Following on from the Making Links conference in November last year, one of the conference delegates raised a question with me regarding eliciting website requirements. So that everyone can benefit, I’ve attempted to answer the question here;

I think where we need the assistance is clarifying exactly what we want/need, from a website point of view, and help determining this.

Understand your organisation’s objectives and strategic goals

A website is a business tool. It helps to deliver the objectives and goals of your organisation. For example, a company that manufactures Widgets may have a website which provides information on Widgets (which is a pre-sales function), compares Widgets to  Blidgets (also a pre-sales function), allows customers to log a support request (a post-sales function), and uses the company’s branding to enhance market position (a marketing function). The website may also allow customers to pay bills  online (an accounts payable function) and network with other users of Widgets (a community building function).

A non profit organisation is no different – it still has goals and objectives, and your website should support this. For instance, if one of the objectives of your organisation is to raise awareness  about a particular topic – then this will be an objective of your website. This is the ‘what‘ – or the objective. The ‘how‘, or the implementation details – then become part of the discussion between your organisation and the web developer.

Some other common requirements of not for profit organisations (and thus requirements of their websites) include;

• Facilitating donor relations and fundraising: Many non profit organisations are dependent upon donations and a donor base. One of the objectives of their web presence is therefore to foster relationships with donors. This may be implemented as simply as having a Paypal donate button on the site, or having something such as CiviCRM allow donors/members to register their interest online. Other functionality that can help meet this requirement includes the ability to subscribe to RSS feeds (which are done automatically using something like WordPress) so that donors can keep abreast of news, or allowing people to submit their email and subscribe to email newsletters. Again, don’t confuse the ‘what’  – ie facilitating donor relations – with the ‘how’. The ‘what’ for organisations may be the same, but the way in which they are implemented is likely to differ based on the the nature, ethos and community that the organisation serves. Another example
• Raising awareness of issues and influencing behaviour or choices: Many not for profits are focussed on a particular area or cause. Often, one of the aims of the organisation is to raise awareness of the cause by informing the general public. This is the ‘what’. The ‘how’ can differ from site to site – for instance some may use story telling, by providing real life accounts. Others may opt for a ‘brochureware’ style site offering clear and concise information to help influence behaviours or choices.
• Brand awareness: This is an area that non profits are traditionally not strong at. The bigger not for profits, such as World Vision and Oxfam have very good ‘brand awareness’. Their logos, colours and name are easily recognised by the general public. This is the ‘what’. ‘How’ this is done on a website comes down to having a standard logotype, standard colours and branding for your organisation, and ensuring that your web presence reflects this. (As a side note, part of ensuring brand awareness is also about having a Web Style Guide which is adhered to by the staff charged with maintaining web content).
• Building communities of practice: Some organisations seek to build or support communities which share common values or a common ethos – for example those interested in the environment, support groups for those with a particular disease or affliction or groups sharing an attribute in common – for interest those who are HIV positive. Building the community is the ‘what’ – and a forum, wiki, blog or other tool is the ‘how’.
• Providing services online: There are some services provided by not for profit organisations which may be time consuming, expensive or otherwise cumbersome to administer using a manual process. They may be candidates for automation via the website. The ‘what’ here is providing the service online – and the ‘how’ is the method used to implement – for instance an online form or instant messaging system.

Your organisation’s business plan, strategic plan, annual plan or annual objectives document (if it has one) is a great place to start eliciting which functions your website needs to support.

Prioritisation

Prioritising requirements when developing a new web presence is vitally important. Having a strong strategic or other business plan is a huge advantage here, as it will already outline priorities for you (and hence priorities for the website). If you do not have this type of document to refer to, then there are other methods to prioritise requirements;

• Return on investment: Return on investment can be measured in many ways, such as labour savings (by automating a manual process online), income generation (by facilitating online donations or donor relations) or brand awareness. Which of your requirements is going to give you the greatest return on investment? Which return is the most important for your organisation
• Effort: Some web site features are harder than others (in terms of effort, cost, overhead to maintain etc). Your web developer will be able to indicate which features are high effort or high cost and which are not. It may be in your interests to get some ‘quick wins’ on the board – those features which provide a good return but which are low cost/low effort.

It may be useful to map out requirements and the effort they will take on a graph with two axes – one for return and one for effort. Those that are high return/low effort or high return/high effort should be prioritised higher.

Measuring whether the website you are designing will meet your objectives

When identifying requirements (the ‘how’), think about how you will measure whether the objectives that your website is supporting have been met or not. This takes us into the field of website metrics – measuring the success of your website. This can be as simple as measuring how many ‘Contact forms’ have been received or how many times someone has downloaded Brochure X. Focusing on website requirements in this way again helps to align them to the objectives of the organisation.

