Use free tools to create your own area online

In less than 20 years, the web has exploded in size and now includes more than a trillion web pages. It has revolutionised how we share information and how we communicate with others, whether they’re halfway across the world or just around the corner. Almost every large organisation or business has a website, as do many smaller businesses, clubs, societies and even families.

Many people are put off creating a web page because it appears too complicated, however. In the past, anyone creating a page needed to know how to write a special language called HTML, but that’s no longer the case. Today free online tools allow you to share information, pictures or video, without becoming bogged down in technical nonsense and jargon.

In this article we’ll explain how to get your family, club, society or business online with the minimum of fuss and expense.

Pictures perfect
For many clubs and societies, one brilliant use of the web is to share photographs: images of a recent event, for example. Although it’s possible to send photos by email, there are all sorts of potential problems that can lead to them failing to get through.

A far better idea is to place the photographs on the web, allowing all members or customers to easily view them. There are many free photo-sharing sites that make this easy.

A well-known example is Flickr. This site provides free photo storage to anyone who signs in using a Yahoo account. If you don’t have one, click the ‘Create Your Account’ button on the home page.

Several images can be uploaded from your computer’s hard disk at once. Whenever uploading any photos to Flickr it asks whether the image should be made public or private.

When you upload an image or video to a sharing service such as Flickr you can usually choose whether to make it publicly viewable by anyone, or to restrict it so that only friends and family you authorise can see it.

This is very useful, but remember that there’s no way to keep photos or videos entirely secure; anyone you trust to see them might make a copy and share it elsewhere. As a rule, we recommend only uploading photos that you would be happy to see on public display.

When joining Flickr you will be asked to choose a username. After doing this, the site will automatically set up a ‘photostream’ ­ – a page where all your latest photographs will always be shown. By checking this page, friends and family can easily keep up with the latest pictures.

Flickr can also organise images into groups known as sets . When logged into the site click the Organize link to get started with this. The simple drag-and-drop Organizr interface lets you choose any number of images from your photo collection, edit their titles and descriptions, add descriptive tags to make finding them easier in future, move them to a set, delete them or adjust privacy settings.

It’s also possible for several different members of a family or club to collaborate using the Flickr site. At the Flickr groups we page you can create a group ­ – think of this like a shared pinboard onto which different people can add photos. Groups can be public, so anyone can contribute, or private – ­ ideal for a local club.

An alternative to Flickr is a tool called Picasa, from Google. Unlike Flickr, which runs entirely as a website, Picasa is a program that can be installed on your computer then used to categorise, edit and fix digital photos. It has plenty of useful image-editing tools built in, including one to fix red-eye in your photos.

Once you’re happy with the photos, though, Picasa allows you to easily upload them to Picasa Web Albums – ­ an online sharing service not dissimilar to Flickr.

It can also send photos to online services that will turn them, for a fee, into prints, mugs, calendars, T-shirts and more. This could be a great way to raise funds for a club or society.