Parish Council Websites Website and Email Packages for English Parish Councils and Welsh Community Councils
The PARISH COUNCIL WEBSITES .CO.UK Solution!
Domain name registration (Basic and Standard)
- Interactive Information Services Limited recommends that we register the domain for your parish council as "yourparishcouncil-pc.gov.uk" e.g. www.shawbury-pc.gov.uk
- Interactive Information Services Limited ISP is registered with JANET the naming authority and names can be ordered from us for £150 for 2 years.
- Alternatively we can register the domain with Nominet as "yourparishcouncil.org.uk" for £20 for 2 years and every two years thereafter.
Hosting of your web site (Basic and Standard)
- Hosting is on our own servers in London which are fully managed and we only have web sites designed and run by Interactive Information Services Limited on them.
- You are not sharing with any one who is likely to write rogue software to stop the servers running or compromise their security.
- We control the server but still allow you to update your site.
- For 12 months hosting £100.00
Email accounts (Basic and Standard)
- Interactive Information Services Limited provide each domain with 3 free email accounts one being for example parishclerk@yourparishcouncil-pc.gov.uk and chairperson@yourparishcouncil-pc.gov.uk
- It is possible for all your Councillors to have an email account but there would be an additional charge of £25 per year for up to 15 accounts.
Basic Parish Web Site Package - Only £199 for any computer via a web browser.
- Our experience has shown that not every council wants the same web site content but the Information Commissioner has provided a template for the information that must be adhered to and Councils are obliged to provide for the general public. Our Basic web site allows a user to add their own information and edit the pages. All this for only £199
- The Basic Package starter kit includes a template with your Parish name across the top and unpopulated pages but with the ICO recommended menu and empty pages in place. This includes all the components included in the Standard Package but only the bare bones of a web site.
- Our basic package web site will therefore provide you with the structure required by the Information Commissioner.
- The basic package provides you with an easy to use Content Management System specifically designed for Parish and Local Councils.
- Type in information, upload images and create your own links, all you would expect from a Content Management System.
- Two administrator levels for you to allow certain different people administrator rights on only one or more pages and a top level administrator who can edit all the pages on the site.
- A fully integrated PDF document management system that has been tried and tested by both local and parish councils that fully adheres to the Information Commissioners recommendations.
- Accessibility controls are included to enable visually impaired to alter the way the web site is displayed on their screen, by changing the contrast and the font size.
- Version control is the added safety net for the administrators, make a mistake with the main pages and you can "rewind" back to page before you started work on it. Again a very useful tool.
- If you want us to fill in the information on your new pages for you, we can do this for up to 20 pages for the one off fee of £300. E.g. you provide us with documents in Microsoft word format or similar ad we do the rest!
- If the information is not already in a digital form we will be pleased to quote you for inputting the information.
- The fully integrated pdf Document Management system (Basic and Standard) is included with all our Parish Council Websites and is almost certainly the heart of the package.
- Once you have converted your word processed documents into pdf file format you can:-
- Easily upload your documents onto your web site from your computer.
- Hold the pdf documents in specific administrator defined categories e.g. Agendas, Minutes, etc.
- Display the latest five file uploads on the home page and the others are all displayed on the specific pages of the web site.
- The pdf documents become fully searchable by any word or phrase within the whole content.
- Note - If you have Microsoft Office 2007 you can download a free pdf writer from the Microsoft web site.. Any other word processor and you may need to purchase a copy of for example, PDF Factory software, currently less than £40
Controls and Tools
- Version Controls (Basic and Standard) - An invaluable tool! For the main body of the web site it is a useful to be able to go back to an earlier version of the page you are working on and make it live on the site as it was before.
- Access controls (Basic and Standard) - Access controls are included on the site pages to provide access for users with visual impairments including large and extra large text and high contrast.
Web design
- Interactive Information Services Limited will also provide you with a design service to make the web site look and feel unique to your parish and will include images provided by you taken in your parish.
- A web page template specifically designed for your parish or town will be provided for only £350.
- The web page template will come with all the pages you are required to complete to fulfil the ICO obligation. (The pages will be hidden until you have information on them. You can make the pages live when you are ready, giving you the time to build your site at your own pace.)
Enhanced Web Site Package Components
- The following Additional Components are available for both the Basic Site and Standard Web Sites. Please see the separate price list. Once purchased a component can be added to any page within the web site.