(NOTE: The best book I’ve found in this field is Hurol Inan’s ‘Measuring the success of your website’ – highly recommended)

The Bonnie Babes Foundation website, email and shared calendaring has recently been developed using free and open source software. That is, each of the software tools is completely and absolutely FREE! My time on the project (around 100 hours all up) was also donated, so the only costs incurred by the Foundation were for web hosting ($15 per month at Servers Australia).  So, how did it all come together?

Email

Bonnie Babes were previously using a POP-based solution using the organisation’s primary email contact address. This meant that if five separate people on five separate computers each sent mail, no one else could see what had been sent. This was migrated to an IMAP-based solution using Thunderbird.

The old POP email was moved to the IMAP folders. The biggest hassle here was that there was around 80 times more email to migrate to IMAP than I had budgeted for during the analysis phase. Luckily, Servers Australia came to the party and gave us some breathing space with an extra half a gig (NOTE: Big thanks Jared!). There was one machine that would crash every time I tried to import the mail from Outlook into Thunderbird, so as a workaround we first imported the mail from Outlook into Outlook Express, and from Outlook Express into Thunderbird. This finally worked (just be careful if you have to do this, as it imports ALL accounts from Outlook Express).

The staff at the organisation were used to using Outlook rather than Thunderbird, however they seemed to adapt fairly quickly. The only glitches we found were that the formatting in Thunderbird is a little different to Outlook – so ‘Paste without formatting’ was used as a workaround.

Filters have been set up on one computer rather than different computers having different filters applied.

Shared calendar

One of the requirements of the organisation was to have a shared calendar so that appointments, events and to do lists could be shared among multiple staff. An Exchange server was out of budget, so I settled for Sunbird. With Sunbird, it can be set up so that a remote calendar can be used. An .ics file was set up for this purpose on the web server, however it was made available under the FTP root rather than the web server root for security reasons.

The calendar is then accessed via a standard FTP URL such as:

ftp://username:password@ftp.mydomain.org.au/path/to.ics

Website

The website has been created using WordPress, with a number of plugins. Chief among them are cForms, for building user editable contact forms and the eShop plugin for online commerce. I had originally planned to use the WP e-Commerce plugin for the Online Shop component, however this plugin seems to be full of bugs and I had no end of trouble installing it.

One very useful plugin that deserves a mention is pageMash - used for ordering pages within WordPress. I’m surprised that this functionality hasn’t been made better yet – as the developers state, it’s still a little ‘janky’. Hopefully this will get a look in for the 2.8 release of WordPress.

One of the very nifty things I learned about WordPress during this exercise is that there is an .ics calendar available of upcoming releases – very handy (and very quickly put into Sunbird!)

Of course, the website validates as XHMTL transitional and CSS 3 valid (a very big thanks to Jason King for picking up that the theme version 1.0 wasn’t compliant).

Google tools

The web presence also makes use of a number of freely-available tools by Google, including;

• Google Adwords (facilitated by Google Grants)
• Google Analytics
• Google Webmaster tools

Being a geek, it is no surprise that my monitor (an Acer X223W) is bigger than my (Teac analogue) television. It therefore made sense that rather than upgrading my TV with a set top box, to investigate what’s on the market to receive HDTV on the computer.

The weapon of choice was a Gadget Geek USB HDTV tuner, purchased from Dick Smith for under $AUD 100. Not bad. Under Windows XP, it installed quickly and easily. The unit came with a mobile antenna and Blaze HD TV software, and on the first scan for channels, it found absolutely, yep you guessed it, nothing. So, out came the coax cable, and I plugged the USB HDTV tuner into the outlet in the wall (straight from the antenna – it was previously hooked into my stereo to receive FM radio). The coax cable only fared slightly better – receiving only the digital SBS channels. Just to be absolutely sure, I repeated the process on the other two coax outlets (yep, small unit and three phone lines and three coax outlets. I <3 my house. It will be even better when it’s CAT 6 wired). At most, I could receive 10% signal strength for one other digital channel.

Not to be deterred, I booted into my other operating system (Fedora Core 9) to see whether MythTV would fare any better. MythTV was a nightmare to install – it is not for Linux newbies. After spending four hours resolving dependencies in yum, I finally got the software to install… only to find that there are no Linux drivers for the USB HDTV tuner. Bummer.

Conclusion: I need a new antenna that can pick up HDTV signals. Well, it beats socks as an Xmas pressie

The Making Links 08 conference was held this week at the University of Melbourne. The tagline of the conference is ‘where social action and technology meet’ – and the delegates are primarily from the community, not for profit, activist and educational sectors.

