Firstly, Welcome! I hope you find this website helpful and informative.
The idea for OC (Open Caerleon) has been developed over two years of OC being a Facebook group, with one aim in mind, ‘Too bring the community together’ the group has done some brilliant things in the community, it has been a source of information, a source to help people out and a source of getting people together, i would hope this continues with the website.
Whilst the Facebook group has had a lot of success, and has grown to 5.5k members, we have noted that there are over 9k people living in Caerleon, and around 2k in the surrounding areas such as Ponthir, Langstone etc. with around 115k people living in Newport. so we asked, where are all these people hiding? we came to the conclusion that not everyone is on facebook, this obviously highlighted the issue of having a community group on Facebook, that can only accessed by a fraction of the residents. we would hope this website bridges the gap and brings the whole community together, no matter what social media platform you use, or not.
I will briefly guide you around this website, there are three main things i wish to draw your attention too.
- 1: The Business Directory
- 2: The Forum
- 3: The Articles
The Business Directory:
OC the Facebook group was created to be a source of local information. we banned adverts as we felt the group would be abused and spammed, Such is with Facebook groups, they do get spammed quite a lot. We did try to accommodate businesses in Caerleon, but found by doing so we upset those who lived in Caerleon but run a business outside of Caerleon, and in turn, we upset those not in Caerleon at all but felt they had a good business that the residents of Caerleon would like to know about. So we had no option but to ban adverts altogether. this wasn’t an easy decision, but it was the one that kept the majority happy. With all of this in mind, the 1st thing we developed for this website is a Business Directory. Allowing business somewhere to advertise and showcase their business. You do need to register to create your listing, but listing is free. your customers can see your listing, call you direct from the listing and registered members can email you direct from your listing. to add your listing, follow the link above to go to the directory, and click ‘Create A Listing’ where you will be prompted to either login or register. If you have any issues please use the contact form to get in touch. You will also notice there are areas on the front page to advertise, please drop us a line if you wish to be featured on the front page. We also wish to help as many charities and good causes as we can, so please also get in touch if you wish to be featured.
The Forum:
In addition to the issues with running a community group on facebook, as detailed above, Another one of the issues we faced was information being lost, posts in the group get dropped off in favour for the latest post. we don’t control the info, and we cannot split it into any sort of category, meaning that info gets lost all the time. we can only pin one informative post in the group. So we have gone back to a forum style Bulletin Board. We’ve called it the Community Forum. Please note: You will need to register an account on the website to access, post, reply etc in the forum. When you have, you will be able to post topics into the forums we have setup. I’ve tried to add as many as i can think of, but if you have any suggestions for more, please get in touch.
The Articles:
You will notice the whole website is based upon a News / media website. it will be article driven, we will try to post as much quality content and news as we can and as it happens, Poltics was previously banned on OC, However, on this website politics will be allowed, but only in the politics forum. Please get in touch if you wish to contribute in some way, either by providing us with the articles, or becoming a contributor in the website and directly publishing them. this could be your chance to talk about your hobby or skills, or maybe you are a budding journalist that wishes to try your hand at publishing on this website. if you do please get in touch.
Finally (for now) If there are any suggestions you have for the website, or wish to get involved in some sort of way please get in touch.
Mike.
