Climate Action Silsden

A Town Doing the Work

Climate Action Silsden is a group of local residents who plant hedges, mend toasters, and help their neighbours cut their heating bills. Three working groups — Biodiversity, Energy, Zero Waste. No staff. No budget to speak of. Just people with an afternoon spare.

By any measure, they’ve achieved a lot. 1,500+ items repaired at the monthly Repair Café. 150m of native hedge and 32 trees planted at the primary school. 25 households given free home energy audits. 4,000+ plastic bottles kept out of landfill through the Refill Shop.

Almost none of it was visible online.

So I built them a website that shows off the work — and keeps the community upto date with their events through a single google calendar.

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The Challenge

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What I Built

A website that carries the group’s work properly — and then gets out of the way.

Events That Update Themselves

• Google Calendar → website, automatically — a custom integration syncs the group’s existing calendar into WordPress on a daily cron, with a manual “Sync Now” button for when something’s added last minute
• No new process to learn — volunteers carry on using the calendar they already use. The website simply follows
• Always current — the homepage and events page show what’s genuinely on this month, not whatever someone last remembered to type in

A Home for Each Working Group

• Three group pages — Biodiversity, Energy and Zero Waste, each with its own projects, stats and route to getting involved
• Custom fields, not custom code every time — ACF-powered content areas mean the group can update their own pages without touching a builder
• News filtered by group — a bespoke PHP query so each group page pulls its own posts automatically as they’re published

Copy That Leads With the Benefit

• Bills first, carbon second — “Cut Energy Bills at Home”, “Waste Less, Spend Less”. The environmental case is there; it just isn’t the opening line
• No jargon — no net zero, no circular economy, no climate emergency
• Numbers doing the talking — a custom shortcode for the impact counters, because mixed-format stats (150m, 1,500+) needed handling properly
• A written archive — news posts on water butts, balsam bashing, home energy audits and free light bulbs, each researched, fact-checked and built to be found in search

One Obvious Next Step

• “There’s a Place for Everyone” — a sign-up form on every page, framed around however much time someone actually has
• Newsletter capture in the footer
• Contact and event details consistent throughout, so nobody has to hunt

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The Results

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What the Client Says

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Looking Ahead

The site is live and the calendar sync is running. From here, the news archive keeps building — each post another way for someone in BD20 to find the group — and the platform is ready for whatever the working groups take on next.

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Key Takeaways

For any volunteer-run or community organisation:

1. Automate the thing that always gets forgotten — events go stale first. Sync them from a tool people already use
2. Lead with the personal benefit — cheaper bills and a mended kettle get people through the door; the wider cause keeps them there
3. Show the numbers — a small group with a real track record should never look like a small group without one
4. Build for the busiest volunteer — if updating it needs a manual, it won’t get updated

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Ready to Get Your Organisation Online?

If you run a community group, charity or membership organisation and want a website that works as hard as your volunteers do, let’s talk.

Book a Free Website Review

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Related

• Website Design Services — Professional WordPress websites for businesses
• Visit Climate Action Silsden — See the site live