Preventing WordPress Plugin Folly

There’s no doubt that plu­g­ins are one of the rea­sons for WordPress’s suc­cess. They can do some won­der­ful things.

Even so, they’ve been the down­fall of many a site. This post dis­cusses the trade­offs of plu­g­ins and how to pro­tect your site from the Creep­ing Men­ace of Plu­gin Bloat. Read more…

Choose the Right WordPress for Your Website

Many small to medium-sized non­prof­its need an easy, inex­pen­sive option for their web­sites. A com­mon bit of advice is often dis­pensed in those sit­u­a­tions: try WordPress.

Depend­ing on the organization’s needs, that advice might be spot-on. Unfor­tu­nately those giv­ing the advice some­times don’t delve into an impor­tant ques­tion: which WordPress?

Because there’s not just one kind of WordPress.

In fact, there are four.

Read more…

WordPress Backups: The Hard Way and The Easy Way

Den­tal check­ups. Clean­ing the gut­ters. Com­puter backups.

Some things are all too easy to put off even though we know we should do them.

I can’t help you with your teeth, and I won’t help with your gut­ters, but I have advice about back­ups. Specif­i­cally, Word­Press backups.

Every day more orga­ni­za­tions trust Word­Press as their web­site plat­form. I do too, and I often rec­om­mend it to clients. That’s great. The prob­lem is that some orga­ni­za­tions take trust a lit­tle too far by assum­ing noth­ing will ever go badly wrong.

Read more…

Caution: Do Your Really Own Your Domain Name?

You own a domain name. Great.

Did you or some­one at your orga­ni­za­tion reg­is­ter the domain name directly with domain name reg­is­trar? Or did a con­sul­tant do it for you? Maybe a web host­ing com­pany or mar­ket­ing firm set it up?

A domain name is like a mask. It’s your pub­lic face on the Inter­net, and someon—the owner—is behind it. You prob­a­bly think that’s you. But are you sure?

It’s worth a few min­utes to con­firm whether you really own that name. Read more…

Choose the Right Technology: Goals, Tools, and Match

I try not to use over­wrought, hyper­bolic drama-words too often in my writing.

Okay, so maybe I don’t try very hard.

But there’s no other way to say this: the time peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions have wasted by using the wrong tech­nol­ogy is utterly tragic.

It can hap­pen so eas­ily, espe­cially for non­prof­its who often need to rely on well-meaning vol­un­teers for tech­ni­cal help. But it’s not hard to pre­vent. Read more…

Website Options for Nonprofits — Part 3: Use Your Browser to Build a Website

This is the last in a three-part series dis­cussing web­site options for nonprofits.

Part 1 gave back­ground infor­ma­tion about what a web­site really is and dis­cussed options for where yours can live.

Part 2 dis­cussed the tra­di­tional approach: installing a web page edi­tor on your com­puter and using it to build a website.

But the last 5 years have intro­duced a bevvy of tools that promise to let you build a web­site using noth­ing but the most basic and ubiq­ui­tous tool of the Web Age: the hum­ble web browser. In this third post we’ll take a look at those tools. Read more…

Website Options for Nonprofits — Part 2: Web Editing Software

This is the sec­ond in a three-part series dis­cussing web­site options for nonprofits.

Part 1 gave back­ground infor­ma­tion about what a web­site really is and dis­cussed options for where yours can live.

But whether you’re build­ing a new site or need to update an exist­ing site, you need some way to edit pages. Today we’ll dis­cuss your options for edit­ing or cre­at­ing a tra­di­tional web­site: one where some­one (you, a vol­un­teer, or some­one you hire) hand-crafts a web­site using a web edi­tor installed on their com­puter. Read more…

Website Options for Nonprofits — Part 1: Big Picture

If your orga­ni­za­tion has a web pres­ence of some kind, which it prob­a­bly does, there’s a good chance you’re not com­pletely happy with some­thing about it. Maybe it’s too expen­sive. Maybe it’s too hard to update.

Maybe it’s just plain ugly.

If your orga­ni­za­tion doesn’t have a web pres­ence, there’s a good chance that makes you uncom­fort­able. It might also make peo­ple who con­sider sup­port­ing you uncom­fort­able. Read more…

Cut Through Computer Clutter

Stop me if I’m wrong: there’s a lot of junk on your computer.

Hey, look at that. Nobody stopped me.

It’s awfully easy to accu­mu­late so much stuff on your com­puter that you can’t find the use­ful stuff mixed in with all the cruft.

And oh, the cruft. It saps our time and sucks our souls. But a few well-chosen tools can make a big difference.

Read more…

Google Voice for Nonprofits

“Google Voice for Non­prof­its” isn’t a new Google offer­ing intended for non­profit orga­ni­za­tions. It’s a question.

Is Google Voice right for nonprofits?

As with any worth­while ques­tion, the answer is “it depends”: on the organization’s size, its cul­ture, its work needs, and plenty of other things. This arti­cle takes a look at some issues to weigh in con­sid­er­ing Google Voice for pro­fes­sional use. Read more…