Help Me!

[ladysprite]

Okay. So last year I came up with what I thought was a pretty nifty idea - a kind of charity holiday. I called it Work For Charity Day, I set it in November, I promised to donate my income for one day to charity, and I asked anyone who could to join me, donate if they could, and spread the word.

And it went pretty well. Over a dozen people joined in, so that between us we donated the equivalent of more than two weeks' work to the charities of our choice.

And that's not bad. It's a good start.... but it could be better. I want to do this again, I want to make it a yearly thing, and I want to make it bigger. My ultimate goal, at least for now, is to get a full year's worth of charity work donated - and that means getting 364 people to pledge to join me this November.

So one of the things I'll need, to make this happen, is a website. I can only go so far promoting it here on LJ and Facebook; I need a place to point people, to collect information, and to explain to those who aren't my close personal friends what we're doing and why.

I have some ideas of what I want, and it's honestly pretty simple; mostly just a welcome page, FAQ, list of links and resources, and a place where people can sign up. I'll need to collect email addresses, but just to send reminders and thanks. In a perfect world, I'd like to have a display like on the 3 Day's donors page, where it can show people's names (or whatever pseudonym they choose to use) and, if they want, the charity they choose to donate to, but that's about it - we have a Facebook page for conversation, so I don't need it to have a message board feature.

Unfortunately, I know bless-all about designing web pages. I'm willing to learn, but I need help to start. So I need a place to put this, and someone to help me make this happen.

Anyone? I will gladly pay you back with gratitude, acknowledgement on said page, and the baked goods of your choice....

Comments

[jducoeur]

In principle, this ought to be fairly easy to set up in Querki -- most of what you need is already there, and I think everything else is on the near-term roadmap. But I'm missing a couple of key features (eg, the ability for people to ask to join, and the ability for you to send them messages), and I don't have my legal ducks in a row yet. (I really need to get incorporated before taking on anything like this.)

If somebody can help sooner, take them up on it. But if you don't have a solution by July, poke at me: by then, I should be ready for it (inshallah), and could get you set up lickety-split. It wouldn't be a work of art, but it should function decently well. (And if any web designers poke their heads up, I can tell them what they need in order to make it prettier.)

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

I've heard it said that you don't typically make "websites" for this kind of thing any more - you develop a web presence mostly via the use of some other third party tools, like blogging tools.

That doesn't mean you have to blog... it just means that this is the quickest way to put together a template that contains all the important information you need.

Alas, I don't know how to do this. But I mention it mostly because if you ran into someone who said they could set up a Wordpress blog to do this, I'd want you to recognize that they might actually be saying "I can probably create all the website you need", rather than "Oh, if you *also* want to blog about this, you can...".

[siderea]

Ooh, that's my cue!

I'm on my commute, so can't go into details atm, but: I think you can do 95% of what you want on wordpress.com in a free account -- not mind you a WP install of your own, which is much more labor intensive, deeply technical, and security-issue prone.

Something useful to know: there is a bright-line difference in sophistication (and thus expense) between "my website tells its audience things" (cheap, easy) and "my website's audience tell me things through my website" (actual work). Any time a website presents its users with a box into which to type -- whether a search box, a sign up, an order form, anything -- the stakes go up, anywhere from, "oh now we have to think about this" to "holy cats". And it's approximately impossible for laypeople to tell where on that continuum they're proposing to land. Appearances can be deceiving.

Back later.

[siderea]

Okay, I'm back.

Wordpress.com allows free signups just like LJ does, and just like LJ you get your journal/blog name as part of the URL: ladysprite.wordpress.com.

As of this moment, btw, 1day4charity.wordpress.com and onedayforcharity.wordpress.com are both available. If either of those works for you, you might want to jump on it.

As I said above, WP will do 95% of what you want. It will happily be a website for you instead of a blog (here is a wordpress.com website of a colleague of mine; he retains a vestigial blog, but it can be turned off entirely if you want), so long as what you want doesn't go beyond 1) showing people webpages, 2) presenting people with a form through which they can contact you, and 3) some built in social media widgets.

