Articles

Top five websites

Paul Devlin names his favourite sites.

Arts Professional
3 min read

Paul Caplan

 http://www.clubbz.com
There are a lot of ways for people to find opportunities to participate in the arts and crafts in their own area, but there hasn’t really been one central, national database of groups, clubs and societies. This fills that gap, and not only enables groups to list themselves and their activities free, but also lets them create their own websites and has a handy postcode search facility for people wanting to find a local group to join.

http://www.meetomatic.com
Trying to get people in the same room at the same time can be a nightmare. Meet-O-Matic goes someway to taking the pain out of getting meeting dates arranged quickly and efficiently. Simply choose a selection of potential dates and Meet-O-Matic creates a link which you can circulate to people. They then visit the site and tick their available dates. Once everyone has visited the site the results are automatically compiled and the most convenient meeting date and time automatically selected. Phew!

http://www.wegottickets.com
A lot of larger venues have their own online ticket systems, but for smaller venues or for individual art or craft groups it isn’t financially viable to have a bespoke online booking system. This site lets people sell tickets for their events online, and it is free – the ticket buyer pays a small booking fee, which covers the costs. The site has a really simple search facility for people to find events in their area. There are hundreds of events and tickets being sold on the site – are yours?

http://www.google.com/alerts
What are people saying about you or your organisation? How often does your website get mentioned on other websites? What do the public have to say about the key issues that affect your organisation and sector? Google Alerts lets you choose key words, phrases or website addresses and then automatically notifies you by email whenever they appear on the web. For example, every time the words ‘voluntary arts’ or ‘amateur arts’ are used on any website or blog anywhere in the world I get an automatic notification. Hopefully people are saying nothing but good things about you. This is one way to find out.