“The Meeting Place for Volunteer Consultants and Clients” Goes Open Source

Southampton, UK (PRWEB) February 6, 2006

Newtraid.org is dedicated to providing a source of support to organisations and individuals, mainly but not exclusively in developing countries that cannot afford commercial consultancy.

After investigation and evaluation of various systems the Newtraid web site has been totally revised and now uses Joomla, an Open Source content management system. This enables the site to be rapidly updated with fresh content and news. As it is open source, it is free, which is important for a voluntary, not-for-profit organisation and is supported by a worldwide community.

Building on the change to Joomla! Newtraid have introduced a Community Forum using the Simple Machines Forum, another Open Source program.

The Forum enables Volunteers, Clients and anyone interested in Newtraid to freely talk about anything or everything connected with Newtraid and related topics.

More importantly visitors to the site can ask questions relating to their organisation or project and anyone can contribute an answer based on their skills, knowledge and experience.

Up until now, if anyone needed help though Newtraid they would be asked for details of their organisation and confirmation that they could not afford commercial consultancy, but now if anyone has a question that can be answered in the forum, it can be posted and should get an answer from any site visitor with the necessary skills, knowledge and experience – no problem! Help can still be requested via email or by using the request form for more complex and confidential questions but visitors are encouraged to try the forum first.

Typical questions for the forum might be:

Where can I get information about small-scale brick making?

Can I get spares for an XYZ pump?

Is there anybody who supplies used computers?

What is the best Open Source office software for our village school?

Future plans are to have forums for languages other than English – we want to make this a worldwide service, which anyone can turn to for support for their projects that benefit their local community.

# # #