Web presence worth it?
Many organisations, both large and small, feel the need to create a website. The Keep Porirua Beautiful website had been piggy-backing on the Porirua City Council webpage until it was transferred over to the OurPorirua server three months ago. ?We were under the wings of the council website, and that had management content and was hard to use. ?OurPorirua.com gives much better usability,? says Keep Porirua Beautiful coordinator John Poppleton. Volunteer Porirua provided a keen tech-savvy worker, Ray David, to help with the transfer, which made the entire ordeal cost nothing. Hosting of the website is covered by the council and HP Computer Company?s grants to Porirua. ?It has been great, Ray David has assisted off his own bat, and the site is a lot savvier than yesteryear. ?It?s about presence and making people stay for more than just a minute ... it records the information about what we have done, rather than having no record,? he says. Guardians of the Pauatahanui Inlet recently employed a Victoria University student to redesign and launch their website www.gopi.org.nz. Chairperson John Wells says having a web presence is ?absolutely? necessary in this day and age. ?I fail to see how any origination could exist without a web presence these days, people don?t write letters any more. ?We approached the university ... [a student] did it as part of their second year of study ? there is no way we could have paid to get it done commercially,? says Mr Wells. The site is a vehicle for members to use and next year will focus on becoming a resource for local schools. Mr Wells says most of next year will be taken up talking with stakeholders around the harbour. ?It will take the whole of 2010 to complete, talking with the councils and schools. ?We are already doing stuff for primary schools but with the modern revamp we want to expand the information available on there,? he says. Trelissick Park Working Group chairman Peter Reimann says their website is useful for receiving enquiries, for example from new volunteers.? ?We refer them to the website, as there is a lot of information there, such as the park Management Plan, our 5-year Plan, minutes of past meetings, our ?Gorge Gazettes?. ?We have had comments about its value, from members of the Youth Environment Forum and Victoria University, who looked at it before their conducted tours of the park,? says Mr Reimann. He says it only costs a small amount to keep it going each year, an amount donated by one of their members, and they have someone who updates it periodically at no cost. Jackson Street Programme coordinator Robert Hutton inherited his group?s website one year after it was launched. ?We certainly want to make the most of it as a medium for promoting our place. ?I?ve been working on it since arriving one year ago to make it better, we spent a lot of money developing it so we want that to work effectively,? says Mr Hutton. The website was conceived as a place people could take ?virtual tours? of the streetscape and peer into shop details. Keeping the website running costs the retail coordinators around $100 per year. ?I have spent this year getting peoples? up-to-date details on there, it works to link both the shops together and attract visitors,? he says. Korokoro Environment Group spokesperson Ruth Mansell says their group is investigating the benefits of launching a website next year. The group has been ?piggy-backing? on the council community website, which proved hard to utilise and not user-friendly. ?We are busy trying to get [a website] developed further with mechanisms for updating. ?Before we put money into it we need to ask the questions of how many people actually access it ? it?s certainly a question we have to consider before allocating funds,? says Mrs Mansell.
