The Ectopic Pregnancy Trust, an organisation that I’ve worked with on and off for the last eight years, commissioned me to design a new mini-website. The site gives women (and their partners) who have lost a child to an ectopic pregnancy, opportunity to light a candle and leave a message in remembrance.

Remembrance is such an important service to be able to offer and the Trust wanted to get this just right, so there was a lot of discussion and many minor changes made along the way. It’s a difficult area to work in because it deals with grief and so many other emotions. The site had to be carefully worded and the colours and imagery well-chosen. It was also important to reflect the branding of the organisation and encourage clients to make a donation to support the work of the Trust.

What tech was used?

I didn’t implement a CMS because I couldn’t find a product to do what we specifically needed. Instead I coded from scratch in PHP and MySQL. Every modification meant a new round of testing; fortunately the Trust has many active supporters who were happy to sign up as guinea pigs- and their help was invaluable in spotting bugs and creating a user-friendly application.

Looking back, would I do anything differently? Maybe, having explored the Drupal CMS lately and seeing how flexible it can be, I would have used it as the tool to enable people to subscribe and light candles.

Using Basecamp to manage the project was a good idea

Izzie at the Trust is a great project champion, she had a vision and convinced her organisation to fund it. She’s also a funny and frequent communicator. Because so much discussion was necessary, we used a great product called Basecamp to manage the project: Basecamp enabled me to uploaded the draft designs as JPGs and Izzie could comment on them; we made to-do lists and ticked them off as they were completed; Izzie uploaded text content so I could add it to pages; and now we have an archive of all the decision-making throughout the lifetime of the project.

If you’re going to use an online project management like Basecamp, here’s one tip: stop sending each other emails and do everything using Basecamp instead. If you want, Basecamp can email you every time a document or comment is added and it’s so much more convenient than searching through old emails trying to find an attachment.

The candle tributes

The site has been live for several months. Here are just two of the messages left on the website:

to our beloved who never made it….will never
forget the minute you made us smile.

Wanted in every way possible ,you fought so hard
but it wasn’t to be. Gone but never ever
forgotten.You are always in our hearts and we
think about you every day.xx

Volunteers from the Ana Liffey Drug Project choose which websites to add to the Addiction Search Engine. When visitors type in a search query the Addiction Search Engine searches only these sites and, in some instances, the sites that they are linked to. Because addiction is an area on the web that attracts bogus websites, this means that the users of the Addiction Search Engine don’t have to trawl unnecessary or inappropriate websites.

How to set up a search engine with Google Custom Search

It’s quick and easy to set up a Google Custom Search Engine (CSE). Simply visit www.google.com/cse and follow the instructions. If you don’t already have a username and password for Google you’ll need to create an account first. Within minutes you’re able to start adding websites to your own search engine.

Refining the search results

A key feature of Google CSE is the search refinements function. Refinements are labels that can be applied to web sites. They appear as a list of links above search results and allow users to narrow their search. When a user clicks a refinement label, the sites that are labeled are given priority in the results.

How volunteers contribute to this project

It does require a significant level of time to maintain and refine the Addiction Search Engine. It’s important to ensure that the Custom Search is up to date and relevant and this is where having volunteers can be really helpful.

All contributors to the Addiction Search Engine give their time and expertise on a pro bono basis. The Ana Liffey Drug Project currently has six volunteers and all have a background in working in the field of addiction. Volunteers are given limited access to the Addiction Search Engine to add sites and decide which existing ‘search refinement’ labels to apply to those sites.

Significantly, Google Custom Search allows for a capacity of 100 volunteer contributors; therefore, the recruitment of volunteers is an ongoing process and is an area with a lot of potential for development. The input of volunteers in sharing their expertise and energy is crucial to the ongoing success of the Addiction Search Engine.

What difference has the Addiction Search Engine made to the Ana Liffey Drug Project?

A key value of the Ana Liffey Drug Project is that they aim to take a wider role in society – they believe in partnership and have a local, national and international perspective. The development of the Addiction Search Engine has acted as a conduit to quality web based information for the wider community.

It’s allowed them to work in partnership with professional volunteers from outside their own agency. They also collaborate with other respected organisations, via their websites, to help promote quality information and support on issues relating to addiction. Using the web has brought new friends to collaborate with, such as the Swansea Drugs Project, Wales. Plus the Addiction Search Engine is helping to raise the profile of the organisation in Ireland and in other countries.

Advice for other organisations wanting to set up their own search engines

Be specific and identify your niche.

Prepare a plan for how you see your custom search engine developing. Do your research and take a look at good examples from other projects.

Be wary of jargon because the keywords and search queries that visitors to your website might use may not tally with the jargon used in your area of expertise/specialism.