You said you wanted mostly just a welcome page, FAQ, list of links and resources, and a place where people can sign up. A bunch of pages and a form which when the user enters their email address, it's emailed to your secret email address: WP.com can totally do that. Note that this means processing sign-ups manually -- or having a system somewhere else which captures the signups and automatically sends a thank you note or whatever. WP can't handle processing or storing any kind of external user submission of data, they can merely pass it on to you via email messages. Worst case, you get an email from WP every time someone signs up, and each night you reply to signups with thank you notes, and store their emails someplace in your email program or mass email service.

Also, WP.com can't handle anything like the donors page you mention, not automatically, out of the box. But you have three options there: 1) curate such a list manually -- at the end of the day, it's all just HTML; 2) figure out if there's some way to get WP to let you embed an IFRAME or something (if it is possible, it might involve paying them for the privilege, since their business model is pay-for-more-play) and then have the content served from somewhere else; 3) have the donors page at a separate website. The first will be quite a bit of tedious work for you; the other two involve quite a bit of technical work on somebody's part. So maybe this should be put off as a "Version 2 Feature".

Thoughts:

1) You might want to create an email address specifically for this project. If it goes viral, it's going to wind up in a lot of people's address books, which means it will get harvested by spambots sooner rather than later. I think you might find it worth the trouble to set up. I know that Gmail (and I suspect that Outlook.com) can be configured to forward copies of all email to that account to your regular one; that way you know when you have incoming email, and so long as you're disciplined about only sending email from the project account, your personal email won't get exposed to random people signing up.

[continued]

[siderea]

[continued]


2) Implementing web pages in HTML is one craft (called HTML production); building new functionalities into web pages is a different craft (called web development or simply programming); and figuring out what web pages should look like, creating the graphics that decorate them and making them look like anything other than black Times Roman text on a white background is a third craft (called web design). To make an analogy: the first is the construction crew, the second is the electrician, the plumber, the structural engineer, or the architect (depending on the extent of the project), and the third is the interior decorator.

You're going to need to think of each of those three domains, though using something like WP.com, it will be in a scaled-down way. You'll have to do a bit of HTML in your pages to make them look the way you want -- just as you do in LJ posts. You can do about none, and rely on the WYSIWYG editor they provide, or work with raw HTML yourself. You'll have to pick a theme and come up with art for it if you want and tweak it a little, in whatever ways they provide -- again same as on LJ. Note that, just like LJ, they have premium themes. Also, if you pay them, you can upload your own custom CSS, if you require the level of visual control of your site. Finally, the point of going through WP.com is that you're buying pre-fab, so you don't need to worry about engineering, plumbing, or wiring. You will need to figure out how to use the WP dashboard to set things up the way you like.

Regardless of how you approach getting a website, you're going to have these three domains you have to think about: making it HTML, making it go, and making it pretty.

3) If you decide to do WP.com, plan on spending a chunk of time (possibly broken into several smaller chunks of time for your comfort and convenience), just going through the left menu choices of the WP.com dashboard and playing with them all and finding out what they all do. There are approximately a zillion choices, often of things it would not have crossed your mind to consider, which you will want to consider. If you plan on spending that time up-front, playing with the toy and finding out what it can do, it will be easier for you to then get down to work and make your site do what you want -- easier than trying to start by going in with specific implementation plan. If you start with "trying to do something" you'll spend all your time in "looking up how you do that" hell, and it's a lot like trying to use your forehead to beat your way through a brick wall.

4) If you're going to be emailing mass announcements ("mail blasts") to big lists of email address, there's software that will make your life easier, and possibly handle things more ethically. People are very touchy about email.

I can potentially set you up with something like that. Let me know. It would be Mailman based; if somebody wants to offer you free ConstantContact or something else premium and fancier, maybe go with that instead.

ETA: Oh, I forgot some important things:

5) The WP.com functionality you want is called "Pages". In the admin area, next under "Posts" is "Pages", and that's where you set up non-blog-post web pages, like the "about" page a lot of blogs have. You can have a WP.com site which consists of only "Pages". I don't remember how you get the blog off the main page, but it's a googleable fact; ask if it gives you trouble.

6) If its important to you to have a URL that doesn't have "wordpress.com" in it, such as "onedayforcharity.org" (sorry, that one's taken) or whatever, WP.com can totally be that for you -- for a modest fee.

