Archive for the 'Web design' Category

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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Women working in non-profit technology - are we visible?

A couple of days ago, Beth Kanter put a shout out to help her with a session she’s running at the forthcoming She’s Geeky Conference. Her session will be directed at women who might be working in the corporate or business sector and are thinking of switching to the nonprofit sector. Beth asked a series of questions including:

• What are the opportunities and challenges of being the techie in a nonprofit organisation?
• If you’re a techie in the nonprofit sector, how and why did you land in the nonprofit sector?

Head over to Beth’s article to see some interesting responses, you can add your comments there too, and I’d welcome any comments you may have too on my blog. I look forward to seeing the outcomes of the discussions that happen at the conference and hope to see events like this for women in technology over here in the UK one day soon.

Interestingly, the results of Web Design Survey which took place in April 2007. A List Apart and An Event Apart conducted a survey of people who make websites. Close to 33,000 web professionals answered the survey’s 37 questions, providing the first data ever collected on the business of web design and development as practiced in the U.S. and worldwide.

As soon as the results were published I was keen to see the outcomes. I wasn’t surprised to see the low numbers of women responding to the survey, and have seen some great conversations about women in web design and also the nonprofit angle about these results unfolding.

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Free tools to test your site for accessibility

Following on from my posting earlier in the month where a US court issued two landmark decisions that the Target Corporation has to make their website accessible to blind people, web accessibility is an area which many nonprofits and charities still find difficult to implement on their sites.
In this article I’m going to show a few of the free easy to use tools available which can help you with testing your website not only for accessibility but also usability and web standards too. Later in the article, I’ll list some other useful resources and services that are available to help charities and organisations.

Accessibility and usability are key to a successful site. You will want your site to be accessible to the widest possible audience regardless of ability or browsing technology, including those who have visual, hearing, motor and cognitive impairments. Conformance to the W3C guidelines helps to make the Web more accessible to users with disabilities and benefits all users. In short, it makes the web a better place for everyone.

If you are the person responsible in your organisation for creating or updating your website, there are some free easy to use tools to help you test and examine your site.

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A different and free way to make a website - use a wiki

If you are looking for a simple and quick way to make a website for your organisation, there are many tools and choices available that are not only cheap or free, but also easy to use for the end user with no complicated need for in depth technical knowledge and ability. In this article, we’ll be looking at Wiki’s and how they could be used as a tool for your website. Their are many possibilities available when using a wiki. It could be used to create your website, support training and learning, creating a campaign or for sharing news, projects and developments within your own organisation.

Remember though when assessing which tool to use to create your website, there are a wide ranges of choices and options available. Wiki’s are just one of many tools that can help. Simple blogging software such as Wordpress for example, can also easily enable effective participation and for simple collaborative website projects.

Creating a website for your organisation using a wiki

A few weeks ago, Michele Martin of the Bamboo Project Blog ran a series of articles showing step by step how a non-profit organisation can use a wiki to build and produce a website. Michele used Wetpaint as her wiki tool.

Michele explained in her blog about why wiki’s can be a good way to produce a simple website for organisations.

“A couple of reasons why I think a wiki can be a good choice for building your site:

• Easy to set up and update - Wikis are really easy to use and require minimal technological expertise. Because of their ease of use, this also makes them easy to update because you don’t have to rely on your “web guy” to do the updates for you.
• Built-in Two-Way Communication - As you’ll see, wiki’s have built-in comment features, which means that you can get immediate and ongoing feedback from site visitors, something that many web citizens are increasingly expecting from any site they visit.”

Obviously, a wiki isn’t going to give you a professional custom designed website, but for many small to medium non-profit organisations, a wiki can be suitable for your needs.

They are free, very easy to use and update, with a wide range of different wiki’s available to choose from such as Wikispaces and Wetpaint. Many offer additional features such as customisation of the colours and layout. Some also offer the option of having your own domain name pointing to the wiki rather than a longer website address, and also you can also pay a very small fee to have any advertising removed from your pages.

How and why I used a wiki

I recently ran a training workshop with voluntary and community organisations to help with planning their website. I decided against using lots of handouts and traditional slide presentations, instead I would create a wiki to support the learning for the day. It was very easy to do and took very little time compared to creating seperate presentations and handout sheets on all the topics were were going to cover in our day.

