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

[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.