ETA2:

7) IIRC, not all WP themes are created equal -- some have different functionality baked in, which means some themes may look nice but not do something you want. Schedule an absurd amount of time for "trying on" one theme after another, and seeing how you like each one.

[meranthi.livejournal.com]

FYI, on Gmail addresses. You can have multiple addresses and forward them all to the same place. And you can set it up so that you reply as if you were replying from the original email. I have 4 or 5 gmail addresses which all go to the same place, and I can reply from each of those addresses individually. I don't know how easy it is to crack that from a hacker perspective, if that's a concern, though.

[siderea]

8) Regardless of how you do this, expect to be creating at least one new account on a service somewhere. Maybe two if you take my advice to set up a project-specific email account somewhere, and you might wind up with others. I strongly recommend taking a piece of ruled paper, and dividing it into columns: SERVICE, ACCOUNT, EMAIL, PASSWORD, URL, NOTES. Then for each account/service you sign up for immediately, or even as you are signing up, fill it in with a pen or pencil. For LJ, your row could look like:

livejournal.com

ladysprite

ladysprite@whereveryousignedupfrom.com

yourLJpassword

ladysprite.livejournal.com

My personal journal

I've seen people launch this sort of project, and have a bunch of new new-media assets, and suddenly realize that they completely forgot what their new email account username was, or whether it was at gmail or at Outlook or at wherever, or what their Wordpress blog's URL was. I seriously recommend writing it down in an organized fashion on a sheet of paper. And taping the paper to the wall above your monitor at home, so you don't lose it!

[ladysprite.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for all of this advice - it's really helpful, and I think I have a better idea of what I can and can't accomplish, and how to make it happen.

I'll definitely look into WP; though it also looks like google pages may be able to do most of what I want, with the benefit of being able to take input data and put it into a spreadsheet for me - I can manage then making the display page on my own; I can learn that, I think. And yeah; getting a separate email address makes good sense.

I may take you up on your offer of further aid/advice with emailing as I make progress. And thank you again; I really hope I can make this work....

[siderea]

Ooh, that sounds like a great idea. I keep forgetting that Google does that, and I don't know much about it. I should take one of those out for a spin and see what it can do.

You're quite welcome. Just let me know about the emailing.

[jducoeur]

with the benefit of being able to take input data and put it into a spreadsheet for me

Yep -- the magic words there are "Google Forms". Basically, you set up a spreadsheet, and then build a pretty question-and-answer style input form in front of it that lets people add rows. We built one of these for the current Carolingian Site Book -- I can probably help with that end of things, if you need any assist with it...

[joannahurley.livejournal.com]

Hmm...to follow on the email info, you can potentially buy a domain and then use google accounts to make multiple emails, etc and otherwise use google for that domain. That's how catandunicorn.org is set up.

I have a friend who does my domain hosting (used to do my webpage when I had one). I can ask him if he has the time. I will ask the same of my SIL. She's the graphic artist, and my BIL is the back end. But I don't know if they have the time to take on a project right now.

[grum]

You have a wealth of advice in these comments. I am definitely interested in being able to share the idea once you get it put together and up online.

[tpau]

well i offered on FB and in person when you asked, so you know, let me know. My thought was to set up WordPress for you either way.

[ladysprite.livejournal.com]

Oh, trust me, I'm planning on taking you up on your offer - we just didn't have a chance to discuss it on Sunday because we were too busy shivering and huddling away from the rain. :)

I'm looking at both WordPress and GooglePages; is there a reason you'd recommend one over the other?

[tpau]

word press is frankly easier to use, and unlikely to go away while google has taken features away when they decided they no longer liked it.

word press is easier to create and maintain, and for you to edit and so on. some nifty features built in for skins and stuff too in there.

[tpau]

plus, wordpress is something i can set up for you in under 5 minutes...

[laurion]

Happy to lend expertise on (depending on how far you want to go) setting up a domain name, a hosting solution, wordpress, and all the other tools you'll probably need to run a site.

Everything else I can offer in terms of design and content and whatnot is just opinion though, but you are welcome to it.

Better still, in the spirit of volunteerism, I'd be happy to host the page under my own hosting account, which will save money and time and some setup. Contact me by email if you want more information or to followup.