How to … Set up a website for tenants

"We felt we needed to make the group more accessible and that a website would be a good way to do this," says Anthony Wiles, chairman of Hull United Residents and Tenants Federation. "Our website means information about the group is available not only to members but to any internet user as well, so, hopefully, it will encourage more people to become involved."

HURAT, a federation of 44 tenant and resident groups, launched its website at the end of January. It includes detailed information about the group and what it does, and also carries press releases, a copy of a recent letter sent by the group to Nick Raynsford, and a copy of the group's written submission to Hull council in response to the council's interim plan for property reductions.

"No single person decided what information should go on the site," says Wiles. "The committee had a general discussion about it and we decided between us what to include. The site will be updated as often as it needs to be; at the moment the situation changes almost daily, so the site is likely to change very regularly."

HURAT secretary Lesley Brookes was charged with organising the site. She and her partner both work in IT so they already had the skills to set up the website themselves and it didn't cost the group anything at all; but even for groups that don't have any contacts with the relevant experience, the process need not be difficult or expensive if only a simple design is needed.

"First you need a service provider [see jargon buster, below]. A lot of them give you web space for free, but even the ones that charge aren't very expensive. We have 50MB of space allotted to us but we are nowhere near using that yet; that much should be more than plenty for anyone.

"Then you need your content – that's the stuff that's going to appear on the site, the words and photos. It's not difficult – every computer these days has a text editor on it. You have to use common sense on what to put up there for everyone to see, but contact details to allow people to get in touch are a good idea.

"It's not a good idea to put normal word processing files onto the internet because people can change them. So for documents attached to your website you should use PDFs because people can look at them but not change them.

"Someone has to upload it all and maintain the website by putting on new information as it's needed. My partner does that for us, so it doesn't cost anything.

If you had to pay someone it could get expensive, depending on how often you wanted them to upload new information.

"The final thing I would recommend is to register the site with search engines so people can find you without knowing your internet address. A lot of them, Google for instance, don't charge for registration, but for others, you can pay as much as £200. These are the best ones, though; on the free ones, you might not appear as the first choice when people look for you."