Advice Pack
The Astrological Association offer a free advice pack for
those wanting to start a local astrology group. The pack was put
together with the help of many long running astrology
groups.
To obtain your free advice pack please contact the Astrological Association Groups
Rep
Be Contactable
Be sure that people can contact you from your website. The best advice I can give here is to get yourself an online email address with a good spam filter. One example is Yahoo Mail
Web Presence
Get your group out there on the Internet. There are free web
site hosts but these often come with advertising, or even worse,
pop-ups!
However there is a way to get a free website presence and that is
by signing up for a Blog. Blogs are easy to set up and use, in
fact I know of at least two groups who use Blogs to keep the
world updated with their current meetings and news.
One is theWessex
Astrology Circle, who use Blogger and the other
is the Suffolk
Astrological Society who use Wordpress
WebSite Building
If you are feeling a bit more ambitious and want to build your own website there are various online resources and tools that you can use.
HTML & CSS
First of all you may need to teach yourself the basics of HTML and CSS, this is the language used to build basic websites, indeed this website has been built using CSS and HTML. There are many sites offerening free ready made CSS templates. The following lists just a few of places to visit, a Google search will find you far more.
- W3 Schools has all the tutorials you can imagine. Start with the basics and learn as little or as much as you want
- Davesite has HTML & CSS tutorials for the complete beginner
- Open Source Web Design is a collection of web designs submitted by the community that anyone can download free of charge! All they ask is that you give due credit to the original designer
Web Building Tools
If you are building your own website there is no need to pay 100's of £££'s for an expensive web design program. There are many free and useful resources to be found on the Internet. An important piece of advice is to download FireFox and Opera web broswers, it's useful to see how your website looks for people who don't use Internet explorer as standard.
- FireFox is becoming more popular as a web browser. It's my browser of choice
- Opera Not as popular as Firefox but still has a significant amount of users
- Nvu a simple to use yet powerful web building program
- Web Developer's Toolbar a useful Firefox add on, lets you test CSS and HTML on live sites
- Color Wizard a clever online color matching application
Domain Names and Website Hosting
Having built your website you will want it to have a name exclusive to you, this is called a Domain Name. The domain name for this site is "astrogroups.co.uk" You can get a domain name for around £5 per year. And of course you will want it to be on the Internet, so you will have to purchase web hosting. This gives you a place to upload your website onto the Internet. Some ISP providers, such as Zen Internet offer free webspace as a part of their package. If you haven't got this then you can purchase webspace relatively cheaply. Finally you will need a FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program to upload your files to the Internet.
- United Hosting Website Hosting from as little as £5 per month. You can also register your domain name with UH. Their support is second to none!
- UK Web Solutions Direct LtdExtremely good value for money Website Hosting. Again you can also register your domain name with them
- Smart FTP An FTP program free to non-commercial users
Have I Inspired You?
I hope so. I taught myself the basics using the above tools
and this site is the result. I'm not perfect yet and possibly
there are glitches here I haven't picked up on. (Let me know if
you spot any.)
If you do build a website for your group please do let me know so
that I can add the link to this site.
