Website
What is a website
A website is a collection of web pages, photographs and other images or graphics, video clips, sound files, and other digital products that are hosted on a computer and accessible via the internet, mobile phones and other hand held devices such as 'Blackberries'.
A web page is single document that is written in HTML - Hyper Text Mark Up Language - that can viewed through a web-browser. Webpages can be written as text files using programmes such as notepad, or any word processing software, but this requires the writer understanding HTML code. It is much more common to create webpages in programmes that don't require this knowledge. These programmes are referred tro as WYSIWYG ('What you see is what you get') programmes, as you can create webpages as simply as you would create a formatted word processing document.
A website can be found by typing a URL - uniform resource locator - into the top menu bar of any web browser. The URL is a combination of a domain name, preceded by http://www. - eg http://www.reclaimthenight.org, http://www.gldvp.org.uk, http://www.takebackthetech.org.uk.
Paraphrased from Wikipedia definition of a Website
Why are websites useful?
These days, a website is often the first place the general public will visit to learn about your organisation and creates an immediate impression on the visitor - it's where you convey your mission and message - and it's a place you want them to come back to, time and again.
Websites can be used for many purposes and allow various possibilities for interaction and participation by the public. When someone visits your website, they might be able to:
- learn about your organisation and it's activities
- participate in campaigns, petitions, surveys and consultations
- access information about public policy processes
- access times, agendas and reports from meetings
- access support services
- access information about various issues
- contribute to fund-raising and make donations
- subscribe to electronic newsletters
- tell their story, react to a news item, comment on a campaign, by writing in a blog
- view photographs, listen to interviews, view short video clips
and so on.
Open and closed spaces on your website
You can create spaces on your website that are open to the general public, and spaces which are closed and private. Private spaces can be created on websites by assigning usernames and passwords to certain webpages. A visitor will not be able to access this particular webpage, without the username and password.
Private spaces on a website could be used for:
- organisational planning processes
- archives of documents
- online meetings and discussion spaces
- collective drafting of funding proposals, briefings, policy documents, newsletters
- maintaining databases of subsribers, donors, contacts etc
Building a secure, website and keeping it alive
Building and maintaining a secure, dynamic and easy-to-maintain website requires resources - people, time, money, skills and knowhow. Resources are severely limited for any small, non-profit organisation - and demand on available resources extremely high - but the long term value of a good website is well worth the initial invesment, which, though significant, needn't be exorbitant, nor ongoing.
Resources about website development are at the end of this note, but here are some ideas to keep in mind, when thinking about your website, where you might host it, who develops and maintains it, who controls access to it, how much it might cost, how you can keep it alive.
Reclaim your website
- Trust and values: Websites can be hosted on a commercial server as part of a package when you register a domain, they can be hosted by the internet service provider that provides your email services, if you are quite a large organisation, you may even host your website on a server in your own office, which is connected directly to the internet. When thinking about a host for your website, consider that you are entrusting a very important organisational resource to a third party. You may want to consider smaller, more 'user-friendly' companies - with staff you feel comfortable with, and company policies that are more consistent with voluntary sector and non-profit values, than large faceless corporations.
- Privacy and data protectionNo matter how or where your website is hosted, you should make sure that the hoster has a privacy and data protection policy, and you should read this before signing a contract.
- Usability and AccessibilityIf you have resources to pay a consultant to develop your website, make sure that the consultant has experience in designing sites that are implement accessibility and usability standards.
- Keep it simple:. It's better to have a simple, accessible site with useful and relevant content, that is easy for you to maintain on a regular basis, than to have flashy animated gifs, graphics and flying banners. Think about this when developing plans for your site, or revamping your site.
- Keep control of your username and password: Controlling access to your website. It is quite common for small organisations to leave control of their website with a consultant, or volunteer. By this we mean, that the consultant is sometimes the only person who knows the username and password for accessing the account to update your website. If you are dependant on a consultant to maintain your website, make sure you have all of the details for accessing your website, should you choose, and ask for this information to be clearly documented, as part of the contract.
- Long term maintenance:Think about longer term maintenance. Websites can be designed in ways that make it relatively easy for you to update content, by cutting and pasting text into online forms. These sites are often referred to as being 'driven' by CMS (Content Management Systems) - which is basically a database, behind a webpage. As a part of your website development plan, build in the opportunity for your own staff or volunteers, to learn how to update content themselves. This will of course cost money, but investing in your own skills and capacity will contribute to a more sustainable website.
- Find a volunteer: there are many people in the online community, interested in volunteering their time and skill to help with both building, maintenance of websites and training. GreenNet (a small non-profit Internet service provider) provides a public jobs and volunteers bulletin board where you can post requests for volunteers
Resources on website development, security, usability, management, programming and databases
These resources are hosted by the ItrainOnline initiative which provides materials and annotated links to high-quality resources in English, Spanish, French and other languages, on topics ranging from computer and Internet basics to highly technical areas and the ways that civil society and development organizations can increase their impact using these tools.
Web Design
Resources to take you through the whole process of designing a web site, from learning HTML and page design tools, to designing usable web sites and writing for the web.
Web Site Usability and Accessibility
Resources to help you make your site easy-to-use and accessible to the widest possible range of users. Topics include usability and usability testing, writing for the web, and designing for accessibility.
Web Site Management
Resources relating to the ongoing management and maintenance of web sites, including site promotion, evaluating sites and using web statistics, web servers, and site security and privacy.
Web Programming
Web programming allows you to add greater interactivity to the visitors of your site. This section will take you to resources ranging from basic topics such as javascript and style sheets (CSS) to programming languages such as PHP and ASP.
Databases
Databases are an important tool for managing information, keeping track of contacts and projects, sharing information with remote users, and even automating the updating of your web site. This section provides resources on databases from basic to advanced levels, including information on content management systems.