Community Building: Setting up a free community or group website
One of the things that I have been working on (in my spare time) recently is community-based websites. So I thought I would share some details for those looking to do the same.
Define you group, organisation or community
This could be a local sports group, or local school committee or simply a website for your local village. You need to understand what it is that you want to do – whether it is simply sharing information amongst a group; or whether you are looking to allow multiple groups to participate in the project.
Get yourself a domain (Domain Name)
A domain, or domain-name is essential here – and it should be something that you you consider carefully. Many of the Internet search engines results (Google for example) will rank higher on the page if the thing you are searching for is in the domain name itself. For example if I were to search on “Overseal School” – a domain name that actually contained the words ’Overseal’ and ‘School’ would rank higher on the page than those that didn’t.
There are many, many different organisations that you can go to in order to secure your domain name. Personally I prefer to use www.1and1.co.uk. They are reliable, inexpensive and relatively easy to setup. I have several domain names with them already.
Most domain name providers like 1&1 will also provide you with some basic web space as well – which would allow you to set up a small site. However; depending on your group or community’s size this might not be adequate enough.
I created the domain community-hosts.co.uk which is where I host my local village website Overseal Village Life.
Get yourself a good hosting provider
All websites need to be ‘hosted’ somewhere. This is traditionally a computer (server) that is secured and accessible 24 hours a day, 365 days a year; which is what you need if you are going to do this right!
However finding a hosting provider can be more complicated than finding a domain name. When I was looking it reminded me of when I was searching for a Broadband deal – there were so many deals – all varying in features and complexity. Nightmare!
My solution – for someone that is looking to do this on a tight budget is to look at the free hosting providers. These might not offer you all the features of the more expensive solutions and they might not be as reliable. Many will also force you to carry adverts on your site. I managed to find a good provider, that is really reliable and pretty good on features as well.
Byethost.com is my hosting provider. This website and my Overseal Village Life site are hosted on ByetHost’s servers. They provide a good range of very competitive hosting solutions from $1 a month! However if you just want to try this out with no risk or tie-then then create yourself a FREE account on the same servers that I am using to host some of my projects.
Visit www.community-hosts.co.uk and click on ‘Sign Up’ to create a free web hosting account through me (or click on byehost.com to do it directly with them) with …
- 300MB of disk space to store your website and files.
- Over 6GB of traffic to and from your website (which is more than enough!)
- Access to 7 SQL Database, PHP Support for more advanced websites
- Access to a visual dashboard which allows you to configure and create your website.
Now you should have a domain name and a web hosting provider; so some space upon which you can create a website. You now need something to put there.
You will more than likely need to configure your domain name to point to your web host – but your domain name provider will have instructions on how to do this.
Building yourself a website – your home!
Websites vary dramatically – some are simple ‘static’ websites that do not change often, and rely heavily on the owner to keep them updated and fresh. Others are more dynamic and allow you to constantly update them with ease without worrying about having to edit the site all the time.
If this is what you need there are various ways in which you can create it – and many web hosting providers (www.community-hosts.co.uk included) offer a way to quickly create and edit sites like these. This is probably the easiest way of getting a community site up and working quickly.
My personal choice though is to create sites with a bit more flare as well as offering a lot more dynamic ability (like Overseal Village Life). Many web hosting providers offer the ability to automatically install various software programs onto your website that offer this capability (www.community-hosts.co.uk included). This personal blog of mine is actually using a program called, WordPress which is very sophisticated in allowing you to concentrate on what’s going onto the website, but not having to worry about constantly edited every page on the site. Great! Programs like ‘WordPress’ are commonly referred to as Content Management System (or CMS).
Again, look for a web hosting provider that allows you to automatically install a program like this, so you do not have to worry about it. You will need to do a bit of reading though to get them looking good and useable.
Once that is done – you have a name, you have some web space and you have a website. Now all that is needed is to promote it to everyone that you know and you have yourself a Community Website for free!
If that has not phased you; you can then look at trying to create an income from the site!
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Dave is a 30-something year old technologist and professional working and living in the UK. Ever since he first sat down at a computer keyboard back in the early ‘80s he has been hooked on technology – good and proper! Now-a-days he works within the software business with a fast paced organisation evangelising how technology can help save us all time, and make us money! Dave’s wife and 2 kids tend not to share this enthusiasm and believes that he is just playing!
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of his employer.
[...] yet it is all very functional and very effective. I recently blogged about it on my own website (David Baldaro Weblog) if you would like more [...]
Managed hosting is meant for those websites that are designed to host busy e-commerce sites and dynamic, database driven Web pages. Perfect for organizations that don’t’ have the time or capital to invest in server administration.
da best. Keep it going! Thank you
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