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Support Groups

FROM: Damon

What NEED does this meet?
Provide software & webspace to make it simple for new virtual support groups to be created & maintained.

What is the APPROACH?
Something like phpwebsite could be used to provide useful, interactive websites that are easy to maintain.

Some of phpwebsite's features: news, calendar, comments, photoalbums, FAQ, and polls. See http://phpwebsite.appstate.edu/.

It could also use mailman for providing email discussion forums.

What are the BENEFITS to people?
There are lots of small charities that may like to have a virtual support group but don't have the resources to create & maintain one.

We could make it so that a new support group website could be created with practically a single click.

What is the COMPETITION?
There are lots of support groups out there, e.g. see http://www.patient.co.uk/selfhelp.asp

But they may not have the range of features that could be made available with phpwebsite or similar tools.

What BUDGET & LOGISTICS are required?
It may need some programmer time to tailor something like phpwebsite
for the needs of support groups.

The other cost is the bandwidth & sysadmin/maintenance.

November 4, 2003 in Connecting People, User Created Content, Web-In-A-Box Systems | Permalink

Comments

Actually I've just realized that Yahoo groups offer a lot of this functionality.

But I still like the idea of making it very easy for small charities to set up a website like this. They probably won't want to be a yahoo group.

Posted by: Damon at Nov 15, 2003 6:07:21 PM