FourTen Creative Blog

This post will be the first in a series focused on getting non-profits with limited resources online. Check back for future posts.

The Online Imperative

Many non-profits work in the world of  immediate need. For them, it is a luxury to think of technology upgrades, social media connectivity and custom websites. But in our modern society, communication is key to sustaining support for these organizations and the web is key for effective communication.

The goal of these posts will be to get your non-profit online in as few steps as possible with the greatest reach and simplest maintenance in mind. We will accomplish this through a variety of open source and low-cost tools to manage your web communications presence.

Step #1 Website

There are a few pieces to line up to get your website online: Domain, Hosting and Software. There thousands of people out there willing to sell you all of these at a wide variety of prices, so I am providing recommendations based on my experience only.

Domain (yoursite.com) - Choosing a good domain name is the first step in building an effective website. It saves everyone a lot of time and mental energy if you choose a memorable and easy to spell domain name for your site. Try to avoid hyphens, exotic domain extensions (.biz or .xyz) as the people you are trying to attract to your site might end up somewhere else. Chances are that your desired domain name with a .com extension is taken, so get creative, you acronyms to your advantage and utilize the old standby prefixes and suffixes like ‘my’, ‘go’, ‘online’, and ‘web’ when you really can’t find a good option.

It is ideal to combine your domain name provider with your hosting provider (see below), but when that isn’t possible, large companies like enom.com and godaddy.com tend to be the most affordable and easy to use options.  Bluehost.com will include a free domain name for life with your new hosting account.

Hosting (the servers) - Once again, there are plenty of people willing to charge you a wide variety of prices for hosting. Many offer proprietary content management systems (or CMS, covered below) or website building tools that lock you into their methods and capabilities. These are to be avoided for the large part especially as a cost consideration in this tutorial.

The other choices involved in hosting are the platform (windows or unix) and other database and email services. I recommend a unix based service that allows for mysql database hosting and full control over email accounts. I use Bluehost.com for many reasons including cost, customer service and features. There are other comparable providers and some are even cheaper, but I am sticking with my experience here. You can click on the link above to sign up at their site. Their hosting runs about $6.95/month and is the greatest cost involved. Off to a cheap start huh?

Software – Many people are immediately intimidated at the complexity of web design based on a fear of code. Html, php, and javascript will all be utilized to build your site, but there’s no reason for you to know anything about it. That’s because website management has by and large moved to a Content Management System (CMS) model. The difference is that you only need a web browser and internet access to maintain your site as opposed to costly software and you are not locked to your files being stored on one computer.

There are many fine CMS’s out there, but I exclusively recommend Wordpress. Technically, people will tell you Wordpress is blogging software and not a full-blown CMS. Millions of people using Wordpress to manage their website would disagree, as would I. Out of the box, wordpress can manage most sites any small non-profit would need. The benefits of Wordpress include a wide developer community, free templates, free plugins to extend capabilities and tons of great tutorials…like this one! And best of all, this open-source software is free!

If you chose the right hosting provider above, then they likely offer ‘one-click’ installs of Wordpress. If not, you can download it from Wordpress.org and follow the installation instructions. The goal here is to do this without programmer intervention. However, when you need help, a one or two hour investment in an experienced web designer may save you 20-40 hours of headaches.

To install Wordpress with Bluehost, you log in to your account, click on SimpleScripts down the screen and select Wordpress from their list of applications. It will ask you for some details and bam! You’ll have a website ready to configure.

Our next post will focus on the configuration process for your website.

Money paid so far: $6.95/month for hosting 1 year = $83.40 (but maybe you found a better deal!)

Next post: Configuring your new Wordpress website

Social media is here to stay. Let’s just get that out of the way. Many organizations are now looking to integrate social media into their web communications strategy and I wanted to share how FourTen Creative is helping people do so.

The Case Study – SimplyMusic

SimplyMusic approached FourTen to integrate their current website with Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, an eNewsletter and a blog. The only hitch was that they had invested heavily in their existing web content platform and were not able to move their whole operation over to a Wordpress install at this time. We decided to come up with a way to complement the current website with a social-media-rich Wordpress install with some key components.

Subdomain Installation: We started by creating a sub-domain of blog.simplymusic.com and setting up an account at Bluehost.com to host it because of a locked-down hosting environment on their existing servers.  We proceeded to install Wordpress (actually WPMU for posterity’s sake) and moved on to focus on the user interaction.

Integrated Site Theme: We then created a theme that mirrored the exact look and feel of the existing site including menu structure to provide a seamless navigation experience between main site and blog (and between servers on different continents…the internet is pretty cool sometimes).

Wordpress Social Media Tools: We then set up our Wordpress install with tools to display latest tweets and send latest blog entries to the Twitter account. (Facebook can receive those same Tweets through the Twitter application installed on your Facebook profile. See previous post.) Wordpress also enables the displaying of YouTube videos in their pages and posts.

Custom Social Media Graphics: Aside from an investment in their CMS, Simply Music had invested in a fabulous set of artwork that tells the story of a musical journey. These source graphics were adapted to customize their Twitter and YouTube environments.

Newsletter: A powerful newsletter is in the works by utilizing a 3rd party distribution system (Mailchimp.com) and the blog to host full content. That means a digest email can be sent with custom a template and will link readers to media-rich content hosted on the blog.

Summary

Overall, this unified social media presence creates a multitude of new discovery points for new customers to find your content and stay connected to your business. FourTen Creative is proud to offer this full Social Media Integration for new & existing Wordpress based sites as well as existing sites running on other systems. Contact us today to learn more.

I have been fortunate to work with some of the nicest people in the world: Kindermusik educators. Kindermusik is a music and movement class offered for young children around the world. See Kindermusik.com for more info on them.

Over the past two years FourTen Creative has provided custom designed sites for four different Kindermusik locations on the West Coast. Some of the concerns central to Kindermusik educators may be relevant to your business as well. I am highlighting here some of the features and successes of these sites.

Interesting/Colorful Design: No stock templates here folks. Kindermusik educators are a colorful bunch as they appeal to infants, toddlers and young children. Each website project began with a custom graphic design process, integrating existing logos and color preferences to an appealing layout that conveyed fun, yet organized information logically according to what parent’s need.

Ease-of-Use: Wordpress has always been my first choice because of how accessible it is for web design novices. Kindermusik educators, though intelligent and capable, often don’t have time to play with html code. With easy configuration and training from FourTen, educators are ready to edit their own schedules, add photos, and blog to their heart’s content.

Social Media Integration: You’ll hear me talk a lot about this, but I’ll keep it short here. These people are social by nature and their websites need to enable the relationships that are the foundation of their businesses. Sites from FourTen can be integrated (and automated!) to work with Facebook, Twitter, email marketing tools like Constant Contact & MailChimp, video providers like YouTube and Vimeo, and come stock with a blog.

Search Engine Playfulness: Ok, well… “Search Engine Optimization” didn’t sound as fun, but making it easy for people to find you on the internet is important. Sites from FourTen also enable seamless integration with Google AdWords campaigns (even custom landing pages) and drive people to get connected to a class near them.

Low Cost of Operation: Ok, let’s be honest, a small business these days can’t afford to keep a web nerd in their basement on retainer. With Wordpress being an Open Source system, multitudes of free plugins, and the prevalence of low-cost wordpress hosting on the web, your overhead for a website could be as low as $85/yr. Seriously.

Visit some of these sites to see Kindermusik websites in action or contact us for your own.

Studio3Music.com

NotableKids.ca

MusicAndMyChild.com

Developmusic.com