmaba.org.uk for more information on the software, and what it's capable of.
Elementor Pro
BMABA are happy to provide all clubs with free Elementor Pro, worth more than $199 per year. This should be automatically activated for you if you import a demo template, but won't be if you just activate the plugins on a fresh install. In either case, if you can't see under Elementor > Licence a PRO and Active licence assigned against [email protected] you should let us know via chat or email, and we'll be happy to jump in and activate this for you.
Installing Plugins & Themes
By default, we pre-install a huge range of premium themes and plugins for you to use freely as required. If you wish to install your own plugins and themes, please contact our office and in most cases we'll be happy to arrange for these to be specifically installed for your website. We monitor what's installed and in use for security, to ensure only secure, premium plugins and themes are in use to make sure our hosting stays super-fast and super-safe. If you want to query a particular plugin or functionality you need, please get in touch and we'll usually be happy to accommodate requests.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is pre-installed. We recommend WooCommerce for any online payments or e-commerce needs. Please visit https://woo.com/ for more information. Remember to check with us before purchasing any premium plugins!
Elementor
Elementor (please see https://elementor.com/) is included for all users, and Elementor PRO is also inclusive for Gold Members. If you're not using a pre-templated website, you'll need to ask the office to apply BMABA's licence for you. Drop us a line, and we can sort that for you.
Using Pre-Designed Template Websites
We've created a number of pre-built websites which you can switch to and use within seconds of signing up. On the left hand menu, look for 'ACCOUNT' and click through. You'll see a page similar to below, outlining your active membership.
Look for the highlighted section, under 'ACTIONS'' and click 'change site template'. From there, you should see all of the available templates assigned to your membership tier.
You can click any template and 'apply' to have it automatically download to your site.
A Word Of Warning
Using a template will automatically overwrite everything on your site, including any ClubManager usage and we can't undo this. Please only use this at the very beginning of your site, before you start with any content or changes!
How Do I Keep Editing My Website?
Once you've setup an account and subdomain, and verified your email, you can login at any time to edit your site. You should visit the /wp-admin (admin) dashboard using your unique website. For example, if your site is yourclub.bmaba.club, go to yourclub.bmaba.club/wp-admin to login.
If you're not sure what URL you're using, try visiting https://bmaba.club/register and if you're logged in, you'll see the following message;
You should click 'go to my account' to be automatically taken to your dashboard. If you see an order form instead, you're not logged in and you should instead login below;
Support SLAs, Including What Is & Isn't Covered
We'll do all we can to support you in setting up and building the perfect website through WordpressbyBMABA. There's something we will always provide as an SLA, some things we'll try and help with, and some things we can't;
As part of our SLA, we'll maintain the hosting and security infrastructure of the system as best as we can, in-line with our membership terms and conditions. It's our responsibility to foot the cost of hosting and associated provisions, and we'll take care of hosting related maintenance issues too.
There is no guarantee tech support and you need to be aware that only a very limited number of people within our team can help with technical queries, especially if it's very specific or targeted. We'll always do our best to help, and we do have technical team on the payroll who can help in most cases but there availability is not included in WordpressbyBMABA, so you need to please be patience and respectful.
Any fixes to content, themes, plugins or your specific install outside of the general upkeep of the hosting infrastructure itself is done by BMABA at our cost and time, so this isn't something we can guarantee is possible, or that can be done promptly. We'll try and help, but we do need you to be fully aware it's not something that is part of membership or inclusive in membership fees so it's offered without warranty or guarantee.
Terms of Use
WordpressbyBMABA is offered 'as is' without warranty or guarantee, per our general terms of service, and terms of membership, available here.