Archive for the ‘Web-Infrastructure’ Category

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…

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…

Share Files Online — Part 3: Collaboration Tools

You need to share files. Whether it’s with friends, clients, part­ners, or cowork­ers, there’s some file you need them to see, and vice-versa.

My last two posts drew a dis­tinc­tion between whether you’re file-sharing for pub­li­ca­tion or for col­lab­o­ra­tion (How to Share Files — Part 1: Overview), and then explored some options for the publication-based options (How to Share Files — Part 2: Pub­li­ca­tion Tools). Read more…

Share Files Online — Part 2: Publication Tools

In last week’s post, How to Share Files — Part 1: Overview, I drew a dis­tinc­tion between publication-based online file-sharing and collaboration-based online file-sharing. Read more…

Share Files Online — Part 1: Overview

Over the last few months I’ve answered a lot of ques­tions about online file-sharing.

“Should I upload my files to my own web­site or put them on a file-sharing service?”

“How can I make a PDF avail­able on my blog?”

“What about sites like Google Docs and Zoho?” Read more…

Decide Which RSS Feeds to Follow

RSS is a great way to eas­ily fol­low a lot of web­sites. This arti­cle isn’t an intro­duc­tion to RSS—that’ll have to wait for another time—but if you’re new to RSS or just a lit­tle hazy on the details, I highly rec­om­mend you watch the 3-minute video RSS in Plain Eng­lish.

Even though RSS is awfully con­ve­nient, even­tu­ally even the con­ve­nience of hav­ing your favorite sites con­densed into one place can get over­whelm­ing. Read more…