If you’re responsible for your nonprofit’s website and you’d like to talk to someone about it there are places you can go for support and to share ideas. The Charity Web Forum is a Yahoo group for the managers and designers of charity websites. There’s some good, frequent discussion and it’s well-worth signing up, reading other peoples’ messages and joining in the conversation.

If you’re developing your charity’s website, what’s the worst that could happen? Well, here are some horror stories that I’ve been told by nonprofit organisations and a few lessons we can draw from their experiences.

Planning your charity’s new website should be a structured task. You need to think about who your audience is, what images to use, the look and style, what content you’ll be publishing, and your hosting requirements; and you should consider all these points before commissioning a web designer. Sounds daunting? Not if you use this worksheet to help you plan your organisation’s website.

Buying a domain name is inexpensive, from £20 per year, but once you’ve put a website address on your nonprofit’s letterhead and email addresses on your business cards, losing or changing it can be costly. Unfortunately, the ownership of domains can sometimes be disputed, requiring negotiation, arbitration and associated costs.