Assistance from LEADER + and Orkney Enterprise has been used to fund a project which provides community groups with a hassle-free website that more or less updates itself and costs next to nothing!.

 

The original idea behind the portal was to enable community groups develop and maintain interesting and informative websites and to encourage the use of IT.  The beauty of orkneycommuntities .co.uk is that if you can use a mouse you will be able to edit your site – there is no need to master the use of complex programming languages.  A site can be up and running in just a couple of hours.

 

For an annual fee of £35 Community groups get:-

 

·   a 10-page website with events calendar and document library;

·   training, which takes around 1½ hours;

·   access to digital cameras to add up-to-date photos to their sites; and

·   the ability to edit all the text and pictures.

 

 

In addition to allowing community groups to have their own websites orkneycommunities.co.uk has a wealth of exciting features that encourage people to visit the home page on a regular basis.  Attractive features such as a photograph archive/album, news headlines from The Orcadian newspaper, BBC Radio Orkney’s daily news diary, a daily weather summary and regularly updated information about any likely Northern Lights activity have all been integrated into the site.

 

Central to the website is an events calendar, which lets visitors find out quickly what’s on. The calendar has links to the community groups’ own websites so that, when a group posts new information, it’s automatically updated on orkneycommunities.co.uk.

 

Although funded by LEADER+ and Orkney Enterprise, the role of promoting and assisting with the project administration has been awarded to Voluntary Action Orkney.   Voluntary Action Orkney is also one of the 42 communities that have signed up for a website on orkneycommunities.co.uk