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.
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
Want to know more about online donations and online fundraising for your charity or Christian organization? We have put together this collection of articles to help your ministry understand the current trends in online donations and how to implement your own online donations for your Christian website.
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.
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.)
by Luke Wertz
Serving as the webmaster of a church website can be a thankless job. We write all our own copy because groups and leaders and staff rarely respond to our requests. We generate our own enthusiasm because all too often church members and sometimes pastors don’t see the website as something much more than a brag piece about “my church.” We’re rarely paid (in money); even less often thanked for our many hours of service. Is it worth all the effort?
Yes! What we do is important. Here are some reasons why:
1) Evangelism is more important than ever; in some important ways, Christianity is losing ground.
In Europe, participation in the Christian church is statistically quite low. 1 Islam is gaining adherents. Already, Islam is the 2nd religion in most countries. 2
In the United States, people are identifying themselves as Christian in fewer numbers3 and teenagers are moving farther away from Biblical viewpoints. 4
In Australia, according to the 2001 census, paganism is the fastest growing religion. 5
2) At the same time, there is evidence that people young and old are feeling a deep hunger for spiritual truth and meaning.6 Many who profess faith can do so only on the surface. When pressed, they are not able to explain their beliefs or why they hold them yet they are dissatisfied with this and wish to know more. From 1994 to late 1998, reported Gallup, the percent of Americans feeling a need to "experience spiritual growth" rose from 54 to 82 percent.6
Where are people going to satisfy this hunger? Many of them are turning to websites. The Pew Internet Project reports that 64% of people have used the Internet for religious or spiritual purposes. 7 Much of this activity is supplementary to their primary participation in the life of a local congregation, but it indicates an established and growing habit of using the ‘net in their religious practice. George Barna reports that 8% of adults and 12% of teenagers use the Internet for “religious or spiritual experiences.” Again, much of this activity is supplementary to actual faith experience, but 2% of teens and about 1% of adults are turning to some kind of cyber-church as their source for faith practice. 8
Barna researchers predicted that people are increasingly likely to be turning to Internet sources more regularly in coming years for devotional readings, inspiration, reading and listening to on-line teaching, and suggested that by the year 2010, between 10% and 20% of U.S. Internet users will rely solely on the Web for worship or to otherwise connect with a faith experience. 8
3) The internet provides users with easy access to a staggering variety of information. Part of this virtually limitless selection of choices is a smorgasbord of spiritual beliefs, practices, ideas and instruction. A growing number of Internet browsers are developing their own belief systems, picking and choosing ‘truth’ that appeals to them and fits within their current views. This do-it-yourself religious practice stands as a challenge to the established church, and is growing outside of any religious authority.
“We are seeing the beginnings of a wave of religious reformation, one as big as the one seen after the invention of the Gutenberg press," said Quentin Schultze, a professor of communication at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich.9 This isn’t taking people towards solid ground, though.
Clearly a dynamic, attractive, substantive Christian presence on the ‘web is vital for present and future evangelism. Church websites must be more than Adobe Reader versions of the monthly newsletter. Christians must build and maintain websites that provide nurture for this spiritual hunger, nurture that is rooted deeply in Truth, and that provides an attractive, inviting alternative to the polyglot of religious and spiritual beliefs provided by the many other groups and faith organizations.
If the Internet is neglected by Christians, it will go on expanding and developing without them. Now is the time to build understanding and awareness of potential among church leaders and members, and for website designers to study and learn and keep pace with technology. Now is the time to educate and assist people young and old to use the Internet responsibly, and to create connections and network with Christian and compatible secular sites and directories.
Christians have made mistakes fighting culture wars in the past. The arts and the entertainment industry are both cultural strongholds long neglected by the faithful. Christians encounter little respect in either of these areas today. While the art world existed before Christ’s birth, the Internet is still a relatively young and growing cultural presence. What a unique opportunity! Christians have a chance to establish and build a presence in the world of technology as it grows, and avoid any future necessity of having to carve out a foothold in a secular environment.
What we do does indeed matter. It matters for today – but more importantly, for tomorrow.
Introduction
Banning spiders and agents
Search engine spider identification
Further learning resources:
The following is a basic listing of search engine spider names and their "owners". This is by no means complete, as there are many thousands of search engines on the Internet, but it covers the more common beneficial spiders. Look for these in your traffic reports or search for the names through your server logs to discover which pages they have been spidering. You'll find that many of the entries will also have accompanying numbers or letters e.g Googlebot/2.1 or Slurp.so/1.0
Here is some advice regarding the Web site that supports your company:
* Do the right thing when you prepare the Web site.
Hire reputable professionals to build and promote your cyber adventure. If you already have a Web site, remember that a Web site can easily be redesigned and properly resubmitted to search tools.