When a charity’s website went walkabout

A charity recently contacted me because through no fault of their own their website had vanished. Their calls and emails to the hosting company were simply being ignored and many weeks later they had received no explanation or resumption of service. These are the decisions we had to make quickly to get their website up-and-running again…

Talk to other charity website owners

If you’re responsible for your nonprofit’s website and you’d like to talk to someone about it there are places you can go for support and to share ideas. The Charity Web Forum is a Yahoo group for the managers and designers of charity websites. There’s some good, frequent discussion and it’s well-worth signing up, reading other peoples’ messages and joining in the conversation.

Web development horror stories

If you’re developing your charity’s website, what’s the worst that could happen? Well, here are some horror stories that I’ve been told by nonprofit organisations and a few lessons we can draw from their experiences.

A worksheet to help you plan your website

Planning your charity’s new website should be a structured task. You need to think about who your audience is, what images to use, the look and style, what content you’ll be publishing, and your hosting requirements; and you should consider all these points before commissioning a web designer. Sounds daunting? Not if you use this worksheet to help you plan your organisation’s website.