Patrick Shaw’s Weblog

One of the things that is great about the work of NPower Seattle is that our work is complemented by a lot of sources - the folks at TechSoup, Idealware, ONE/NW, to name just a few.

On top of that - there are also great resources such at the column that Craig Crossman writes for the Seattle Times, called Small Office / Home Office. I was delighted to see that he’s identified another online backup tool called called Carbonite. I’d recommend that you take a look at his article as well as at the Carbonite website to see if this tool might work for you.

Remember, your mileage may vary - you should always choose software in the broader context of your mission, the tools that you have on hand already, training needs, price, and so on.

Special thanks to the sharp eyes of one of NPower Seattle’s network experts, we know that Symantec and TechSoup have teamed up to offer Mail Security 6.0 - a terrific tool for those running Microsoft Exchange!

The database and website team here at NPower is always on the lookout for new (and sometimes free!) tools that might help nonprofits in their work.

One of those is a tool called dabble db. It brags that you can enter your data once, share it with a dozen people, and view it from a hundred angles. They have a video you can watch, and some of their tools are free!

Lately, there have been a number of endeavors to make it easy for non coders like me to create complicated applications. You can use a tool from Yahoo called Pipes, a new tool from Microsoft called Popfly, or an offering from a vendor called Coghead. Each (in their own way) lets users create web based applications.

I’ve seen some nifty creations - some of which looked like they might add value to the nonprofit sector and some that didn’t. But I’m optimistic about the potential!

There are a lot of compelling reasons to use a content management system. Here at NPower Seattle, we’re using Plone to implement websites (of both the simple and the complicated variety!) and one of the features that we like a lot is the way that Plone handles rules based items, such as news and events (or calendar) items.

For example, Plone can automate your news data. You fill out a form (with as little or as much information as you like) and that event can START publishing on a certain date, STOP publishing on another - and Plone can automatically create a link in a box on your home page if you’d like:

And clicking on one of those items will display the detail:

Calendar items work in a similar fashion - you complete a form, can choose to display a link on your home page, and can have additional information about that calendar event:

You can also choose a bigger calendar, if you’d like - one that looks more like this:

Using simple forms and easy to manage rules mean that you can quickly and efficiently update your website - and don’t have to worry about leaving an old news or calendar item on your website! You can find out more about Plone and calendar and event features at www.plone.org

Are you considering using Salesforce at your nonprofit? We think it is a great tool - you can track donors, grants that you are applying for, your stakeholders (and more); can send email and newsletters, can use powerful mail merge tools, and can integrate with your website. And that describes what we call “out of the box” functionality. To be sure - you still need to customize to suit your needs and you need to import your data and also learn how to use your new tool.

But is it right for you? You can attend a workshop at NPower Seattle to find out - and you can also review an earlier posting to gather additional information.

NPower Seattle has recognized Puget Sound nonprofits who are using technology in an innovative way for the past two years - and we’re begriming the process of identifying nominees for our 2007 event!

Last year, Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association received our innovation award for establishing an integrated digital village across three affordable housing and community centers in West Seattle.

And in 2005, Densho received the award for preserving the oral histories of Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during Word War II - and by providing education on civil liberties and rights to students.

We’re looking for nonprofits who:

• Empower more people to take action
• Elevate the organization to a new level of performance
• Expand the capacity of the nonprofit sector by creating solutions other nonprofits can adopt.

Nominations are now being accepted!

Page view, unique visitor, referring URL, key phrase . . . looking at your web statistics can be a little overwhelming! But reviewing them regularly makes great sense - you can figure out who is visiting your website, which content is effective (and conversely, which content might need some, ah, attention!) and can make the most out of your website investment.

Here’s a quick glossary of terms, courtesy Flying Solo:

Unique Visitors: a single, individual person that views your website within a specified time period such as a day or a month. Each person visiting your site is counted only once during that period, no matter how many times they visit your website.

Number of Visits: This is the number of times that your website has been visited. When you compare it with the number of unique visitors, this gives you an idea of the number of people who are returning to your site.

Page: This is a single page of your website, it may be your home (index) page, contact us page, about us or another page within your website.

Hits: A hit is a request made to the server where your website is hosted. Each file that is requested is counted as a hit. For example your home page may be a single .html page with 5 images on it. The number of hits recorded will be 6, as your .html page is one file and each image is also counted as a file. Therefore looking at how many hits that your website has received is not a very good statistical indicator.

Bandwidth: This is the amount of data (measured in megabytes) transferred from your hosts server to an internet user’s computer. E.g. Someone views your home page and on it is text and images that add up to say 2mb, if 50 people view this page then the amount of data transfer would be 100mb. Your web host will specify the amount of bandwidth (data transfer) that your hosting plan includes each month. If you exceed this you will be charged for additional bandwidth. If you have a large site with lots of traffic, keep an eye on this statistic.

Visits Duration: This statistic shows how long people are spending at your website. If they are not staying long you may need to review your content or add an attractor to have them stay longer and view more of your site.

There’s more, too - Work Industries has a nice posting about how to read your stats, which ones are worthwhile, and which ones aren’t.

And our friends at Idealware have a great article called A Few good Web Analytics Tools - also a terrific read!

So - review your statistics, and tune up your website!

Every customer presents NPower Seattle with a unique set of needs - and we work hard to deliver a scope of work that leverages the tools we’re using (We’ve standardized our web development in Plone, and we’re implementing Salesforce, too - we’re still providing other database services as well - but Salesforce is very compelling!) while also meeting those unique needs.

That means our scopes of work are an ever evolving process - I’d like to think that each scope is incrementally better than the last. Here’s a sample scope of work for an agency (de-identified to protect their privacy!) for implementing Plone and integrating some of their Salesforce data. The agency worked with a local design agency to define their information architecture and visual design - so this project doesn’t include those phases. You can review that scope here: Sample Plone and Salesforce Scope of Work

For additional information regarding implementing a scope of work for a Plone website, you can review Elements of an Effective Plone Scope of Work -a brief presentation I created.

One size doesn’t fit all - but it can help to see an actual scope of work, especially if you haven’t had to implement a website before!

Techsoup has been a terrific resource for nonprofits for a long time - and I’ve turned to them frequently for great information, tips, and tricks about the how’s and why’s of technology.

I’m delighted to have had the opportunity to contribute back, too - they’ve recently published an article that I wrote called “Tips for Creating and Editing Content“. The team at Techsoup did a lot of heavy lifting with editing, and my colleagues here at NPower Seattle provided their usual expert advice!