If Your Group Wants a Website

Start by acquiring your own domain name. Examples: www.ourgroup.com, www.doing-great-things.net, www.ourneighborhoodpark.org

  1. Find a name. You can check with your domain registrar company (see #2 below). You can also use whois.net, which will tell you if the name you select is already purchased.

  2. Pick a name you think represents your group. Keep it short, memorable, specific, If and easily written down. Chances are your first choice will already be taken, but you might luck out. Avoid dashes or underscores, as they will lead to typos and confusion.  (Your domain name is not as important as many think. Most of your traffic may come from links on other sites and search engine results.)

  3. If Tyou want to buy a site, check with the company that hosts your site and others the offer this possibility. Compare prices. You can pay yearly or, usually, a few years.

  4. Don't forget to renew your domain each year or whenever it expires. If you lose your domain by not renewing it, it may be difficult to get it back and your content may be lost.

Once you get your name, you'll need to tell your registration company where the web site is hosted.

Hosting your site

Hosting costs money. Free sites may not offer the flexibility you want. Shop around! Read reviews and check prices and what they offer (easy web site creation? free email? security? Email service for mass mailings?) .

Running your site

Keep your site simple and easily updated. Many groups create beautiful web site with lots of functions. But if users see that they are out of date, they are likely to conclude that your group is not not active. Look into free options. Your host is likely to provide some free options for easily creating a web site. WordPress makes it easy to create a database-driven web site (as do Joomla and Droopal). This has some advantages:

  • All the pages reside on the site, which allows you to update the site from anywhere, and multiple people can edit it without worry about who has the most updated version of each page.

  • The work of all the code for the site is already done, all you need to do is select a style and add your content.

  • There are numerous add-ons and themes (styles) to select from.

This should get you started with making your decisions about your web site.