Rapid application and web site development. Increasing demand for web standards. New standards and technologies appear, grow, and morph together within shorter and shorter cycles. Webmasters must be more productive than ever. These guidelines will help you become a more productive webmaster.
The building blocks of a productive webmaster are:
Webmasters can find plenty of excellent tools now to:
The old saying, "Use the right tool for the right job", remains true today. Invest time today in finding yourself the right tools for the jobs you do.
The net houses a myriad of web developer software. Some of the best web development applications and tools are free or open-source. Yes, many excellent web design applications still cost, yet can be worth paying for.
Yes! Finally Clear Well Written about Building a Professional Website with Drupal
Following a link from http://drupal.org/planet I came across the excellent series by IBM developers about developing a profession website using open source technology. In fact, the series focuses on using Drupal as the core.
The professionalism in the process used to redesign the website and the detail with which these articles are written make this series a must read for anyone interested in community websites.
Some items to highlight include:
Earlier this week CWM community member bunced recommended Church123 from within the CWM forum thread topic: EZ to build site, nice layout: which web host would you recommend for
What interested me was the statement by bunced that Church123 is:
"very powerful, and a professional company with a good customer service record and a nice product".
I have to say that after checking out Church123 for myself, I absolutely agree with bunced.
I signed up for a free 30 day trial account and here is what I saw:
In my communications with Gordon, from Church123, regarding my comments about how easy is is to use their system, here is part of what Gordon said:
Our system is not crammed with as many features as some CMS's. We've concentrated on getting the core functionality really, really good. Our strengths are certainly ease of use and support (we genuinely care). In truth if you stick lots of features in the CMS then churches will think they should use them and they litter their sites with all sorts of widgets that actually distract visitors from the reason they came to the site. I go to a church of about 100 people, our site is clean and information rich (it was used as an example by the World Web Evangelism Day). On average we get two new visitors through the doors on a Sunday directly because of our website.
I just came across this great post from back in April by Dean over at Heal Your Church Web Site about Software as a Service for Church Websites .
It is worth a read and your consideration if you are involved with any Christian Website for an organization. Here is a small snippet to entice you over to read the post:
...SaaS helps keep this highly mobile, suburbanly sprawled congregation together by facilitating both paid and lay staff in terms of communications, sharing materials and schedule management. In other words, the problems solved by FBCF’s use of the CCM go well past that of simple website content ‘manglement.’
Hello CWM Community.
Okay, I have been reading various material about Myspace . I want to know what our community, and others think about it.
For those who are "enthusiasts" and use myspace, please tell me:
What people generally do while on the site.
Please note: I want to hear from both enthusiasts and critics. Friendly, thought provoking points and counter points are welcome and encouraged.
Please answer the Myspace Thread in the forums.
In Christ,
Sean Buscay
PayPal Donations provides Christian Websites, Churches, and Non-profits with a simple low cost solution for accepting secure online donations. With PayPal Donations your ministry’s members and donors may easily donate from your website using their credit card or bank account on PayPal’s secure server. The advantages to using PayPal’s Online Donations for your Christian Website are similar to those discussed for NetworkforGood.org.
PayPal’s Basic Online Donations includes the following advantages for your Christian organization:
When using PayPal Subscriptions, your members and donors may:
One very nice feature of PayPal donations is that your Christian organization could setup donation links which may be included within emails to your members.
Unlike, NetworkforGood.org, PayPal does not require your Christian organization to be an exempt nonprofit registered with the United States IRS.
One only needs a PayPal account in order to get started receiving online donations and your Christian website can begin receiving online donations in less than five minutes.
PayPal provides the following seven step overview on their website:
From my experience, the “Donations” link in step three is sometimes hard to find. Donation buttons may be generated in the same place you find your PayPal button factory. Also look for the donations link in the copy on the “Merchant Services” page, once logged in.
In order to remain on target with the mission and vision of CWM, those of us on staff must continue to ask ourselves, “What Makes Christian-Web-Masters.com any different from other Website Design and Development Sites and Forums?”
Many of the articles and tutorials on CWM, and many of the discussions held on the Christian Web Master Forums, cover the same topics found on other popular webmaster sites. In fact, those sites like SitePoint.com and AListApart.com have a level of participation and meet “excellence” standards that CWM continues to strive towards.