The great part of using a wiki to support delivery of training is that the materials are available after the event for the participants to be able to refer back to rather than them having to look for their scribbled notes from the day. I also added photo’s from the day too. I found it was highly successful as a supporting tool. As we learned about each subject area, all the links to relevant websites were there immediately for them. I live resource compared to a static one. I’ll be using wiki’s a lot more in the future to share learning with others.

As a trainer using the wiki as a learning tool, I learn’t about using my wiki more effectively too with the way I displayed the content. I observed how users of the wiki were using the pages and how they found information. I had put too much text on most pages. At some point soon, I aim to break down the pages in to smaller chunks to enable better usability for participants in sessions, they had to do a lot of scrolling to find information and links!

Do you want an easy and quick way to learn more on how a wiki can help you to communicate or create a website?

Commoncraft have just released another of their fun and lively quick video’s on Wetpaint Wiki’s in Plain English, which has been commissioned by Wetpaint, a company that have created an easy to use wiki. Instead of showing the technical parts of what a wiki is, it delivers how you could use wiki to share your subject, and how you can easily create a connected community.

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In the pink!

Regular readers will have noted a drastic colour change today on my blog.
It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month. From politicians, to the public, to the press, it is a time when focus on breast cancer is at its very highest across the world.

Pink is the colour during Breast Cancer Awareness Month hence the new look to my blog during October. You can find out more by searching on the internet for breast cancer awareness charities and nonprofits to learn how you can help to raise funds, spread the word and take part.

Bloggers and website designers like myself are joining in with awareness raising across the globe by turning their sites pink for the month. You can find out more at Pink For October.

I’d love to hear from you if you go pink - Please do leave a comment with your weblink.
Michele Martin at the Bamboo Project Blog has joined me in being pink for the cause too!

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Let your readers be in control: Text resizing

Text resize buttons on a single website or enable your readers to take control and learn how to make all their internet viewing a better experience? Which would you prefer?

Later in this article, I’ll provide you with a helpful list of links to resources which can help you to understand more about accessibility.

As well as designing for the web, and supporting groups to make informed choices for their website ideas, I also help with accessibility audits too. Some people get ‘told and sold’ that their website is accessible because of a bit of code that shows buttons on their site to enable their viewers to resize their text on that site. In some cases, a few of these sites are highly in accessible in many other areas. I’m not totally against resize buttons, and have implemented it myself within reason on some sites where relevant and complimentary to compliant, accessible design. I also include helpful guides on how to resize text easily within your browser. I do feel though, that text resize buttons, don’t serve any real value and shouldn’t be needed. I also ensure that even without these controls, the site aims to be accessible from the users end, as best as possible, no matter what device, browser or platform they are using to access the information they are seeking.

Another common barrier to making a websites more usable for all can be the way that some accessibility statements on sites are written. They are conveyed in a manner which seem best read by other website developers, rather than for the understandable benefit to the end user who just wants to be able to access their site of choice without having to learn and understand a myriad of jargon about the way the site was designed.

One example of text resizing buttons acting in a complementing manner is on the Webcredible website. Not only do they have buttons, but also the site design is carefully constructed for maximum usability and accessibility, that’s what Webcredible do. Also they have a simple piece on their ‘about this site’ page which enables users to take control and learn how they can change their text viewing size for themselves. But sadly not all sites are that well designed.

One person that I know well, who has difficulties with many sites due to the font size, often finds that text resize buttons cause more of a barrier than a help. Especially when they are viewing sites with outgoing links. What use is making one site with text resizing facilities when that site then leads them to another website with a totally different ability to render text at an appropriate size?

So, shouldn’t we all be trying to help users to have a better experience by helping them to take control?
By improving your readers knowledge and understanding with help on suitable browsers (including Opera and Firefox) and showing them how to make their viewing easier, the internet can slowly but surely become a more inclusive place for all.

At Accessify, a website of tools and resources to help with accessibility for websites, Ian Lloyd has posted an article “Teach a Man to Fish (or How to Resize Text)”. It includes a visual guide video on text resizing. The video shows how you can take control by showing how easy this can be achieved in a variety of browsers. For those that cannot see the video there is a text transcript available too. The aim of the video and transcription is that it helps to provide a visual and audio way to complement “accessibility / how to use this site” statements on websites.

