Tell us about your organisation and why it needed a good website
The East Lothian Antiquarian and Field Naturalists Society has been around for a good long while, long before the internet was invented (not quite a hundred years, but almost). We’re still playing catch up and this is our second attempt at going digital. Our membership and audience is mainly older individuals, so we needed a website and hosting with hands on support and a presence that encouraged new members to join.
Houston we have a problem!
We found it difficult to manage and maintain our first website, in no small part because we never got to grips with its capabilities. It quickly became disorganised and out of date. We realised that a new site would help us renew our offering to new and existing members and organise our immense assets into a new digital library. Our archive of 30 volumes of the Transactions of the ELAFNS were being digitised and to be made available widely and freely available to the public for the very first time. We realised that we could also promote our lecture and field visit programme beyond the membership more effectively with social media links.
How did Ourlocality help resolve your problem?
We needed their hands on help to extract and re-organise the existing content, and take a backup of the old site, and then we needed to get the domain back into our hands and managed for us. We also needed to be able to manage the transactions volumes and catalogue easily, so asked for tools to help us manage, display and search the new digital archive.
What would you say to others?
It works well for us. We have limited in house expertise with website management and realise there is more to it that a bit of fancy design wizardry. Help is available almost 24/7 and only an email or phone call away.
And how much did it cost?
We are now on their £72pa plan for hosting, which includes domain management and space for future transactions uploads. We needed a volunteer or 2 to learn the ropes and on the back of our related project, https://el4.org.uk we got a few hours of training.
