How to Start a Community Website or Blog

coffee time Heather Stillufsen

Heather Stillufsen

Whether you wish to start a local blog for interest or politics, there’s a huge market for talented artisans to change the status quo, as most tourism and council blogs are boring. Instead of promoting zoos, aquariums and fast food, you could promote local nature, litter clean-ups and artisan shops.

It’s pretty easy to gain traffic for a small local site (around 80% of Google searches are local). Offer veggie restaurant reviews, green politics, litter clean-ups, public transport campaigns and zero-waste initiatives.

It takes a few months for Google to pick up your site (it kind of ‘waits and watches you’ in the Google Sandbox to ensure you’re writing quality content). But if then decides to trust that you have an inspiring site that helps, the world’s your oyster!

Just like putting a sandwich board outside your indie shop down a hidden alley, you’ll have to build trust over several months, before you begin to get visitors.

Keep things simple. Recent Google SEO (search engine optimisation) changes have rewritten all the rules. Read simple SEO tips. The main points to take away are:

  • Create inspiring titles (how-to posts are good, round-up posts of favourite books or products, interviews and simply write what you wish to share). Keep things simple (have as many external/internal links as you need, but no more).
  • Regularly edit posts (people read slower online) and divide long content into short paragraphs with H2 sub-headings and bulleted points, to make info easy to read. You don’t have to write ‘really long posts’, but do write enough for the subject to be the best it can be. If it gets too long, break the post into two or three shorter ones, then interlink.
  • A few images per post is fine, but don’t overload (this slows the site down and also means more hosting fees). And if you want to share a video, just link to it (embedding uses up bandwidth, plus many people don’t want to join Google accounts, just to watch YouTube).
  • Keep sidebar clutter-free. An ‘about widget’, search box, popular posts widget, category list and perhaps a music video link (don’t embed) is good. Make the site easy to navigate and never use ads (most people block them anyway with free plugins). And never use hugely-annoying pop-ups.
  • Social sharing buttons are hardly used either, so remove these too. Regular quality content is more likely to get shared, not plastering ‘share it’ buttons everywhere.
  • Don’t worry too much about social media. Instagram is not good for your mental health, and images are shared for a second, and never again. Pinterest has changed its rules, so it’s really difficult to get traffic, unless you’re spending your life on there. Just build stable organic traffic for search engines to find your site.

Where to Host Your Community Blog

Self-hosted WordPress is the best bet for most people (non-profits can use free hosted WordPress which is free, but its business hosting is good for established sites as you get unlimited traffic. Good hosts will back up your site each day, so you should not need extra add-ons.

Krystal Hosting is a new green web host. Their Switch Credits gives you money back on time left on your plan, so you can join sooner, if locked in with a current web host. It runs on Ecotricity, is fiercely independent, and works with tree-planting organisations.

Choose a domain name (fairly short and easy to type with no hyphens), and add domain privacy to protect from spammers and keep your personal details like address private. Once launched, delete unused default plugins and add only those that you need. We use:

  • Jetpack (simple and effective for stats)
  • Open external links in a new window
  • Stop spammers (disable Jetpack security for this to work)
  • A broken link checker

Once that’s all done, invest in a pretty affordable website or blog theme:

Tenby Connects (how to ‘do’ a community website!)

Tenby Sarah Frances

Sarah Frances

If you visit most ‘town websites’, you are likely to find a boring generic site filled with ads for visiting zoos, aquariums, and directions to the nearest superstores and car park directions. Not good enough!

Let’s pop over the border to beautiful Wales, to discover a site that is a sublime example of how to foster community, and makeover your town or village!

Tenby Connects is a beautifully designed website for one of Wales’ most popular holiday destinations. It’s packed with profiles of local volunteers and small shops and businesses, plus has many projects that local people can get involved with. It’s really inspiring, take a look!

The projects in Tenby include:

  • A Community Fridge – This is where people donate food (not yet out of date) and people basically just help themselves for free (read our post on food safety for people and pets).
  • Friday Wellbeing and Cooking Group – this is held over winter to offer tips on healthy budget cooking, and to try out wellbeing techniques (it’s aimed mostly for unpaid carers).
  • The No Throw Party Kit – for a small fee, you can borrow a set of reusable plates, bowls and beakers for 30 guests (with table cloths and reusable cutlery) to avoid buying single-use plastic items.
  • Litter-Picking Groups – equipment can be borrowed to pick up litter at regular meets by the harbour.
  • Repair Cafes – these are held once a month, where volunteer experts repair items brought in by members of the public – for free (or perhaps a cup of tea and some biscuits!)
  • Town Ambassadors – volunteers basically wander around the town on foot, answering questions to help local people and visitors. An ideal hobby for resident chatterboxes!
  • A Community Edible Garden – this is run by volunteers, again to provide free food for local people. Volunteers also help look after plants for pollinators in public gardens.

Use no-dig gardening (and avoid netting) to help wildlife (and ensure ponds have sloping sides). Also read our post on pet-friendly gardens.

NextDoor: Set Up a Local Neighbourhood Website

Nextdoor is like a ‘local Facebook’. You set a boundary and put safety caveats in place, then post anything from lost/found pets, job adverts, community bulletins or where the nearest party is! It’s free to use, just find someone to handle the admin.

Councils and emergency services can also share real-time info (like flood warnings). And you can even say ‘hi’ to some of the 300,000 Next Door neighbourhoods around the world.

Facebook is increasingly concerning regarding privacy, tracking and grooming of children. NextDoor is local, safe, avoids the ‘Big Brother’ stuff and is not designed to make billionaires richer!

It’s now used by over 100 million neighbourhoods across 345,000 neighbourhoods worldwide, for trusted local news, real-time safety alerts, recommendations, sales and free listings, plus local events.

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