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Working towards a new world of Interoperability and Accessibility? It’s not here yet…

In the web design arena, there is currently a lot of discussion about how and where the ‘web’ is headed. With the concepts and available draft of of HTML 5, and the air of disappointment to many that it potentially is not necessarily going to enable better accessibility to all. On the other side of the equation, CSS (cascading style sheets - the supporting code that helps enables your site to look good and separates the style from the structure of the site) has reached 10 years of age already, and there is enthusiasm at how the next stages will enable more beautifying of the web.

On a positive note, I’ve discussed recently with fair few nonprofits who are becoming really aware about wanting their sites being operable on all platforms and browsers. It’s been a great experience sharing my knowledge and enthusiasm to enable them to explore and reach forward with ideas on making their site usable, approachable and accessible to a wider audience.
I’ve also experienced frustration that whilst many nonprofits are striving to move forward with usability and accessibility, many businesses are not taking this seriously and therefore losing their customers and potential sales. I’ve experienced this first hand this week whilst scouring various estate agent websites, not one would operate fully in anything other than Internet Explorer.

So for those interested to see where the web is headed, I’ve collated a few links to some articles which have given me some food for thought on accessibility, usability and also internet design for the future.

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31 Days to a Better Blog - Day 15: Stickify your blog!

Following on the 31 Days to a Better Blog challenge, the task today was to ’stickify’ your blog.

Darren at Problogger says:

“It revolves around identifying key points where traffic is entering your blog and then optimizing those points for stickiness either by providing means for subscribing via RSS or email or by driving people deeper into your blog.”

A few days a go, the task was to analyse your statistics (see my post here on day 11 of the challenge on how I use Google Analytics), so by using your new knowledge of how people are accessing and using your site you can target key areas of your site or blog which you can add some extra features to enable new readers to want to stay or sign up for feeds to keep connected with your news.

Darren is using video in his post to convey his ideas and messages, which is well worth a look, as an idea.
I’m going to try a few future posts as videoposts, although don’t want to compromise accessibility too much for those that cannot use the technology, so am currently looking in to and testing some ideas tools to provide captions to video’s (such as MAGpie) and also looking into podcasting my RSS feeds too (such as the Readspeaker podcast feed).

There’s a useful article on the ICT Hub website about Web 2.0 and accessibility if you are interested in some of the barriers that blogging and interactive websites can cause.

(If you use or know of any of the tools mentioned to enable captions to video, or podcasting rss, please do contact, as I’m compiling a list of applications to test and report on! Thanks)

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31 Days to a Better Blog - Day 12 & 13, and an update on progress…

The 31 days to a Better Blog Challenge continues…

The task for Day 12 is to Introduce Yourself to another Blogger.

“Email another blogger in your niche to introduce yourself and your blog. You don’t need to ask them to link to you or anything - the point isn’t to get any specific outcome other than to touch base and hopefully build a relationship.”

Since this challenge began, I’ve been alot more confident in a making contact with other bloggers, not only in my ‘niche’ but in other areas too. I really recommend this tip, relationship building is definately a key part of communicating via the internet. It’s a little harder than the traditional face to face route, and does require abit more time and commitment, but the results are very worthwhile. I now communicate with a wide range of people regularly across the world that I wouldn’t have formed any connections with, if it had not been for blogging and reading others blogs.

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31 Days to a Better Blog - Day 10: Declutter your sidebar

I’m still there and up to day 10 of the 31 Days to a Better Blog challenge. The challenge set by Problogger Darren was something that I had already begun thinking about whilst stuck in a bad traffic jam earlier today. Yes, de-clutter your side bar. Read my thoughts below on how I will be approaching this and why.

Darren helps us with todays task by giving us some suggestions to help us to see what we do and don’t need on our sidebar/info areas on our sites. I feel we could all use these tips, by regularly doing a check of your blog or website, especially the homepage (doesn’t have to just be a blog) where in many cases people come to first, or if they entered your site elsewhere will return to to understand the context of your site. Is your homepage overloaded with unnecessary information? Well, these sidebar tips may help your website too.

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