website

When did you create your website or last do a major overhaul? Chances are that quite a few months or even years have slipped by since the last time you really paid attention to what’s on your website. [First published February 2006.]

February is a good time of year to do a review of your site. Get it all up-to-date and in order for this new year of action. You don’t need any special skills for a review, just the ability to use a web browser and make some notes.

Here’s a checklist.

Contact details

• are they on your website?
• are they easy to find?
• are they accurate?
• do email links and contact forms still work?

News

If you have a News section:

• are the items listed still news or are they now “olds”?
• have things happened recently that have not been listed?
• should you move older items to a News archive?

Activities

If you have a section about your activities:

• are the activities still current?
• are contact details correct?
• are dates correct?

Newsletters

If you have a section for newsletters, meeting minutes etc:

• have the most recent materials been added?
• should older materials be put into archives by year?
• do the links contain information about size and format?
• is there a link to download Adobe Reader (if materials are in PDF format)?

Resources

If you make books, videos, brochures or other resources available for loan or purchase:

• are items listed which are no longer available?
• are prices or loan conditions current?
• are new items available but not listed?
• are contact details correct?
• does the online order form work correctly?
• does the order form for download and printing work correctly?

Review date

It’s a good idea to let visitors know you check and update your website regularly.

• do pages have a note of when they were last reviewed?
• do any pages show a review date older than 12 months ago?

Statistics

Check your statistics regularly.

• how many visitors did you have last year?
• which were the most popular pages?
• what search terms did they use?
• who links to you?

There are other things you could check on your website, but these are items you should check regularly. Print off a copy of the checklist and assign the task to a volunteer or paid worker. Add the review to your regular meeting agenda.

We’ve made the checklist available as a PDF too. Download a copy for your own use: site-review.pdf (45Kb PDF).

Written for and reproduced from CommunityNet Aotearoa Panui, February 2006.

Popularity: 13% [?]

You’ve designed a conference programme with photos, explanations of the workshops, a registration form, extra information. What’s the best way to distribute this? [First published February 2005.]

Email and web

Imagine it’s your annual conference. It’s a big event with speakers and workshops, conference strands and a fundraiser dinner. You’ve designed a programme with a list of all the presenters, photos, fancy headings, explanations of the workshops, a registration form, map of the venue, extra information. Now you need to persuade people to sign up.

You’re tempted to email the programme out to all the members of your group, other groups in your area and people all over the country who will be interested. Even supposing you’ve taken to heart the information in Panui #36 about mailing lists, is email the best way to do this? And what format should you use: Word, PDF, something else?

Big documents

The minute you add pictures to anything the file size gets bigger. Send an ordinary text-only email to a friend and it takes a second to get through. Add a picture and it can take minutes. Put the picture and text into an attached Word document and you can multiply the time it takes.

If you have large documents, such as a conference programme, fact sheets or newsletters, especially if they have pictures, then email is a poor choice for distributing them. All too often email gets clogged up, attachments are removed or they can’t be opened when they arrive. Then there’s the whole question of viruses and worms in attachments, and spam filters blocking the message.

Don’t spend half the day emailing out a 2 Megabyte Publisher file to all your members only to find that three quarters of them didn’t get it or couldn’t open it. You’re wasting time, money and effort and creating ill will at worst and confusion at best.

Little by little

Here’s the trick: you write a short email, with at most two paragraphs, containing the most important information. Along with that you put the full document on your website. Your email includes a link to the web page (not directly to the document itself) so visitors can go to read and download what they want.

This approach not only saves problems with attachments but also avoids tying up phone lines and clogging up mailboxes.

You can also offer in the email to send a printed copy to anyone who wants it. Remember to remind them to provide their name and address so you know where to send it.

Advertisers

If you want someone else to advertise your conference (such as CommunityNet Aotearoa) don’t just email all the guff and ask them to run an ad. You’ll find your message lands at the bottom of a list of priorities. First see if there’s an online form you can fill in. If not then craft an ad containing the key information and a web address and email it as text only in the body of a message. Provide contact details for any further information the advertiser might need (eg querying a spelling or a date).

Choices, choices

In the next issues we’ll look at what format you should use for documents — Word, PDF, HTML, plain text, rtf, Publisher, AppleWorks. There are so many to choose from and each has its advantages and disadvantages. We’ll also look at a free service for those who don’t have a website but still need to distribute large files.

Written for and reproduced from CommunityNet Aotearoa Panui, February 2005.

Popularity: 13% [?]