VGClubs Guidelines

VGClubs gives every club a real website at its own address, run by the club’s own students from a dashboard. No coding required.

These rules are on top of the community guidelines, which apply everywhere on the platform. Read those first.

What makes a club site different from everything else here: it is not your page, it is the club’s page, and to anyone reading it, it is the club talking. That is the whole reason for the extra rules below.

Who runs the site

A club’s advisor seats members in roles. A webmaster edits the site, a treasurer handles the money pages, a secretary handles the roster and meetings, and an advisor can create a custom role with its own set of permissions.

Holding a role means you are acting for the club, and a few things follow from that:

• Your account and your role are yours. Do not hand your login to next year’s officer. Ask the advisor to seat them properly, so the record shows who did what.
• Post what the club decided, not what you think. If the club has not taken a position, the site does not take one.
• Hand over cleanly. When you graduate or step down, tell the advisor so your role can be removed. Keeping a seat you no longer hold is a problem even if you never use it.

Your advisor is responsible for the club and can change anything on the site, including undoing your work. That is how it is supposed to work.

Going public

A new club site is not public until the advisor launches it. Build it, fill it in, and get the advisor to look before it goes live.

Once it is live it is a public web page. Search engines can find it, anyone can read it without signing in, and people who are not at this school will see it. Write everything on the site with that in mind.

What goes on a club site

Meeting times and places, officers, events, news, photos from things the club did, how to join, and what the club is about.

What does not:

• Anything about a member that they did not agree to have posted. A roster is internal. Do not put students’ full names, photos, phone numbers, or schedules on a public page without asking each of them.
• Photos of students who did not agree to be photographed. Ask before you post, and take it down when somebody asks you to, without arguing about it.
• Anything that reads as the school’s official position. The club speaks for the club.
• Fundraising that the advisor has not approved, and any request for money that sends people somewhere off this platform.
• Political campaigning, and anything endorsing a candidate in a student or public election.
• Business advertising. A thank-you to a sponsor who actually supported the club is fine. Selling ad space is not.
• Copyrighted images, music, logos, and templates you do not have the right to use. That includes team logos and brand artwork from companies.

Money

If your club handles money through the site, the treasurer tools are for recording it, not for holding it. All of it runs through the school’s normal process, and your advisor is accountable for every dollar.

Ledger entries, budget lines, and reimbursements should match what actually happened. Do not delete a record because it looks bad. If something was entered wrong, correct it and say why.

Never collect payment details on a club site. Not card numbers, not payment app handles, not anything. Point people at the school’s process instead.

Sign-ups and member data

The sign-up page collects real information from real students, most of them minors, so treat it accordingly.

Collect only what the club needs to contact someone about the club. Use it for that and nothing else. Do not export the list, share it with another club, or hand it to anyone outside the club, including a company offering something to your members. When a student asks to be taken off, take them off.

The Privacy Policy covers what the platform does with this data. What your club does with it is on your club.

Files and uploads

Uploads publish immediately and get checked afterward, so something can go up and then come down. Upload only what belongs to the club and what you have the right to publish.

Keep the file area tidy. It is shared by everyone with a role, and the next webmaster has to work in it.

If the site goes wrong

If your site is taken down or a file is removed, the advisor is told and the reason is in the console. Open a ticket at /support if you think it was a mistake, and let the advisor know you did.

A club site being paused is not always a moderation decision. Sites also pause when a club goes inactive or an advisor asks for it.