Media Release

August 7, 2009

Waitakere Online can help you

Want a website but don’t know where to start? Help is at hand.

The Waitakere Online Community Project offers free web hosting for small businesses, community and not-for-profit groups based in Waitakere.

Whether the local rugby club, parents group or coffee shop, you could be missing out on important business or memberships by not being online.

The Waitakere Online Project is part-funded by Waitakere City Council, which is committed to fostering a progressive and sustainable business community as well as supporting community groups and organisations.

“The biggest barriers to people using technology are cost and lack of knowledge,” says Councillor Linda Cooper, who sits on Waitakere Online’s committee.

“This project helps businesses and organisations break through those barriers and will lead to an informed community capable of being involved in e-business.”

Waitakere Online helps to get people started by providing website templates and giving site owners administration rights to maintain content.

It also hosts the site on its OurWaitakere (www.ourwaitakere.co.nz) page which means no internet service provider costs or technical hosting agreements.

People can also get free lessons through Waitakere Learning Centres at Waitakere libraries and have access to online tutorial information to help learn the necessary skills required to maintain their site. They can also ask fellow users for advice as part of the online forum.

“Setting up a website can seem scary but Waitakere Online is a great way to ease people on to the world wide web,” says Cr Cooper.

“Establishing Waitakere as a vibrant online community with wired businesses is a key initiative in the drive to ongoing economic sustainability and social growth for Waitakere”.

Those already using the service have given it the thumbs up.

“I found the whole process user-friendly and was able to load images very quickly. In fact, it's so easy that anybody can do it,” says Kathryn of Esquires Coffee Houses in Henderson.

“From start to finish it only took a few hours to build my website and I tend to do all of my maintenance on the site at home and have found it extremely easy to do,” she says.

“After a bit of help, including attending the free workshops, it didn't take long to figure out how the templates worked and I felt a lot more confident.”

The service is only available to Waitakere residents, community organisations and businesses.

For more information visit www.ourwaitakere.co.nz

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