YWAM Information Technology - Web Development - Comments

Thank you!

tofirius — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 12:13:06 +0100

Hi Daniel,
Thank you so much for your ideas. I'll definitely look into Lightbox. There is an extension that will default to a certain language based on IP, but it got to be really frustrating to those staff who speak English... so I took it off. However, we also have ywam.lv registered which I have pointing to the Latvian side of the site automatically. So, on our international advertising, we use ywamlatvia.com, but on Latvian advertising, we use ywam.lv. Regarding the DTS ads... perhaps you can understand when you're creating something, sometimes you just come up with something totally random... that's the case with the glasses kids... but these are just for this year & I don't think I'll use them again after September. I agree with you that they are rather random... I was hoping to jerk some heads into thinking outside of the box with those, but only God can know. I can tell you that I plan to get more deliberate with future ads... I was in a time crunch with this one. I appreciate your feedback. It helps me to grow!!

Chris Bischoff
YWAM Latvia, National Communications Coordinator
www.ywamlatvia.com

Thank you!

tofirius — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 12:12:31 +0100

Chris Bischoff
YWAM Latvia, National Communications Coordinator
www.ywamlatvia.com

Good Job

dan.snell — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 11:45:10 +0100

Hi Chris

Good job on the site. I know how consuming these projects can get and also how it's very easy to get tunnel vision so good job in the site but also in asking for feedback.

An idea for the image enlarge could be done with with css where a little plus sign or click to enlarge appear over the image only on hover. I'm fairly certain this could be done. Another idea would be to see if there is a lightbox plugin for typo3. If you've never seen lightbox work you can have a look at http://www.ywamharpenden.org/index.php/ywam-harpenden-facilities/ wait for the page to fully load and then click on a picture. This would give a great feature to your pages.

Another idea for the site, and you may already have done this as I can't personally check to see without flying out to Latvia, would be to either have a cookie to remember the language preference or to have some code that detects the IP location and so selects the language most likely used (or preferrably both) i.e. if the IP is located in Latvia then it defaults to the latvian language. You will probably need to research a bit on this but it would be a great feature especially for Latvians to see that YWAM isn't completely English focused.

I would say from a design point of view is that to me the DTS promotional images don't communicate a lot. This might be a cultural thing and they may communicate well in Latvia and the surrounding region. But personally I didn't understand the relationship of the images of the two different kids with glasses and the slogan Dare to be Different.

Hope this helps.

Daniel Snell
YWAM Harpenden Communications

Excellent feedback

tofirius — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 09:25:10 +0100

Hi guys,
Thanks so much for your feedback. It's very helpful.

To Robert, I would totally agree with you on your analysis of Typo3. I just hope that in future versions, they will simplify the setup process.

To David, again I agree. I had begun the process of creating an RSS feed, as there is an extension to do just that, but in the melee of trying to get the site up, I had to put it on the back burner. It's still on my list of "follow-up" things do to in the coming days & weeks.

To JJzD, thanks for your image advice. I agree with you there, as well. Again, because of needing a new site so desperately, I pushed many details of "prettiness" to the back for preference of launching the site according to my deadline (which is in conjunction with the Go Manual release - Thankfully I still have a few weeks before it really starts reaching folks' hands). I would very much like to see what you did & how it looks. Feel free to email me at crb(AT)ywamlatvia.com with the image attached.

One feature of Typo3 that I have utilized on this site is that all images within the main content area are enlargeable, so that if you click on the image, it'll bring up another window with a much larger version. I wasn't sure how else to explain that to the user, save for putting "Click to enlarge" as a caption under every image, which I wasn't fond of. I may yet go back & do that still because I want people to be able to really see those photos. It's an effort on my part to make my site more "handicap accessible" as it were.

Please let me know more feedback. This is great!!

Blessings,
Chris Bischoff
YWAM Latvia, Communications
www.ywamlatvia.com
www.chrisandlydia.net

something simple

tofirius — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:05:23 +0100

Hi,
I know that at past CRIT conferences, a paper was passed around where you could fill out your contact info & skills that you have & those skills that you'd be willing to share. It was put into an Excel spreadsheet & then emailed to all of the participants... that was in 2006.... but I don't know if it was done at the subsequent CRITs.

There's an attempt on ywamkb.net to put together something kind of related to this, but I think the method is a little bit like that Excel spreadsheet... not very effective.

I'll definitely keep this in mind.

Chris Bischoff
YWAM Latvia, Communications
www.ywamlatvia.com

Has Not been attempted as far as I know ...

bill.hutchison — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 03:01:29 +0100

That is a very good idea. It might be something that we can add to ywamit.com when I have time to look into it. I am sure that there are modules that could help ...

Does anyone know of modules that would help make this a possibility?