- Contact Form Component - Allows the public to email a question or comment directly to the Clerk's email address
- Events Calendar - An Events Calendar is a must for the Parish Council and can of course be extended to a whole parish events calendar.
- Today's Events Ticker across the top of the front page (This extra is only available when ordered with the Events Calendar)
- Latest News - Provides a component for the Clerk or anyone else on your Parish Council who has been given administration rights and a password to add latest news contributions.
- Addition of a RSS feed from the Latest News (This extra is only available in conjunction with the Latest News component)
- Google Maps Reporter - A great way for people to indicate exactly where there is a street lamp not working or a pothole or anywhere there is a problem on a Google map or from an aerial view.
- Once the report is filled in an email is sent to the Clerk with the name and contact details of the person reporting the problem, a description of the problem and an exact map location which when clicked on shows the location on a map of the parish.
- Photo Gallery - You can upload a selection of images directly from your computer desk top, and our server will do all the work for you to change the sizes of the images and really makes it easy for you.
- Set up a Survey - for example - for your Parish Plan. Interactive Information Services Limited will provide you with the mechanism to set up an online survey with various answer types including multiple choice single responses, multiple choice with multiple responses, true or false, yes or no, text box for a longer answer, matrix, etc.. The component will draw graphs from the results for easy presentation of the data.
- RSS feed reader - The RSS feed reader component can be added to any page and can be used to put RSS feeds on your site. Good ones to use might be the local paper for the top 10 stories of the day. They automatically get updated by the Local paper or you could put the BBC News on!
- YouTube - Do you have a video you want to add to a page?. Upload it to YouTube and just insert the component into your page and you then have video on your site.
- Twitter feed reader - Twitter feeds are the way to get people in your parish involved in parish affairs. Just add the component to your page and create your Twitter account for all to see.
- Parish Boundary Google Map - Your parish boundary will be plotted onto a Google map and the Parish will be displayed as an overlay. Fully zoomable using Google Maps
- Google Street View - The component can be added to any page to enhance the users experience when looking at your parish web site.
Administrator Panel and Administrator Assistance
- All Parish Web Site packages come with the ability for an administrator to log into the site and create and update the pages.
- You are provided with 2 levels of administrator. One level has overall access and editing rights and a second level of administrator who can be restricted to the editing of only those pages specified by the overall administrator.
- You can also have a number of top level administrators who can add and edit all the pages and control the access for second level administrators.
- At Interactive Information Services Limited we are well aware of the learning curves that Parish and Town Clerks are being asked to go through with the advent of new technology and new media and we have devised a process to help fulfil the obligations to ICO and give your Clerk time to learn how carry out these steps for themselves.
- We offer a very cost effective service of converting your minutes, agendas, standing orders, parish plan etc. to PDF format from Microsoft Office format and uploading your documents on to the relevant pages for you.
- We also offer a help package that is second to none to update your pages for you.
Initially we can populate the web pages with information supplied to us and get the site up and running in a short time. There will be a one off charge of £300 for populating up to 15 pages, provided all information is supplied in a suitable digital format it is only £20 per page. For an additional 12 months subscription of £150 Interactive Information Services Limited will update your pages, convert your Word documents to PDF's and upload them to your web site. The following year your Clerk can take over at no cost or you can continue with our support at the same price. - LogMeIn - We have experience of helping Clerks by demonstrating how to carry out certain tasks using LogMeIn to access your computer from our desktop and guide you through the process of updating pages.
- LogMeIn can be set up so that Interactive Information Services Limited can only enter your computer when invited to do so and you control the access session fully while watching your screen. This has proved invaluable to Clerks who have used our service. Set up cost and LogMeIn licence for one computer for 12 months is £40 per year.
- Online Help Desk - Our help desk will provide help via any one of the following, email support, Telephone support, Skype support, LogMeIn and the help desk is available 9.00 to 5.00 on Monday to Friday excluding Bank Holidays.
- JANET and Commercial ISP's
Charges for New Name Requests as displayed on the JANET web site - The charge for the creation of a new domain name is £94 including VAT. This includes the first two years' maintenance charge, which covers all reasonable changes to delegation of the zone associated with the name. The maintenance charge of £47 including VAT will then come into effect two years from the date that the name was originally accepted by the Naming Committee, and biennially thereafter.
At Interactive Information Services Ltd we pride ourselves on providing a superior service for Parish Councils and helping them fulfil the requirements of the Information Commissioners Office. Please contact us for a detailed discussion and to arrange a visit to demonstrate our web sites.