In accordance with BSA recommendations to protect the safety and identity of scouts and scouting volunteers, your pack website is divided into two areas:

Your CoolCubs pack website includes a public-facing Home Page. It is ideal for introducing your pack to the public. Its key components include a custom "Message from the Cubmaster" where you can talk-up your pack's achievments, display honors and awards, welcome prospective scouts to the pack, etc. It also includes an overview of upcoming pack events (minus locations, dates, and times, for youth protection), an e-mail link for prospective scouting parents to inquire about joining the pack, and BSA youth/adult volunteer forms. Your public-facing home page also displays recent scouting news and a summary of the current issue of Boys' Life magazine.

Your pack website also displays a private Home Page, available only to those to whom you've given the Secure Area password. The private Home Page displays everything in the public-facing Home Page plus pack event locations, dates, and times, a group photo of your pack, and a more detailed Cubmaster announcement that may include phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Anything you would communicate to your pack families via e-mails and handouts is appropriate here.

A popular feature of CoolCubs is our Den Pages. You may create fully-customizable pages for each of your dens, giving each den leader a dedicated place to communicate with their den's parents in a way that suits them. Webelo den pages often focus on the responsibilities of campouts and outings, whereas Tiger den pages often display promises, pledges, and mottos that starting scouts must memorize. These pages are fully customizable by way of a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) graphical editor into which you can compose formatted text (using colors, highlighting, different fonts and size, etc., just as you would use a word processer). And to help customize each den page, den-specific photos may be uploaded here.

The Events Calendar is important for Pack-to-Parent communication. Load up this calendar with den meetings, pack meetings, outings, ceremonies, derbies, community service events, etc. Scouting parents now have access to event specifics, eliminating the need to send and resend e-mails about each event. The Events Calendar automatically feeds the "Upcoming Events" sections of the private and public home pages. You don't need to do a thing to keep those lists current. CoolCubs does it for you.

As an added convenience, each event includes the same WYSIWYG editor described above so you can include links to Google Maps or Yahoo Maps pages that show people exactly where the event takes place. You can also paste information about the event, such as flyers, waivers, supply lists, etc.

CoolCubs makes it easy to preserve your pack's history and give your scouting families a place to view photos of your pack's activities through the years. Organize your photos into albums, creating a well-organized gallery that chronicles the history of your pack.

You can create as many custom pages as you want. Use this feature for everything, including policy pages, oath, promise, and motto study guides, detailed bios of pack leadership, pages to advertise businesses of scouting families, supplies-wanted boards, general-purpose bulletin boards, uniforms-for-trade listings, donations wanted pages, derby tips and tricks, etc. This is one of the most powerful tools in your CoolCubs tool belt.

CoolCubs provides a place for you to upload documents that you want to distribute to scouting families. Upload PDFs, Word documents, spreadsheets, text documents, photos, etc... anything you'd want your pack families to be able to download. Common uses include derby tips, waivers, policies, study guides, summer activity sheets, rank progress charts, fundraising forms, BSA youth and adult applications, uniform standards, campout supply lists, directions to meetings & events, responsibility charts, awards, etc.

This feature is visible ONLY to your pack administrator. It is never displayed on your public-facing or secure home pages. This is your place to manage your scouts' personal information, including addresses, phone numbers, and emergency contact information. You can manage this roster from each den page (scouts are filtered by their respective den) or as one whole pack. Here is where you may specify parents' e-mail addresses and cell phone numbers, which are key to our upcoming Unit Management notification features.

Give your scouting parents one place to find the names, titles, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers of your pack's leadership and other volunteers. It's easy to change, convenient for everyone, and more secure than printed handouts.

All of this is done in an environment that is password protected, uses Secure Socket Layer (SSL) transmission of passwords and all Secure Area information, and has BSA Child Protection rules in mind. We have found many Scouting groups use non-SSL social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Shutterfly, MySpace, etc., which expose every bit of information and too much detail to the general public about meeting times and locations. Those services potentially endanger children. Offering a safe place for you to share these details with trusted members of your scouting community is what drove us to create CoolCubs in the first place.

With CoolCubs, you don't need to worry about reserving and paying for a domain name or a custom URL. You'll be assigned a URL with your Pack Name in it. If you do have a domain name reserved, we can show you how to forward/link your URL directly to your CoolCubs page.