Creating your own website allows you to create the image you want for your community council and it can be very useful to have one place where people in your community know they can find information like news, events and contact details. Having your own website gives you the option to store a lot of information like minutes, pictures and documents and make it available to anyone who is interested.

A website works best when there are frequent updates and reasons for people to come back to the site, so remember to make a plan for who is posting and how you are going to get new content. It might be useful to have a couple of people who are able to post on the site, but they shouldn't be the only ones creating content. The best stories are created or written by the people who are most knowledgeable about the subject.

Some community councils use their website as a portal for other community groups and encourage them to share information on the community council website. This helps drive visitors to the site and can play a big role in making the community aware of the many ways the community council collaborates with other community groups.

A website can also work well alongside other social media. Many websites allow automatic posting of content across platforms like Twitter and Facebook and make it easy to share information among different audiences. You can also use the website to show your social media streams for members of the community, who might have an account on Facebook or Twitter.

All community groups wishing to create a website will need a web platform. Wordpress is free and simple to use, but there are many options available and it might be worth paying to register and host a domain for the community council if you do not already have one. We have created a small series of video tutorials to help if you want to get started on Wordpress.