'The government has to help the farmers first. We've applied for a rate reduction, but it's a long-winded process. It will be at least a year until we get anything," says Martin Baucutt, owner of the Shepherds Inn in the village of Melmerby, eight miles from Penrith.

Long after the foot and mouth epidemic has left the headlines, and after almost 5m animals have been slaughtered, the disease's impact is being felt by small businesses in rural communities from Cornwall to Cumbria. The Shepherds Inn, an award-winning pub, has felt the effect. "There have been very few tourists about. The initial effect was at Easter, when trade was 30% or 40% down. It has been slow since then," says Baucutt. "If business is 40% down, then we are losing income of £25,000 to £30,000 every month."

Baucutt's pub is just one of many small businesses using community website UKVillages.co.uk to try to rebuild trade in the months after foot and mouth. The site lets visitors from 27,528 communities across the UK to post their own information and advertising - rather like a local newsletter crossed with yellow pages. If you look up information on the nearby area, a signpost directs you to the Shepherds Inn; its owner is hoping that it directs enough users in real life to help make up some of the £70,000 in trade he has lost.

Launched in April 2000, UKVillages predates the epidemic, but as a way for communities to help themselves, it was tailor-made for it. "If you talk to rural communities, they feel that, not surprisingly, there's a squeeze on spending from government at the moment," says founder Rupert Dick, a former IT consultant who designed the site so that his local amateur dramatic society would not arrange performances that clashed with events in nearby villages. "Businesses such as farm shops, bed-and-breakfasts and pubs have been posting on our site to let people know they are still open for business. US bookings are starting again, and many are coming to our site."

The site isn't just about advertising though: many rural communities have posted information for locals, whose movement may be restricted due to foot and mouth. They're hoping that the information will reassure also reluctant tourists from overseas. Currently, one in eight visitors to the site, which logged 2.25m page impressions in June, is from the US or Canada. The majority, though, are from Brits who may be looking for a plumber in the nearest town, or a holiday cottage at the other end of the country.

Thanks to a deal with Consignia, each local post office has its own page to post local information, and you can search within a set radius of the nearest town to find destinations and businesses that you didn't know existed. "No one who is not from the area would log on and look for Melmerby unless they were specifically coming here. But if they look for Penrith, that includes the villages nearby," explains Baucutt.

UKVillages isn't just a noticeboard: Dick wants to use the site to help under-threat rural communities rebuild themselves as well. For example, it has been giving its users the official response to foot and mouth in each area: "We include tailored links from Maff and the county councils on the site too, which we spend a lot of time finding - because sometimes on the council web pages the information is buried," he says.

For organisations that need money, rather than words, Dick has created a fund that he calls the "community kitty", which any visitor to the website can apply for. "We have always said that we're not a big, money-grabbing website. So of all the sponsorship we get, we give a percentage of that to a pot - that's the kitty. We'll dish out the pot twice a year," he says.

With a typical grant of £100, the donations are designed to be small but efficient. "It's easy to think that the donations are insignificant. But for the people getting them, they certainly are not," Dick says, showing applications that he's had already: a ramp for a 130-year-old village post office in Norfolk, new shelves for a playgroup in Cornwall that has been attacked by woodworm, and a television for a community group in Llandysul, on a local council estate that has neither a public telephone nor a shop.

The site's sponsors aren't only filling the kitty, but giving UKVillagesa source of income (it aims to be making an operating profit at the end of the year). "It fits our philosophy perfectly, because we're a mutual building society and we want to keep strong links to the community in the north-west," says John Barbour, a spokesman for the 51-branch Cheshire Building Society. "Our sponsorship is all about supporting local organisations. There's a lot to be said for the spirit of mutual self-help."

Because businesses can choose the areas they want to sponsor, the site's revenues come from sources both global (Tesco, Shell Direct) and local (the Heath Sports and Social Club, Royston).

Ukvillages has a long road ahead if it is to achieve its aims. Local part-time staff supplement the five staff in central office (Dick's converted stable at the back of his house), to help build momentum across thousands of communities: 80,000 regular visitors still only means three per community. Baucutt, for example, worries that the volume of traffic isn't enough to support the smallest rural communities. "It's an excellent idea, but it's not prolifically used yet - our village has only four businesses on the site, which I've encouraged them to put up."

According to marketing director Ellie Stonely, UKVillageswill succeed because it combines an understanding of its users with the self-sufficiency it is encouraging in rural communities. "At our offices there are chickens wandering in and out and the puppy falls in the pond every now and then," she says. "But we're a lean and mean organisation."