Nexo launches home-page building site for groups and clubs
Sample Nexo site
(Credit: Nexo)Pitched as "MySpace for groups" at Demo 07 last week, Nexo is a new Web publishing service that makes it gratifyingly easy to create a site for a club, team, or group of any sort.
There are a lot of easy ways to get a free site on to the Web right now, from MySpace (not a bad solution if you want to advertise your group to 40 trillion teenagers) to Wiki services like Wetpaint, but Nexo's focus on group dynamics pays off. The site is a good option if what you need is to keep a group of people informed and in touch with each other.
Once you set up the framework for your group site by adding elements like a home page, a calendar, and a forum, you can then invite people in your group to participate and contribute to the site.
It sounds humdrum, but Nexo has a good blend of structure and openness. For example, it's easy to set up a simple-to-use photo page, and it's also simple for anybody in the group (who has permission) to add to it, either by uploading their own pictures or by pointing to their Flickr images. Videos work in a similar way.
Nexo supports many item types.
(Credit: Nexo)There are nice little Web 2.0 touches in Nexo that delighted me when I tried the service. Two examples: First, comments or journal entries that people leave on a page are updated in real-time for all to see; you don't have to reload a page. Second, the photo upload tools gives you a quick zoom-and-crop option when you add pictures. It's a little thing, but it makes adding a portrait to your profile page much easier.
If you want to set up a family site, you might want to use Vox, which is based on a blogging platform. But anyone who works with a group or club that could use its own Web site would be wise to check out Nexo.
Rafe Needleman writes about start-ups, new technologies, and Web 2.0 products, as editor of CNET's Webware. E-mail Rafe.
The web stuff based off of groupware applications is a dime-a-dozen these days... sure I can post a website, and set up collaboration tools to discuss things with other members, etc.
What I can't do is manage membership lists (including upload/download of them in some simple format like Tab-Delimited), give people a PayPal link to our PayPal account, have automated reminders sent of membership lapse coming up, etc.
If the features of one of these (so-called) Web 2.0 based collaboration servers could have all of those features added on as a service at a reasonable price (with better pricing for non-profits), as well as both public and "private" areas for the Officers/Board, and perhaps Committees... THAT would be perfect.
Add in a simple to use newsletter upload/post/mailing list mechanism... I write the newsletter, and upload it once a month... the software handles sending it out on the proper day to those subscribed, and automatically posts it to the website.
The whole thing could be funded by taking a percentage of the online transactions, as one example of a business model for it... as long as I still had a way to add members who'd sent in the old-fashioned paper checks.
If *ALL* of the above were done... it would be worth gushing over as much as you have over this lame website that just customizes a standard collaboration server for you...
I don't want file sharing - I want the computer to work on the day-to-day nitty-gritty junk of running a club so we can free up the talented volunteers that do the work to do better things!
In addition, I would like to have a way to have a few public pages for people who wanted to know more about our group as well as private pages that are accessible only for group members. I would also love to be able to change the password for group members easily and as often as I like.
Another thing I would love for our group is an easy FAQ form that was easy to fill out and publish so I could post FAQs about our group to the interested public.