I decided to catch the train up to Melbourne as it’s both cheaper and less stressful than driving in peak hour traffic through the West Gate car park. Who should happen to sit next me on the train? None other than former Liberal member for Corangamite – Stewart McArthur. The irony was not lost on me – a presenter at a largely left wing conference chancing to sit next to a right wing MP. Perhaps the universe was having a chuckle. Stewart was devouring his way through at least three newspapers – so I tried to break the ice by asking him which one he thought was the most truthful. To his credit, he took the question very well and provided me with advice on the merits of various individual journalists. We got talking and I found out he was a keen runner, and he encouraged me to take up the sport. I felt like a politician when I refused to commit

My talk on the day was on free software for non-profit organisations;

making-links-kathyreid-useful-free-software (Open Office .odp file)

making-links-kathyreid-useful-free-software (Powerpoint .ppt file)

The presentation went well, and the audience let me know they were very pleased with it – and had a load of questions!

I then lead the CMS session – which didn’t go quite so well as we spent a lot of time on security issues rather than being able to demonstrate the software in a lot of depth.The group really wanted to see some different options with skinning Drupal and Joomla – however I hadn’t upoaded any and I couldn’t get FTP access with the wireless network connection. There was a lot of contention over whether Joomla or Drupal were more appropriate for use – with the comment raised theat Drupal documentation wasn’t up to scratch.

Some of the key themes expressed during the day were;

• Concern over having sensitive information in databases hosted on the web: CiviCRM is a tool which holds contact details and personal information on donors and volunteers. Delegates were concerned about the security that would be applied to ensure that unauthorised access did not occur to this data.I’ve provided some links below for further information on these products.
  • WordPress security tips and tricks
  • WordPress security whitepaper
  • Drupal and security – Drupal discussion groups
  • Drupal security best practices
  • CiviCRM security consideration
• Criteria on which to base a CMS decision: Many organisations wanted information on how to select the best CMS for their need. One of the delegates provided this handy link to CMS matrix which allows organisations to compare the functionality that is available through different CMSs.
• How to being a foray into social networking: The organisations that were present needed pointers on how to step into the social networking waters – with some already on Facebook or Twitter, but with no real engagement strategy or supporting strategies.

Other key presentations included:

Jason King (non profit web designer) presented tips for non profits, including;

• Register your name and keep it registered (so that somebody can’t grab it when it expires) - this theme was also bourne out by Darryl later on in the session with his presentation on whatsinaname.com.au, which lists all of the domain name registrars and prices for domain hosting (interestingly my host, Servers Australia isn’t on the list – and they’d be near the top for pricing)
• Make sure that you keep all the details such as passwords for the site – so that in the event of a disagreement or dispute with the web designer, you’re able to get into the site and take control
• Choose your web developers carefully – sometimes the director’s brother’s kid son is not the best person to plan or design your not for profit web site.

Andrew Edwards, of Huge Object also gave a presentation on working with developers, the key take aways being;

• Know what you’re paying for – understanding exactly what the developer is quoting on can give you much clearer expectations of what will be delivered
• Check our your developer - by making sure that they know what things like web standards are for instance
• Have a clear idea of what you want in your website – so that what is delivered is more likely to be what is delivered

[Updated 17 Nov 08 to include summary of Jason and Andrew's presentations]

The ‘Go Girl – Go for IT!’ event was held at Deakin University’s Burwood campus on 28-29th October and saw over 1200 secondary school girls attend dozens of presentations by women in IT, who spoke of their career directions and aspirations.  Organised by Victorian Women in ICT, the event aims to attract female middle secondary students into a career in information and communications technology – and to explain some of the subject choices they need to make to get there.

Having participated in BarCampMelbourne and Software Freedom Day, I was motivated to assist with Go Girl – Go for IT! Both BarCamp and SFD engender (no pun intended) a strong sense of community, have a strong freedom ethos and a determination to break down barriers to participation – all things shared by GGGIT. While the workload was overwhelming at first, and the days themselves were both stressful and exciting it’s definitely something I’d jump at the chance to be involved with again.

As a learning opportunity the presentations offered a number of insights.

• Know your audience: Some of the presenters (I won’t mention names) tried to be edgy or hip with their presentations, and used swear words and other shock tactics to engage the audience – even though there was little substance to their presentation.  There is an appropriate context for swearing  and presenting to 15, 16 and 17 year olds is not an appropriate context. Substance first, flashy stuff second.
• Know your audience: Some of the better presenters were both interesting and interested – interesting to watch and genuinely interested in the aspirations and dreams of their audience. Passion is something that you can’t fake.
• Know your audience: Some presenters were the total opposite of hip – and downright boring to watch. 15 year old girls are not business analysts or programmers – and a data flow diagram is not going to engage them.

