It is what you make it and a look around the World Wide Web will demonstrate just how useful, or useless, a Website can be. As the Web is primarily a source of information, sites have to provide that information or get left in the ether of cyberspace. Let's take a look at the sites of a few not-for-profit organisations. The Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has one of the largest Websites of any Indian NGO. It runs to over a 100 pages, divided according to the organisation's activities.

There is a searchable database and archives, all put together by an in-house team and updated regularly. The site is hosted by OneWorld Online in the UK.

CSE is one of the few organisations to haverealised that through the Web, all things previously impossible -- selling services and goods abroad, networking globally, disseminating information-are now possible. So the CSE Website is geared to these activities. It is rich in content and people can easily find out the latest on a variety of environmental issues, albeit keeping in mind CSE's views. People can also buy pictures online after seeing a sample. They can, of course, download a thumbnail of the photo, but to get a larger, printable quality image, they have to pay CSE. Though this cannot be yet done on-line owing to Reserve Bank restrictions, it will not be very long before CSE finds a way around this.

The site is organised to allow people to delve deep into an issue, as deep as they want, and yet switch to another section. It would have been useful if it were possible to switch between other parts of the same section with equal ease. The other problem is that the site is extremely verbose and while you get all the information you want, you getlots that you don't.

Most useful is the searchable database that lets people find documents, specialists, organisations and photographs. This greatly enhances the utility of the Website and reduces the time a person would spend in finding information. Of course, the site is of interest primarily to environmentalists and planners looking for specific information, but that does not detract from the fact that they have discovered the Web, truly.

The Tata Energy Research Institute, another large Delhi-based NGO, has a comprehensive Website as well, though no database. The flat files are arranged so that people can switch from one level to another easily enough. But after a while, it is difficult to find your way out again. The hierarchy is sharply defined and once you have reached the lower levels of the site, it takes some doing to come out again. However, the site is easier to read than the CSE one in that it is less verbose.

The TERI site's utility could have been considerably enhanced if they had asearchable database. The advantage with databases is that they are easy to update and retrieve information from. If the Web server is set up properly, the database can be updated in real time so that visitors to the site get the latest information. It also reduces the time taken to get at this information. Sure it is expensive to set up a database, but then, see the utility. It's like having a library at your fingertips.

But these organisations are exceptions to the general rule. Most just believe the Web is a place to post an introduction to themselves, a few pages about their activities and let it rest at that. There is no attempt at updating a site and even less at making it useful to general visitors. Most visitors to a site would want to know a little about the organisation and more about the area they work in; the problem first and the organisation's role second. But it's usually the other way around in 99 per cent of the Web sites.

Then there are the rudimentary sites of smaller NGOs who haverecognised that the Web is a good way to reach people, but haven't much to say. They have pages on problems in their place of work and embedded in these pages are their contributions to social upliftment. Personally, I feel the size of a Website is unimportant provided it tells its story well, without too much of the I factor. If an NGO can afford a database, nothing like it; it really adds value to the work that has already gone into a Website.

Compare two sites www.narmada.org and www.kalinga.net/cart. The first is about the agitation against the Narmada dam -- a comprehensive site that tells the full story of the agitation against the dam, where it began and where it is going. There is an active news section, embellished with photographs. The latter is of a small organisation in Orissa and has a bare-bones approach. It gives an overview of what it does, its activities and the results of a workshop held long ago. That's where the matter ends. Another difference is that the Narmada site is updatedregularly, while the CART one is changed once in six months, if that.

I never get tired of repeating that simplicity is paramount and people do not take kindly to gimmicky sites. Older browsers cannot support most of the features available to designers today. Keeping this in mind, take a simple prototype and give your visitors general information, after which you can blow your own horn.

If you have a search engine on the site, it will enhance its utility many times over and let people find what they want in a fraction of the time that they would take to navigate from page to page. After all, time is money.