Archive for November, 2007

Organisations learning how to get a presence on Facebook

Beth Kanter explores how Simon Berry of Ruralnet UK has enabled his organisation to have a presence of its own on Facebook. You too can leave your non profits’ Facebook tips and best practice for success over on Beth’s Blog. See the article at: Simon Berry’s Facebook Advice on Beth’s Blog.

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Free screenreader software to assist the blind and visually impaired

Over on David Wilcox’s Designing for Civil Society site, David recently reported about Roger Wilson-Hinds, who was demonstrating screenreader software at the e-democracy conference. The screenreader (known as ‘Thunder’) not only reads text out loud, but also can increase the text size for those that can see. It also helps with managing information, RSS feeds, podcasts and much more.

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Accessibility 2.0: UK newspaper websites featured in study

Today, I was contacted by Laura Oliver who writes for Journalism.co.uk - a leading website for journalists.

Laura informed me that their site is launching a series of features and articles that will be published throughout this week on the accessibility of the UK’s main newspaper websites to blind and visually impaired users. They’ve conducted their own study and assessment of the country’s largest newspaper media websites with a team of volunteers.

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Consultation on accessible government websites

The UK government has issued a consultation document on ‘Delivering Inclusive Websites’.
Read the full story at the Web Standards Project.

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sNews - an easy and simple web publishing tool for non profit organisations

I’ve been keeping an eye on sNews for a while now, and have given it a good road test for use as a simple CMS (content management system) that will meet the needs of many voluntary and community organisations.

The choice of CMS to use for any nonprofit organisation should be always considered carefully. Will it meet your needs now, but also in the future as your organisation grows?

I use a wide range of open source CMS, depending on the needs of the group or client that I’m designing for. MODx is and always will be one of my favourites for all sites from simple right through to complex needs as it is very web developer friendly and works well for web standards and accessibility. Drupal and Joomla I still use, although more occasionally now.
The CMS listed above I generally work with for medium to larger sites with more complex needs or for database integration.
What about the tools I use for smaller and simpler websites that need easy content managing and updating features?
Wordpress is another ‘CMS’ which essentially is a blogging tool, although very able and adaptable to become a good viable CMS for an organisation and I am increasingly developing more sites with Wordpress as a base at the request of clients and increased usage and recent promotion in the non profit technology area here in the UK. Wordpress is a good tool, although to me, isn’t the only one that should be considered as a ’smaller’ CMS for organisations.
(CMSMadeSimple is another great easy to use CMS which I aim to review at some point in the future).

So why sNews?

Wordpress as I mentioned above is at it’s heart a blogging tool. Often organisations, especially small ones such as clubs and associations and other small service providers stretched to capacity with lack of time, are seeking a way to have an effective website that they can manage and update content easily. When I create a site, and give training on Wordpress for example, I often find that for a simple website I’m saying “you don’t need that functionality, that’s if you are using it to blog” or “remember to tick that box in that corner if you don’t want comments” and so on. To the average occassional content updater, Wordpress has lots of information to wade through in the administration panel.

To those who are ’scared of technology’ I want to be able to give them a site that they can intuitively be able to create their content easily and quickly without the need to navigate through lots of different menus and become confused if they click on the wrong area. It makes sense to use a tool which they can easily use 100 percent rather than having a tool which they will only use a small amount of it’s capabilities. Hopefully, also they will keep the site updated on a regular basis by adding new features and content. This is where the beauty and simplicity of sNews can really help the person who is designated to update the content on a website.

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MODx, the most promising CMS of the year!

MODx wins the Most Promising CMS of the year 2007! This is a great achievement for the MODx team! Congratulations!
Read the celebration news from the MODx team.

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Snack Attack

The Media Snacker Respect meme started by Jerimiah Owyang is now at my blog courtesy of Beth Kanter who tagged me. I’m not the biggest fan of meme’s but this one did make me stop and think as it’s made me aware of our shift into how we’re using social media tools to get our information snacks compared to using a newspaper or other traditional media for example.

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