There are wonderful options for you to make your own free community website.
Great for nonprofit, social and sporting groups to have their own space to get together and to organise their events.
A commercial venture can also make a start with a free community website and move up to paid upgrades at a later stage.
When you head to ning.com there is not a lot there to tell you what’s about. Just a screen where you can sign up. A bit like Facebook. And just what is different about Ning compared to Facebook and MySpace anyway?
Well, Facebook and MySpace are about profiles–even within Facebook and MySpace groups, you flip through pages and profiles. Which is all good. But if you want something more integrated where you can see more of your group at a glance– Ning might be the option for you. You can keep track of your group’s events, connect with others in your own forum, The look is clean, and you can customise your ning to suit your group. And once you sign up, you can interact with other groups within Ning with the same ID. Ning was co-founded by Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini, with Gina as the CEO.
Ning says: “Ning was started with a simple premise: when people have the freedom to create a new social experience online, uniquely customized for the most important people and interests in their lives with no effort, no cost, and infinite choice, the world is a better, more colorful and certainly more interesting place in which to live.”
webs.com is a very slick-looking site where you can create a fully-featured home for your group. You can share photos, keep a calendar of events, invite members and allow them to add their own profiles, create your own forums and even assign moderators to manage the forums. You can be in widget-heaven with easy widget installation. Paid upgrades include a web store.
Webs says: “Whether you are part of a volunteer fire department, organizing a running club, planning your high school reunion, seeking a spot to post news and events for your local swim team, or looking to connect with fellow Tay Zonday fans, it’s easy for you and your group to communicate online with Webs. Our completely customizable templates and tools help you build a site unique to the needs of you and your members.”
(We have no idea who or what Tay Zonday is!)
Boxloads of features and options for your community group at wetpaint.com. Private onsite messaging, photo galleries, video galleries, dynamic page organisation and much more. Wetpaint was started when a friend of the founders developed cancer and was unable to find a social group where he could connect with others going through their own cancer journey.
wetpaint says: A Wetpaint website is built on the power of collaborative thinking. Here, you can create websites that mix all the best features of wikis, blogs, forums and social networks into a rich, user-generated community based around the whatever-it-is that rocks your socks. A social website that’s so easy to use, anyone can participate. Paid options include the power to integrate social publishing into your website.
In Australia there are a number of initiatives for nonprofit community groups that you can find through this website: ourcommunity.com.au It’s a large website full of advice and resources for Australian community groups. The page for resources on free website options can be found here
