Over on the NMCA board — someone who sell drag racing web sites (I picked up one of their fliers) was claiming that drag racers need a web site to have any chance at a sponsor (True) — and that anything less than a web site by a professional web designer is not going to work (NOT TRUE).

This was my response — which I felt I might share here too.

I agree that Myspace of Facebook — is hardly a web site — if you are serious about trying to have a web site help you hook up with sponsors. They are a good supplement to bring traffic to your web site.

Fans of Big Red Ram (NSS Race Team)
Jason Wieck Racing LLC
JmcRacing
Nostalgia Super Stock Drag Racing
Frank Hawley’s Drag Racing School

Blogs are a click up from there — but they too don’t give the professionalism required for hooking up with people you want to solicit money from. They do have a purpose for those who simply want to share their team’s progress — and many actually evolve into the racer/team taking it a step further with their web presence in the future. There are a ton of places where free blogs (see below) are offered for racer teams to use.

http://nssracing.ning.com/
http://mopardragracing.ning.com/
http://throwthebumsout.ning.com/
http://god-bless-texas.ning.com/

The next click up from there, is to create a free Ning site (see above) dedicated to your team and to control it more privately. Again — this isn’t the best way to go about it — but it is free and beats doing nothing.

It is true that getting big money without a professional web site is impossible — but thinking a professional web site is going to open the doors to money is naive. Frankly, there really isn’t a whole lot of money out there — just ask all of the unemployed NHRA Pro drivers — or Connie Kalitta. I spent 40 hours a week and thousands of dollars trying to find sponsors when I own the Texas Big Bird Pro Mod car. A lot of heartache is out there — now even more than then.

Where I disagree is that a racer has to pay for a Professional Word Press template. That is a luxury — not a requirement to play. While I realize that is what you do and the purpose of your post — I’d hate to see racers discouraged into thinking that they shouldn’t bother with a team website if they don’t have the money to pay someone to do it for them — or if they don’t buy a template.

Any racer reading this can have their own WordPress web site for less than $7.50 a year to register their team’s domain name — and less than $3 a month for decent web hosting with MySQL databases (required for php web sites like WordPress) — without banners and other unprofessional restrictions.

A couple examples of WordPress web sites that were virtually free to create and maintain are:

http://www.bigredram.com/ (my Team’s Site and former “Bitchin Web Site)
http://www.nostalgiadragracers.com/ (A work in progress)
http://www.nssracing.com/
http://www.chairmanobama.com/ (political site so stay away if you have thin skin and like Obama — but it is an example of a free WordPress site)
http://www.getoutoftheunnow.com/
http://www.diamondbackengines.com/

WordPress has 1000s of templates that control the look and feel of the web site with one-click, and thousands of feature addons (again added with a click) — so just about every color scheme, number of columns, and feature if ever needed is free.

To those of you wanting to have a team web site — roll up your sleeves and jump in. It is as easy as:

1. Go to www.SouthernStarHosting.com (or the Registrar / host of your choice — but I like Southern Star as they’re cheap yet have good English speaking tech support and excellent account management features) and register your team’s domain name www.MyRaceTeam.com for $7.49, and the Economy Hosting plan for $2.91 a month. Best to host and register the name at the same place if you’re a novice.

2. Set up a MySql database and database user. Super easy, it only sounds like it should be complicated. The Southern Star Hosting user manual is easy to understand and they have real English (as the first language) tech support if you should ever have a problem.

3. Go to http://wordpress.org/ and download your free WordPress application. Free — no strings attached. Once installed — one click keeps it updated. Follow the simple instructions to use Wordpad to modify the config file with your MySql database name and user)

4. Use a FTP Program (I and 115 million others to download it use a free one with Firefox – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/684) to copy the WordPress files to the server, and then run the install script by simply typing the address of it in your browser. Boom — it just installed and you still don’t know a lick of programming. Again the 3-step WordPress Install instructions walks you through this.

5. Access the admin panel of your new site and select the viewing template you like best, and the feature addons you want. Don’t forget the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) addon for google to rank your site high. Sure you will have to try as few things (and maybe do a little reading – although I never did) to get a handle on it — but kids and old ladies both do this all the time.

6. Make a banner of your car in a photo editing program, and add it to your site — if you want to customize further.

7. Start adding pages and making posts.

8. Spend a little time now and then to tweak it to look better and run more features. You don’t have to do everything at once.

There is excellent support all over the Internet if you run into a snag you can’t figure out on your own. This is a billion times easier than most people think — and your biggest investment to try is a lousy $10 for the domain name and a month of hosting. I’m sometimes amazed at the same people who can map a Kobelco, set up a killer NOS system, or tune their engine computer — are scared to death to just try to develop their own teams web site.

People who are in the programming business survive by perpetrating the myth that this is magic and you have to be Einstein.

If your last name is Jegs, Kalitta or Schumacher — you might need a pro. However this 55-year-old 9th grade dropout is too damn cheap to pay someone something I can get free.

Most anyone can have a killer web site up in one evening, if they only get past the notion that it is magic.