Take time to learn how other Google features can assist your new Google Custom Search Engine. You could use Google Alerts to receive email updates of the latest websites, news items etc to be listed on Google, based on your choice of query or topic. For example, one of the email alerts the Project receives is on the topic of ‘drug addiction’. This lets them know about the latest web sites and articles to appear on Google and they can add the best of these to the Addiction Search Engine.

Measuring the success of your custom search engine

Google Custom Search provides statistics on the use of the Addiction Search Engine. That’s how the ALDP knows that there were 3,982 search queries in February 2008 and a grand total of 12,349 searches so far. The statistics facility, provided by Google, gives a clear picture of the ongoing use and success of the Addiction Search Engine.

You don’t have to have your own website to have a custom search engine. However, if you have your own domain name and webspace you can host your CSE within it. Recently, www.addictionsearch.net has been developed as the new home for the Addiction Search Engine. If you have your own hosting then the free Google Analytics tool can be used to get far more detailed statistics on site usage.

Other indicators of success include the ongoing telephone calls, emails and personal contacts made by people interested in the work of the ALDP having found the website and their specific interest in the Addiction Search Engine.

Advertising revenue

Google by default puts adverts on your CSE but non-profit organisations are allowed to switch them off. Originally the Project didn’t plan to include adverts on the website. However, not for profit organisations need to create revenue too and adverts can create a revenue stream that meets some of the cost of providing and developing the website. The eventual goal is to have a financially self-sufficient website.

The website is too new to gauge whether the revenue will be sufficient. However, between 18th February 2008 and 12th March 2008 the revenue earned from Ad Sense was $52. This could be improved on by ensuring the Ads that appear on the website are efficiently and effectively targeted: there is an option to exclude the URLs of inappropriate ads.

This case study was written by Jason King based on interview notes with Tony Duffin of the Ana Liffey Drug Project.

The Ana Liffey Drug Project

Established in 1982, the Ana Liffey Drug Project was the first ‘low threshold - harm reduction’ type service in Ireland. This model has gone on to be replicated throughout Ireland by many other organisations. Ana Liffey Drug Project was originally set up as an alternative to the dominant abstinence based approach of the day. The project created a welcoming space where active drug users could look at their life and their options for positive change in a non-judgmental environment. The project espoused core principles of ‘Respect, Welcome, Participation and Rights’. These principles still apply today.

Tony Duffin

Tony Duffin is Director of the Ana Liffey Drug Project. Over the past 16 years Tony has focused his efforts on the issues of drugs, alcohol and homelessness. Tony has delivered, managed, designed and led innovative services that work with people actively engaged in problematic substance use. Tony qualified in the Diploma in Drug Dependence from the National Addiction Centre, London, in 1999 and the M.Sc. in Drug and Alcohol Policy, Trinity College Dublin in 2006.

Five years ago, when nfpSynergy began their research, only 16% of the public said they had visited a charity’s website in the past six months. By February 2007 that figure had risen to 23%; and by October 2007 it was 30%. That’s very encouraging news for charities spending time and money on developing their websites. So what else does the report tell us about trends in charity websites?

Charities can be slow to adopt newer technologies. Currently only 16% of charities publish an RSS feed to enable visitors to subscribe to receive content; surprisingly only 15% have a blog. That’s not to say that charities are unaware of the benefits because when asked what else they planned to implement, podcasts and blogs were top of their wishlists with RSS not far behind. Older, reliable technologies remain popular: over half of the charities circulate an email newsletter; and chat and forums remain popular ways to build an online community.

Half of the charities surveyed accept donations online and many can take regular donations by direct debit. An encouraging number of charities intend to set up online donations within the next six months.

43% of charities have a budget for the website. A quarter don’t have a budget, and a quarter don’t know whether they have or not – and I suspect that means not!

Responsibility for editing the content is usually left to just one or two people. Only 23% of charities had three or more staff working on the website and only 15% let volunteers contribute. Content management systems (CMS) have made it possible to enable many more people than that to author, submit and edit web content. No techie skills are required so I’d hope to see more charities enabling more staff and volunteers to contribute to the site content in future. Only 41% of respondents said they use a CMS but I’d expect that figure to rise substantially over the next couple of years, especially as older websites get redesigned.

I’m impressed by the 4% of charities that said they update their website hourly: I just hope they’re not the same organisations that only let one (presumably very tired) person edit the site content.

NfpSynergy asked whether charities’ websites conform to accessibility standards – 32% said yes. That’s higher than I’d expect and I wonder if that’s accurate, has anyone seen any alternative figures?

