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ABOUT
COMMUNITY WEB SITES
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The St. Louis
Post-Dispatch aims to be essential reading for everyone
in metro St. Louis but where do we
citizens-of-the-region do our essential
talking, networking and
planning? There isn't room for all of us
in Kiener Plaza. So, the Post-Dispatch has built this
Community Web Sites network as an online town square a
hub for Web sites set up by non-profit organizations,
classrooms, libraries, houses of worship, support
groups, ethnic associations, collectors' clubs, amateur
sports teams, political advocacy groups any type of
non-commercial organization in metro St. Louis through
which St. Louisans can gather to share their interests,
make new connections, promote a good cause, talk about
public issues ... and participate in special programs we
at the Post-Dispatch have created to bring the region
together.
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Need a Web
site?
If you
belong to a nonprofit group that hasn't yet entered the
Internet age, we can help. If you haven't thought
of entering the Internet age, it's time to start. There
s a heart-and-soul to what every organization does, and
then there s the logistics scheduling, publicizing,
booking halls, writing newsletters and the rest of it.
If you and your friends and colleagues could spend less
time on the stamps-envelopes-and-phone work you could
spend more on the sport, hobby, celebration or political
cause that brought you together. A Web site can free up
that time, if it s easy enough to use if it replaces the
work you re already doing instead of adding to it. In
fact, it can open possibilities for reaching the public
and collaborating with other organizations that you
might not have had the spare time to dream of. Join the
Community Web Sites program and we'll give your group a
Web site of unlimited size, access to easy-to-use
software with which you can build it, and training all
free of
charge.
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And once
you have one...The Post-Dispatch invites you to take part in
a new kind of
conversation. Our Web
tools and programs allow groups like yours to ...
hold meetings, interviews and
brainstorming sessions online, in real time
publish photos of your group's members, sound
clips from lectures and sermons, videos of your most
recent events
ask your
members and the general public for feedback using
questionnaires, sign-up sheets and surveys
write your newsletter online, and have your
members receive automatic notification of it by
email
receive charitable donations, by
credit card, over a secure line
create your
own calendar of
events, with maps,
driving directions and Web links built in and pass
those events into the Post-Dispatch, Get Out and
STLtoday.com calendars. And so on. In
addition to everything your group can do for itself as a
Community Web Sites member, the Post-Dispatch will
periodically invite you to join in special news-related
programs. We may, for instance:
"spotlight" your Web site on the
Community Web Sites gateway, the Post-Dispatch's
online home page or the front of the
Post-Dispatch newspaper's Metro St. Louis
section.
send readers of news, sports and
entertainment stories to your site, when those stories
involve your group's work
invite you
to join special programs like Choose Your Causes or, around
election time, our Election Pages.
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No Web
site should be an island
This is, we think, a visionary
program for St. Louis. The little vision is that
community groups like yours can get new exposure through
our centralized town square be seen by more, and more
diverse, people than you've been able to reach before.
The bigger
vision is that, by
allowing all of metro St. Louis to meet in one place for
the first time, we'll be able to spark conversations
that have never been held before, link volunteers and
donors to where they're most needed, enable the public
(and not just us, the newspaper) to convene region-wide
forums on serious topics or frivolous ones and build a
single calendar for all the goings-on in the metro area.
If groups like yours take this idea and run with it, we
believe this network has the power to revolutionize the
way St. Louisans talk with one another, as well as the
way the community talks with the journalists who report
on
it.
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Join
us
If the
Web is new to you... No software is needed, and no experience
is necessary. Applying for a Web site takes 10 minutes.
Our tools are designed so that anyone who can type in a
form or double-click on a filename can create a
powerful, handsome site and can share out the work of
updating that site with colleagues and friends. And yet
as you grow in sophistication, you'll have the
flexibility to design pages wholly or partly from
scratch.
...or if
you have a Web site already... We will
give you a Web site you can use as a side door to your
existing site. You can integrate your Post-Dispatch page
or pages seamlessly with pages on an existing Web site,
and use only the features you want to the ones you
can't, or can't afford to create on your current site,
like a powerful calendar and live chat. Furthermore,
joining our network bonds you to the most popular online
destination in St. Louis, which draws millions of
visitors each month. You can't get the advantages of the
network if you sit outside it. Come take a look.
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