West Union, Illinois | The question to answer before you start is what do you want to accomplish with it? Are you wanting to promote yourself, offer things for sale, or what? The answer to that will help you decide what your needs are. To be honest we really haven't gotten a handle on how to use a farm web site ourselves. We just knew we wanted to get the URL's tied down so we didn't lose them. Our main use has been to show what is going on to off-farm family members and other interested folks.
We have 3 URL's www.BumpusFarms.US , www.BumpusFarms.info and www.Bumpus.Farm . The first two we have had a while the last one I grabbed just because it came available. When we first started talking about a web site I found the .com version already belonged to someone else. I got busy and got the .US and .info versions as soon as possible. www.BumpusFarms.US links to a free blog site. We post photos of what is happening around the farm. It's been kind of just sitting since August. Like some other stuff we got busy and ignored it and just haven't gotten back to it. Part of the reason is what we were wanting to accomplish with a web site is being done better and easier through Facebook.
We can access the Facebook Bumpus Farms page from about anyplace including our cellphones. We can upload photos and text easily and quickly.
We have a couple "secret" groups set up to talk between ourselves or with landowners. Even though they are set for secret we never assume true privacy and don't put anything confidential on there. For instance starting, stopping and scheduling irrigators. When I start or stop one or see it is going to need something done I post on a group set up for our farm communications. Those in the group are notified and can access it from anyplace and respond. You can post files like planning what variety goes in what field, or engine hours, on and on. I can post it from the field, come home and read it from my desktop. And if I lose my phone the info is still there.
If I want to tell a landowner about field conditions, post photos of us working on their place, etc I can post to a secret Facebook group accessible (at least in theory) only to us and them. As I said, we never assume true privacy and don't put anything confidential on there. |