Observations from the day included;

• Similar to BarCampMelbourne, I noticed that the majority of presenters were Mac rather than PC based – and not just those who were heavily into graphic arts, animation or video. It appears there is definitely an increasing takeup of MacOS.
• Girls from schools with a lower socio-economic background appeared to appreciate the day and the presenters more than private schools – it was interesting that I was not the only volunteer to make this observation. The only conclusion I can draw here is that the private schools are afforded more similar opportunities – therefore appreciate them less.
• Many of the regional schools had to arrive late and leave early because of the distance they had to travel – however many of them did make the effort to come which was pleasing to see.

For me personally, the stand out presentations were;

• Pia Waugh: Of Software Freedom Day International and One Laptop Per Child fame, Pia spoke on how a career in ICT can provide all the things you want from a job – money, travel, interesting work etc. She went one level higher however and showed how the work that you can do can change the world.
• Rebecca Cannon: Spoke on the Artabase site, that intends to be the next Facebook-style collaborative social networking site for artists all over the world.
• Kylie Robertson: Discussed her work with Ish Media. This presentation was a hoot, as it showcased the Girl Friday serial that is downloadable on to mobile phones – and pioneered the way in mobile content.

The Anam Cara House Geelong website went live earlier in the year, and now the Anam Cara House Colac site has gone live. The designs of the two sites vary somewhat to give a distinctive feel, however both sites use WordPress with a variety of plugins so that the administration and documentation is similar between both sites.

The site does not use WordPress widgets – a deliberate choice until such time as there is additional content on the site and the volunteers who will be updating the site become more familiar with the administration interface.

As with the Geelong site, one of the stumbling blocks was again the choice of Events Calendar. At first, the trusted EC was used, but it does not handle custom permalinks very well. I’ve settled instead on Events Calendar by Luke Howell, which is more basic but as is often the case, more reliable.

Further to this post, the presentation I gave at Software Freedom Day in Melbourne is now available. It is a brief presentation, as most of it was demonstrating WordPress and Alice. Unfortunately I had a few hiccups on the day, and it was only with the much appreciated assistance of Ben Balbo and others that the presentation could go ahead. You see, Sakai runs on a Tomcat installation and I had it set up ready to go, but had to reboot, then had Java issues so I couldn’t get it to work. The other hampering factor was that external internet access was not available, and most of my demo used online websites. Never mind, there’s always next year.

It was great to see so many presenters and participants, however numbers were down compared to last year. The Hub, while being a great venue, is a little bit out of the way for most – not as central as the Town Hall.

Free and open source tools in education (Powerpoint, 107kb)

Links for the tools referenced are given below;

• WordPress
• Alice
• Sakai
• Moodle

Questions and comments are warmly welcomed.

Deakin Uni was approached by Bonnie Babes a couple of months ago to assist with their web presence, which was quite dated. I’ve been working on a redesign using free and open source software. The key features are;

• An easily updateable website using the WordPress personal publishing system
• A custom theme for WordPress based on Bonnie Babes’ organisational colours
• A number of freely available WordPress plugins including WP e-Commerce, SEO Tools, ShareThis and pageMash

It wasn’t all plain sailing however. The hosting platform (which is freely provided with thanks to Apex Hosting in Melbourne) is based on Windows and IIS. My use of WordPress has centred on a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) based platform, and I’ve certainly not used PHP much under IIS. The fact that this platform is in use has limited a number of the features of WordPress, so much so that it is likely that the site will be moved to an alternative hosting arrangement. They include;

• Inability to use nice permalinks: Because IIS has no inbuilt mod_rewrite (one of the Apache modules that most hosting providers have installed), the pretty permalinks don’t work in IIS without a lot of kludging. While it is possible to get them to work using mod_rewrite alternatives for IIS, most hosting providers don’t have these installed by default – and they’re unlikely to install on request. WordPress have obviously come across difficulties with IIS and permalinks before – hence this article.
• Inability to use cURL libraries: The cURL libraries in PHP are incredibly useful. They are also used by the WP e-Commerce plugin (which I was aiming to use to facilitate an online shop) as part of the checkout functionality. It wasn’t until I got to testing the checkout that PHP threw a fatal error
• Inability to have WordPress in one directory, and make your blog another: This is related to the permalink issue, largely due to the fact that IIS does not support mod_rewrite or .htaccess without third party tools
• Difficulty making certain files and directories writable: On a Linux system, you can easily use filesystem permissions to make a file or directory (to Linux they are the same thing) writable. Writable files and directories are used all throughout WordPress, for things like;

• Sitemap generation
• Storing of uploaded media such as images, word documents and pdfs
• The ability to edit CSS and other design elements through the administration interface

So, where to from here? It’s likely that we’ll go with another hosting provider who provides a LAMP architecture..