There are plenty of free tools around these days that make it relatively easy to set up a website for your local community. Here’s a round-up of some of the most popular.
- Wordpress – one of the world’s most popular blogging platforms. You can use a Wordpress blog to share articles and news about your local community (a bit like an online parish magazine). You can also set up static pages with reference information about the area, e.g. a list of local clubs. Similar alternatives: Blogger.
- Ning – this social networking platform lets you set up a mini Facebook for your local area. If that conjures up horrific images, try looking at HarringayOnline for a site that’s using this well.
- phpBB – “the world’s most widely-used open source forum solution”. A discussion forum lets local people talk amongst each other and can bring a site to life. It’s a bit more complicated to set up as it needs to be installed on your web server, but many web hosts can help you install phpBB forums for free. Similar alternatives: Simple Machines Forum.
- Yahoo Groups – a really simple tool letting you create an email list for your neighbourhood. Members can send messages to the group and specify how often they want to receive group emails. Yahoo Groups also lets you share photos and files. Similar alternatives: Google Groups.
- Joomla – the most advanced of the five. This is a fully-fledged, open source ‘content management system‘ (CMS) with all sorts of options and extra add-ons that you can download. You will need some space on a web server and should be prepared to spend plenty of time learning how it all works. If you want lots of flexibility, though, and are technically-minded, this could be an option to explore. Similar alternatives: Drupal.
What does your favourite local community website run on?
Photo by robbyt.
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Great list! Thanks.
My favorite by a country mile is Qlubb (http://www.qlubb.com). It’s geared specifically for “real-life groups” — basically people who interact with each other physically as opposed to those virtual communities like Ning (although Ning can be used for local groups too). The nice thing about Qlubb is that it is dead simple to use and it has other planning features needed for physical, “off-line” groups. Qlubb is more for a private group though as opposed to a location-based community that anybody can join.