Weblog
07/02: Managing a Website
Recently I've had the opportunity to manage a site that actually has to be updated on a regular basis. It's kind of fun, but takes a lot of creative input to keep it going at a reasonably professional level! (The site is sitc.hlicmke.org)These are the things that seem to work pretty well that I would suggest if you find yourself in my shoes.
1) A good Content Management System (CMS) can speed up your work greatly! I've written my own and used drupal extensively... I like both for different reasons, but if your looking for speed and robustness drupal is great!
2) Have the important content easily accessible on the front page. Either primary links or hot items. This is where people can get the meat of what your site is about. Everyone should be able to see the these and click them without any work!
3) People will come back once, and if they see no change, they won't come back. You need to keep adding content. A regularly updated poll works well! Also, any new stories or input work great! User generated posts are by far the most effective because then people can read others ideas.
4) Keep it short. People will generally skim the first few lines and then move on. Make your posts only a few lines. Or if you must make it longer, make dividers in bold so that people can find the part they do want to read.
Hope that helps!
19/10: Spam
I get roughly 1 spam message every 45 minutes.That's about 30/day and 10,000/year.
And I'm careful with my email! Imagine if I wasn't!
04/10: Bar Camp Milwaukee!
I went, I saw, I learned a lot. Met some interesting people from blissdev.net, december.com, jabber.org, rohdesign.com amongst others.Also learned more about Drupal CMS, Ruby on Rails, and Opensource flash!
Other than that a lot of visionaries, and a lot of people interested in non-profits...
My talk on the subject of nonprofits and tech proved fruitful as about 10 people attended and discussed various ways to help bridge the digital divide. It was maybe more visonary minded than I would have preffered, but nonetheless it proved to be such a good discussion that we continued to meet during the next session. Highlights..... I'm not sure.... Conclusions, about the same. Value? Networking. I am going to meet with a least a couple of people soon to talk. And that really is worth something!
04/10: Technical stuff!
I just created http://tech.rachelandjuan.comThis is a nice step forward for rachelandjuan.com!
There is now a lot of new content, and to be honest I like the Drupal CMS a lot! So far it has worked better than I could have hoped, and even a bit better than Nucleus which is the blogging CMS I am currently using.
This might mean a future switch to Drupal for the whole site, but we'll wait to see how things go.
21/09: Nucleus and Acornhost
In case you haven't noticed the little note at the bottom of this blog, this part of our site is powered by a blogging program called Nucleus. Our website is hosted by a company called Acornhost.I just have to give props to both! They are both excellent services and using fantastico and cpanel I was able to install nucleus in seconds. Then I uploaded the skins and voila. Web Blog.
Nucleus is easy to use with a simple interface and great support.
Acornhost has been a great web host, prompt and kind. They also gave the Here's Life Milwaukee site a discounted rate (50% off) for being a non-profit! That's 2.50 a month for apache running php and mysql as well as cpanel and fantastico... I haven't found a better deal.
If that wasn't enough acornhost is all green powered and run by women. I must take my hat off!
17/09: Bar Camp
I have just registered for BarCamp Milwaukee a "non-conference" on technology. I will be speaking on 'non-profits and technology' or in otherwords, a digital divide. Milwaukee, just like any other city, has a problem when it comes to technology and the poor. There simply aren't the resources available to effectively teach things like webpage design to kids. What can be done? That's what I'm talking about I suppose...I hope I figure it out by then!