When doped with organic dye laser molecules, porous sol-gel prepared silica constitutes a solid state dye laser medium. In this study such media have been shown to exhibit laser action using: (a) a krypton fluoride, 249nm, laser pump producing nano-second laser pulses and, (b) a coumarin 504 (507nm) pump producing microsecond laser pulses. The lasing thresholds were measured as 140kW/mm3 and 1.8kW/mm3 respectively, with lifetimes of 10-20 and 50-100 shots respectively.