About a year and a half ago I started a little side project to solve a very specific, very small problem: I couldn't find anything in the Renfrewshire Schools Pipe Band WhatsApp group.
Competition dates, committee meeting minutes, the details for the last ceilidh fundraiser - it was all in there somewhere, buried under dozens of messages about various things I didn't need right now - missing jackets, sign up requests for the Club 100, and a slew of "sounds great" or thumbs-up replies to a message I hadn't even had a chance to see yet. As a parent trying to keep up, I'd scroll and scroll and eventually just ask someone directly, which meant someone else had to stop and answer the same question they'd already answered three times that month.
So I built noticeboards.info - a digital version of the village noticeboard. Take the important stuff out of the noise and put it somewhere it's instantly easy to find.
What it actually is
Each group gets its own noticeboard on a subdomain - think thistledown-pipe-band.noticeboards.info - with a clean, public page listing the things that actually matter: upcoming events, announcements, committee updates. No scrolling required to find last month's minutes. You post something once, and it's just there whenever anyone needs it.
How it's gone so far
The Renfrewshire Schools Pipe Band parents have used it through this season to track competition events, committee minutes, and fundraising announcements from a recent ceilidh. It's been well received - which, for a project built in spare hours around a day job, is a nice thing to hear.
Beyond pipe bands
The pattern behind a noticeboard - a small group, a handful of things people need to know, no appetite for another app or another group chat - turns up everywhere once you start looking for it:
- Youth football clubs, posting fixtures, cancellations, and AGM dates.
- Running clubs, listing weekly meet-up times and routes so nobody's stuck asking "is it the usual spot?"
- Village halls, keeping a public list of what's on and when the hall's available to book.
- Parent and toddler groups, sharing term dates and one-off session changes.
- The local pub, listing quiz nights, live music, and the football fixtures they're showing - with the bands playing there able to list their own gig schedules on their own board.
- A standing board game night between friends - as informal as it gets, but still needing everyone to know whose house it's at and what's on the table.
None of these groups need a full events platform or an expensive paid app subscription. They need a page that's easy to update and easier to find.
Try it
It's now open for general registration - anyone can spin up a noticeboard for their own group. If that sounds useful for something you're part of, give it a go: noticeboards.info
What's next
I'm building this the way I build most things - in the open, in spare evenings, one sprint at a time. Weekly email digests are next on the roadmap, so people who'd rather get updates in their inbox than check a page don't have to lift a finger. I'll be writing about that build here as it happens, same as everything else in this Changelog.
If you've got questions, feedback, or a group you think it'd suit, I'd love to hear from you.
Originally published at https://chrisshennan.com/blog/i-built-noticeboardsinfo-to-escape-a-whatsapp-group-now-anyone-can-use-it