Midlothian Scouts has launched its new District website at midlothianscouts.org.uk. It is built on WordPress with The Glenmore Scout Theme, created from scratch with help from Grok Bot AI, so families, young people and volunteers can find District news and their local Group in one place.
One District site, with Group pages inside it
Instead of every Scout Group running its own website, hosting and security, the theme lets Groups live as subsites of the District site. They are not separate WordPress installs. Each Group is a set of pages under the District site at its own address, managed from one Scout Groups screen in WordPress.
That means:
- one place to find every Group in Midlothian
- consistent Scouts branding across District and Group pages
- shared pages such as our Privacy Policy and Accessibility statement
- each Group can have its own pages, news, Join information, waiting-list details and Volunteer pages, without running a separate site
- easier handover when volunteers change roles, because everything sits in one WordPress install
- District news can reach everyone from the same home
Each Group can also keep its own name, address, logo, menu, footer details (including its own charity number and copyright line), colours and “where to find us” map. A Section can be a subsite under a Group in the same way.
Three Groups already have their own area on the new site:
You can also browse all Groups and Units from the District Groups and Units page.
Built with AI help, with people firmly in control
The Glenmore Scout Theme was written from scratch as a custom WordPress theme. Grok Bot AI helped write and test the theme code, with each change kept on a pull request in Richard’s own GitHub repository. It follows Scouts brand colours, type and layout, and is designed to work for any UK Scout District, Group or Section.
Using AI this way was deliberate, and the access it had was limited. The AI helped with the coding, but a human stayed in charge of what reached the public website.
Richard Fairbairn, District Lead Volunteer, said:
“Whilst initially, I saw it as a bit of an experiment to see what AI could do in a positive way, I was surprised how well it could do the task.
It wasn’t perfect, and I did spend a fair amount of time advising it on getting the layout I wanted, following the Scouts Design Guide, and finding bugs and getting them to fix them. But I feel the experiment was largely successful.
Ultimately I’m clear there is a place for AI in Scout projects, provided everyone is clear about not giving it access to confidential and sensitive data and managing its limits, and checking what it does.
In Scouting volunteers are time poor, and as AI develops it can be used beyond horrible AI tacky posters and silly videos and save volunteers time.”
Explore, and get in touch
Have a look around midlothianscouts.org.uk, find your nearest Group, and see how to Join or Volunteer. If your Group does not have a subsite yet and you would like one, contact Richard Fairbairn at richard.fairbairn@midlothianscouts.org.uk.