In discussing new articles to be posted on Christian-web-masters.com, CWM staff member Luke (iLuke) recently explained to another staff member:
The purpose here isn't to compete with sites like SitePoint or pixel2life -- the major focus would be substantially different (even if the content is hugely overlapping). Coming from a Christian perspective, and with the ability to interact in a Christian environment will be what sets this apart. It is not an easy thing to present the basics of HTML from a Christian perspective (there simply isn't a great deal of content there), however, having the ability to discuss the basics of HTML within a Christian community because of a basic article that you read would offer real advantages to a new webmaster.
I also just came across this post from CWM member tjsingleton on his In Awe of Him Ministry site:
Where can you find caring people who enjoy helping others and love Christ? Christian-Web-Masters (CWM) hands down. There are people from all over the world willing to share with you web tips, encourage you to keep it up, and make sure your site doesn't look tacky. (You should have seen my previous design. Just kidding.) Javascript, PHP, Photoshop, SEO and more. It all can be found at CWM and even more.
I am becoming more and more of a fan of the content management system Drupal.
The developers and community at Drupal.org have recently released the beta version of the new 5.0 release. This new version of the Drupal CMS received many new features, including improved performance, a new administrative interface, and a new slick default template.
I decided to download the beta and give it a test drive. Here are some of the things I found during installation and setup.
After dropping the drupal files into the main directory for my test site, I created the mysql database and then pointed my browser to the new site.
Here is what comes up:
I choose my database type (mysql) from the radio box, entered the name of my Drupal database, along with the username and password to access the database. Then I hit “Save configuration”.
That was it. My new Drupal install was complete. Nice.
After completing my install in about 90 seconds, I followed the link to visit “your new site”. From my new Drupal home page I was guided by a five step list to start using my new Drupal site.
So I:
including:
At this point it would have been good to be taken back to that five point list. However, I had to go back to my home page to seed the five point list again.
Today I am taking a look at NetworkforGood.org because it has the following advantages for your church or nonprofit website:
Note: I and CWM are not affiliated with Networkforgood.org or Guidestar.org.
Network for Good is a nonprofit organization that has been around since 2001. Networkforgood.org acts as an online donations portal for non-profits. Networkforgood.org accepts online donations for any nonprofit listed within the non-profit database ran by Guidestar.org.
Guidestar lists all nonprofits who are an exempt nonprofit registered with the United States IRS. This means that if you are a church or non-profit in the US, then you are probably already listed on these websites.
Based on the information from their website, you can get started taking online donations in 4 easy steps.
Once your nonprofit registers, you can add to your listing in Guidestar. Network for Good provides you with a link and even images to let people click to “Donate Now” from your website.
One of my greatest passions is helping Christian non-profits succeed in their mission. Christian-web-masters.com focuses on helping Christian organizations with website resources. Accepting online donations is becoming one of the website resources which I most frequently recommend to the non-profits that I work with.
The chief reason for non-profits to accept online donations is the potential to develop a steady stream of recurring giving among its members. Most online donation systems allow donors to setup automatic monthly donations. These monthly automatic donations, will, over time, result in a predictable (usually steady and increasing) stream of giving. A predictable stream of income is a benefit to any non-profit, whether large or small.
Online donations are on the rise. In fact, according to a report from USA Today in June of 2005, online donations to the USA’s biggest charities increased 63% from 2003 to 2005. The ePhilanthropy Foundation has reported that online giving is growing exponentially each year, from $250 million in the year 2000 to more than $4.5 billion in 2005.
As a result of the growth amount of dollars being donated online and the increase in numbers of people giving via the web, E-commerce vendors and other technology companies have been on the move to help non-profits meet the rising need to accept online donations by providing new tools to help charities with online fundraising.
For more information on trends in online donations see:
USA Today Article About Online Donations
About.com About Online Donations
Network For Good Study on Online Giving
Online giving is particularly cost-effective for charities. While it can cost $1.25 to raise a dollar from a new donor through direct mail and more than $.63 through telemarketing, the costs per dollar of raising money online can be as little as five cents. (Sources: Fund-Raising Cost Effectiveness/James Greenfield, Cost-Effectiveness of Nonprofit Telemarketing Campaigns/Keating, Parsons & Roberts, and Network for Good.)