Open Source Software

Community Radio Toolkit Spotlight on Websites: How to build your website: Software needs and options

Once you’ve decided on content, design and features for your website (and you’ve got PCs and internet connection), you’ll need to build the beast. Put simply your options are to: - pay someone else to do it, just tell them what you want - use a pre-made template, bought or sourced free on the internet - build it yourselves

This piece is about some of the software you might want to use both to build your basic site and to add special features. As much as possible free or open source software will be listed. Much of the software comes recommended but try to find out from others what they’ve found user friendly and effective.

Please note this piece is about software for your website, not for other station operations. Andy King’s Radiolicious blog contains a feature on How free software could benefit your station. Sources of free software can also be found at http://www.sourceforge.net and http://www.thefreesite.com/Free_Software/index.html

1. The basic website 2. Features and interactivities for your website 3. Other software for your web-based work ______

1. The basic website

Starting from scratch? Here’s some options.

Writing html code Web design software Faster but less flexible Content management systems requires extensive relieves coding pains are pre-configured offer lots of extra knowledge and is and offers complete templates. From free functions like forums, time-consuming. design flexibility. to varying prices. chat etc.

Dreamweaver and Try www.oswd.org Drupal, Joomla, Frontpage are Website hosts offer Moodle are all popular popular, but can be templates too, eg and free of charge. pricey. www.123reg.co.uk Our system’s on Moodle. You can even get a CMS with a radio module at http://dev.cmsmadesimple.org/projects/radioroster/ and

Graphics You will need to ask permission to put photos of people on your website. Many stations have a standard form that can be completed and signed by staff, volunteers and people involved in other events you organise. Photos of children are a whole different ball-game.

You cannot take images – photos or clipart – from other people’s websites without their agreement. It can be expensive to commission images to be drawn from scratch so you may be best of exploring websites offering free graphics. The Free Site offer links to sites with photos, clipart, icons and buttons and other images for use on websites at http://www.thefreesite.com/Free_Graphics/

The expensive Photoshop is popular of image editing but others are available free via http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/ or through SourceForge at http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=100

2. Features and interactivities for your website

Here’s where a good content management systems (see above) comes into its own, with many of these features inbuilt into the system. Everything is also available individually, for purchase and usually also free of charge. Sometimes there is a choice as to whether features are hosted on your own website or on the software provider’s site.

Bravenet at http://www.bravenet.com/ runs the gamut of interactivities from the standard forums, chat rooms and guestbooks to the more unusual provision of customised e-cards and daily horoscopes.

For more information on the function of different interactive features, please refer to the other articles in this series: “Content is king: What do community radio stations put on their websites?” “Building an Online Community with Interactive Features”

Webcasting Webcasting is the process of offering life broadcasting or streaming of your current broadcast on air via the internet. A great option for those who can’t tune in using the radio, for instance because they live on the other side of the world from you! Information on streaming technology and a list of media streaming systems is available in Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_streaming_media_systems

A series of open source webcasting resources are listed at http://dowire.org/wiki/Open_Source_Webcasting Webcasting advice and services for community radio are available from the Community Media Association at http://www.commedia.org.uk/about-cma/canstream/

Podcasting Podcasting allows you to offer select programmes or recordings via your website for listeners to access when it suits them using either the internet on their computer or downloading to other media players. Free podcast generator http://podcastgen.sourceforge.net/

© Community Radio Toolkit www.communityradiotoolkit.net Podcasting technology blog at http://blog.podblaze.com/public/blog/96162 Blogging software specialising in podcasting http://www.loudblog.com Podcasting advice and services for community radio are available from the Community Legal guide to podcasting http://creativecommons.org/podcasting Media Association at http://www.commedia.org.uk/about-cma/canstream/

Blogs There’s lots of decent free software to choose from for these online diaries. They can usually be hosted on the blog company’s own site or on yours. These are both popular. http://www.blogger.com http://wordpress.com/

Forums The free forum software from PHPBB at http://www.phpbb.com/ is used extensively by radio stations and other non-commercial organisations for discussion forums.

Chat There’s more software than you can shake a stick at for ‘real time’ discussion. Take a look at what’s listed on the Freesite link at http://www.thefreesite.com/Free_Software/free_chat_programs/

Guestbooks for supporters to leave comments on your site are available at http://www.freeguestbooks.net/, http://www.anvilbook.com/, http://www.a-free- guestbook.com/ and many other places.

Other interactivities you might investigate include wikis, polls for voting, calendars and many other more obscure facilities –new ones being developed daily. Your best bet is to do a an internet search to see what’s available and how other people are using it.

3. Other software for your web-based work

Information on hosting and domain names - http://www.icthubknowledgebase.org.uk/hostingdomainnames

Website statistics Want to know how many people have visited your site? http://www.amazingcounters.com/

Free website counters and statistics to analyse traffic to your site http://www.statssheet.com/

Detailed analysis of visitors to your website, including where they come from, sites referring to you etc http://www.google.com/analytics/

Software for constructing a database to hold/display a radio station schedule, including shows and DJs http://dev.cmsmadesimple.org/projects/radioroster/

Free anti-virus software AVG http://free.grisoft.com/ Avast http://www.avast.com/

© Community Radio Toolkit www.communityradiotoolkit.net Read more about software to protect your computer at http://www.gtfm.co.uk/protectpcnviruses.aspx with advice both on free software and good practice in protecting your computers from being affected by viruses. Free email Googlemail http:// mail.google .com Thunderbird http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/products/thunderbird/ Eudora http://www.eudora.com/email/features/windows/ Pegasus http://www.pmail.com/