Thanks

Bill Hutchison

Ning Huge for Porn ... But so is the Internet

bill.hutchison — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:50:10 +0100

It turns out that Ning is actually pretty huge for Porn Networks. The porn networks are hidden being secure logins, but none the less, porn sites account for a large percentage of Ning's traffic.

I got this message through our Ning site:

Just want to put out the warning about associating your group with Ning.com. It is known to be a domain that supports lots of adult content. (They deny outright support, and claim pro-freedom for adult pornographic photos/videos.) This is exactly the kind of attitude we need to fight. There is such a thing as right & wrong in this world.

I understand that Christian groups need to use great technology, but don't sell out please to these immoral folks.

Ning porn networks
http://valleywag.com/340933/is-marc-andreessen-running-a-porn-ring

Recent stats still point to this being true:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/ning.com
(See bottom of page listing and click on More ning.com domains for the most popular subdomains on ning.com)

Unfortunately one of the other site administrators deleted the user that sent us that message, so I don't even know who the person was who sent us the message, otherwise I could find out more about who they were. I have actually just had my admin privileges removed this morning while I have been at home with my daughter, so I can't follow up on it myself.

When evaluating new technology and how we use it we need to take these sort of things into account, but at the same time we shouldn't run from it because some are using it for wrong. I reckon that if we always had this mentality then Christians would avoid movies, television, radio, books, magazines, and of course, worst of all, the Internet.

In the end it will be up to your own discretions, but you will need to evaluate the platform for what it is and decide if it's something you want to use, like all new technology.

Bill Hutchison

This is old but...

alicam — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 06:58:19 +0100

Hi again, Alex.

Long time since Lonavala!

Just wanted to alert you and others that Vertical Response is free for all non-profits. This is not just US ones but international

If you are in doubt, then email them directly on this, as I have done. They just need to know your official non-profit status and you're off and running.

I don't think it's an unlimited account, or such, but it's a great start.

I found this out when I did some reseach on the Network For Good project (http://www.groundspring.org/services/dms.cfm) - which is pretty amazing in itself!!

Cheers,

-Alister

---
Alister Cameron // Blogologist
www.alistercameron.com

Mob. 04 0404 5555
Fax 03 8610 0050

DTS 2004, Melbourne AU
CRIT 2007 Participant
Communications advisor to Lynn Green (INTL), Tom Hallas (ASIA-PAC) & Jeff Fountain

Great blog

dan.snell — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 14:05:41 +0100

Some really great ideas. I will definitely be looking into them myself.

I added some of my own thoughts in a blog post called developing on wordpress.

Daniel Snell
YWAM Harpenden Communications

Good points

Donovan — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 07:57:06 +0100

Good blog, this is much of what I would call the essentials at the moment! I would encourage anyone not knowing where to start out to look at this list.

Javascript on Ning Pages

bill.hutchison — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 04:41:17 +0100

We are having some problems with pages, notes and the HTML boxes on the site stripping out javasript and "cleaning up" the html code that we add.

It is very strict with regular users (I think it strips all javascript), and it also strips out some javascript for administrators, although we have not been able to figure out how it chooses what javascript to strip, and what javascript to leave in.

Ning Stability and Uptime

bill.hutchison — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 04:40:09 +0100

I don't know what kind of uptime Ning regularly has, but on Friday morning I came into the office after dropping off my son as school to find the communications staff praying for Ning, as the service was down.

Ning had their sites back up after about 3-hours of down time, but I don't know if this is a common occurrence, or a once off thing. Time will tell.

Ning Customization

bill.hutchison — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 03:54:37 +0100

Almost all the elements on the page can be moved around the page. You can also choose to disable features on the site for users, make groups public or private, and lots of other stuff. We are using it as a rudimentary content management by adding static pages to the site, which is done through Ning's "notes" feature.

Also, each user has control of their own web page, including the template, what elements can be displayed (but as an admin you make some things mandatory) and how elements display (blog title vs blog excerpt, all photos vs favourite photos, import rss feed, etc.). Your best bet as a user would be to sign up and them completely ~~destroy~~ customise your personal page.

You can read about some of the customisation of Ning on their site here.

Bill Hutchison
Reef to Outback

So that site you linked to

crashsystems — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 02:43:17 +0100

So that site you linked to is your custom social-networking site? I didn't realize that Ning let you use your own domain name. What other kind of customization features does it offer?

A few more GoDaddy codes

bill.hutchison — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 01:43:18 +0100

Here are a few more promo codes that you can use for GoDaddy.com. They are who we use for most of our general domain name registrations. We still need to use an Australian registrar for any Australian domains:

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Code “Geek5” Save 15% on any order of $20 or more
Code GNCSSL Get a Godaddy SSL Certificate for $14.99

These are GoDaddy Promotion codes from Geek News Central.

Bill Hutchison
Reef to Outback