There are several other systems running on the same platform as Voice, which are closing in March 2020. They are: BedsParishes, BucksVoice, EssexInfo, and SurreyCommunity.

Voice offers free websites for community, not-for-profit and voluntary groups. Voice can provide free websites to any groups that are currently using these other systems.

  • Voice is free to use.
  • It uses the same software platform, so you'll be familiar with how it works.
  • Voice can offer a partial transfer of your site to Voice. It is not a complete transfer and you will still have to do some work to complete setting up your new site, but it will probably be quicker than starting from scratch (see below for full details).
  • If you have your own domain name (website address such as www.example.org.uk) you can continue to use this with your Voice site. If you don't have your own domain name, then your new site will have a e-voice.org.uk address instead. You can automatically divert any visitors from your old site to your new site until the old site closes.
  • Voice don't provide technical support other than through the forums and online documentation.

Moving to Voice

If you want to move your site to Voice, we recommend that you do the following:

  1. Register as a user on the Voice site and apply for a website.
  2. If you want your site transferred to Voice (rather than starting afresh), send a request to support@e-voice.org.uk to transfer your site. You'll need to mention the address of your existing site and the address of your new Voice site (ie; where the site should be trasferred from and to). Before you request this, it's important to note that:
    • We can only transfer content from other sites built using the same sofware platform. That is, sites built on: BedsParishes, BucksVoice, EssexInfo, and SurreyCommunity.
    • The transfer won't be immediate - it may take a few days, but you'll be notified when it has been completed.
    • The transfer will include the following items of your site:
      • Pages and Assets (the items you can see on the 'content' and 'asset library' tabs of your admin pages).
      • Albums and Pictures in the Photo Albums application
      • Files and Folders in the Our Files application
      • Events from the Events Calendar application
      No other application content will be moved, nor will user accounts (anything listed under 'users and permissions'), site settings, theme settings (anything listed under 'site settings' or 'look and feel') or reports (from the 'reports' tab).
  3. The transfer is an automated process and is offered on an 'as is' basis. Whilst it should transfer the majority of content without a problem you will need to check your pages once the transfer is complete and fix any issues. For example, depending on how they've originaly been set up, some links and inludelets may need to be updated after the transfer. Voice cannot offer any support to correct any issues resulting from the automated transfer.
  4. You will need to manually set up:
    • the site theme (look and feel tab)
    • applications (applications tab)
    • members and additional admins (users and permissions tab)
    • site settings such as name, description, domain name (site settings tab)
  5. When you're happy that your new Voice site is ready:
    • We recommend that you set up a redirect from your old site to automatically take visitors to your new site. You can do this with the Use External Site setting on your old site.
    • If you use your own domain name (website address such as www.example.org.uk) liaise with the company that you purchased it from to update its settings so that it points to your Voice site. You can find the necessary settings on the site settings > site domain tab of your new Voice site's admin page.
  6. You're done!