There’s a lot to learn from the nfpSynergy report so please read it. But remember that statistics aren’t always reliable or meaningful out of context, especially when a relatively small number of organisations has been sampled and the respondents aren’t necessarily au fait with techie jargon. For example, according to the report, twice as many charities were using a CMS in 2004 than in 2006: experience tells me those figures should be the opposite way round.

I designed their website using standards-compliant html and css. Only a limited colour palette was used, to reflect the charity’s branding. The ‘heads’ graphic and logo were supplied by Relate.

The website has a simple structure of pages and sub-pages, but no posts or news items.

This Relate website is built around WordPress, a free and open source content management system (CMS). This enables Relate to publish pages on their website and easily make changes to text and images. WordPress is a great tool for small charities who want to have control over their own website content.

To see the website I designed for Relate visit www.relatelondonnw.org.uk.

What does the Ectopic Pregnancy Trust do?

One in 80 pregnancies is ectopic, meaning that the egg develops outside the fallopian tube and the pregnancy is lost, with future fertility often affected. There are at least 20,000 admissions into hospital every year and approximately five deaths per year.

The Trust raises awareness of the condition amongst women of childbearing age, the medical profession and the general public. It provides a helpline and supports research into the underlying causes, to improve earlier diagnosis and make advances in the treatment and management of ectopic pregnancies.

How does the Ectopic Pregnancy Trust use online forums?

An incidence of one in 80 pregnancies means that although the condition is common, it is not so common that women are likely to know anyone else who has had it. The Trust uses simple technologies and the ubiquity of the Internet to put people with similar health and emotional needs in touch with one another, who otherwise would never meet.The condition is potentially fatal, so the website provides quality information on symptoms, diagnosis and treatment, written and peer-reviewed by medical experts. Because the condition is often misdiagnosed, articles on diagnosis and treatment are provided for medical professionals. The Trust also uses the site to further its own research programme by publishing a questionnaire.

It was the introduction of forums into the website that changed how the Trust operates. Forums (also called messageboards or bulletin boards) enable conversations online. Someone might post a message to say they are worried they might have an ectopic; others can respond with sympathy, understanding and information based on their own experiences. Separate forums exist for women at different stages of loss and recovery and there are passworded rooms where the moderators and volunteers can support one another.

What difference has ICT made?

The Trust now exists in many ways as an online rather than a physical organisation. Most new referrals are via the website, fundraising efforts are co-ordinated online and the forums have relieved the burden on the phone helpline. Visitors often find the website by typing their symptoms into Google. Many visitors are from overseas because the Trust is the only charity in the world for this medical condition.

The forums have enabled the sharing of quality information and emotional support in an informal setting and with a degree of anonymity. There are on average 40,000 visits a month to the forums and over 1,700 registered users, with up to 42 people online at any one time. An average 200 messages are posted daily.

The board has saved lives. Forum users once sent message after message to a woman with symptoms to convince her to go to hospital immediately – she had an ectopic and without their advice could have died.

What was learnt?

Simple, inexpensive and popular technologies are often better than expensive, custom-built applications. The first messageboard was custom-built by an IT volunteer. It was difficult to maintain so the Trust switched to the free and open source phpBB bulletin board: easy to install and use, with a large community of other users.

The original messageboard went live without being properly tested and this compounded the problems with its design. The new phpBB forums underwent months of user-testing first, to iron out any problems.

Small charities can’t monitor such busy forums using paid staff alone. Moderating duties are delegated to eight trusted volunteers, who look after visitors, reading and replying to messages and ensuring everyone is welcomed.

The website has been active for six years with no funding and a web designer voluntarily keeps the site going. It’s impractical to rely on a volunteer to make changes to a large website so the Trust edit the site’s content using Adobe Contribute software and a blogging tool called WordPress is used to post news onto the site.

Although this example shows that a small national charity can use the Internet to build a successful community, it’s not sustainable without secure funding, which is why the Trust has put together a plan for the website’s development. The website has twice been nominated for an E-Commerce award and in 2007 it won an eWellbeing award. This kind of recognition will be invaluable in approaching funders. Visit the Ectopic Pregnancy Trust website to see their online forums in action.

This article was written by Jason King (the Trust’s web designer)  and originally published as part of the Media Trust’s New Media Case Studies booklet.

I wrote three of the articles, about how:

• Interplast, a plastic surgery charity, promote themselves by blogging;
• Save the Children sold virtual yaks in the virtual world of Second Life;
• and the Ectopic Pregnancy Trust’s online discussion forums have proved so valuable to the charity.

You’ll also find articles on online fundraising, RSS, putting video on the net, e-commerce and campaigning online.

Download New Media Case Studies.