Looking for a bit of advice on setting up some form of online resource for a community group – somewhere for people to upload and share documents and a shared calendar. I don’t want it to be a Facebook group as not all the members are on this.
I’m not the most IT literate person anymore so ideas for something simple (and free) would be appreciated.

Thanks

I would recommend picking a WordPress Forum theme with Calendar functionality.
Hosting the site can be free or low cost on Google Cloud, or similar.
Get yourself a URL for £12 for 2 years and a free SSL and you’re away.

WordPress gives those with limited IT knowledge a chance to manage and customise a site through the WP built in CMS (Content Management System). There’s better solutions out there, but it’s an easy way of getting things started and see if your idea is even viable.

If you need a hand or pointers, just drop me a message.

Thanks Cokie

+1 for WordPress. For simple things (which yours is) it’s more than adequate. I know some webspace resellers have WP quick installers which are designed to work with how they have set things up so it’s dead easy to get started, click the icon, choose your name and theme and you are pretty much done.

The reseller I use charges £40/year for hosting (without backup plan) and domain name registration. Not free but not exactly expensive.

If you want it to be an email type group with reminder calendar then groups.io works quite nicely.  A bit like yahoo groups used to be.  You can login with google or facebook ids without creating a new account and then choose to either get emails messages when things are posted or check online yourself

Otherwise you might want to consider just persuading those without fb to sign up just for that.  It works well and most people already know how to use it.  The problem with creating yet another platform is that it is yet another platform and it can be difficult to generate enough interest to keep it alive

https://groups.io

You could also look at some of the online wiki options too.
Something like Nuclino https://www.nuclino.com/product or Tettra may work https://tettra.co/

I would steer clear of building anything yourself, if you can possibly avoid it. WordPress is relatively easy to set up and maintain, but:

The problem with creating yet another platform is that it is yet another platform and it can be difficult to generate enough interest to keep it alive

In my experience, this is the key point. FB is successful because lots of people use it already and it pushes updates and events out to the users; they don’t have to actively choose to go and visit yet another website to find out what is happening. People can post snippets of information quickly without having to remember another login and use a CMS.
You could consider using a FB Page, rather than a Group. Pages can be public, so you don’t have to sign up to FB to view the information on them.

I don’t have a FB account and have no interest in using it, but in my experience of developing online resources for a club, you’ll get a lot more interaction via FB or one of the other existing social media tools than you will through a custom built website.