Comments on: Top Five Ways You Know The Redesign of Your Nonprofit Web Site Went Bad

By: Build A Nonprofit’s Technology Assets From The Ground Up, Part 2 OF 4

Build A Nonprofit’s Technology Assets From The Ground Up, Part 2 OF 4 — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:34:23 +0000

[...] you should certainly shoot for the strong graphical quality of the websites listed here despite what I have to say about them. Being a good looking website has all sorts of benefits to it like getting people to buy into [...]

By: Allan Benamer

Allan Benamer — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:36:12 +0000

I hear ya! Please report back on how it all turns out either on your blog or here. And trust me, this isn't something limited only to Australia or the US. It's somewhat endemic to our sector (although the for-profit sector has its own egregious examples).

By: Jason King

Jason King — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 09:35:50 +0000

I'm currently undertaking a similar exercise with the websites of 120 small nonprofits in Victoria, Australia; very few of them are beautiful or inspirational but it will be interesting to see whether I find more or fewer coding errors than you did. Few so far have valid HTML.

The good news is that I now see more CSS than table-based layouts. The main technical problems I've found are:

- No CMS or sometimes an awful custom-built CMS;
- Meaningless URLs.
- Uninformative title tags or they're identical on all pages.
- they' never check the stats or don't have the password.
- Website created in Microsoft Publisher (ok, only one of those so far).

By: Examples of inspirational nonprofit web design « Nonprofit web design « by Jason King

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 09:22:00 +0000

[...] a contrary note, as Confessions of a Nonprofit Executive Director points out, web beauty is only skin-deep and whilst the 40 inspirational website all look great, they’ve not all been well coded (but [...]

By: Build A Nonprofit’s Technology Assets From The Ground Up, Part 2 OF 4 | Non-Profit Tech Blog

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 14:01:15 +0000

By: Allan Benamer

Allan Benamer — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:49:46 +0000

Understood, O Boy. I think that's one of the reasons I started blogging. It was kinda clear to me that nonprofit management tends to think of technology as an afterthought and a whole lot of issues break down in the manner you described. It has always been my hope that nonprofit management would read blogs like mine so that they can avoid many of the pitfalls that can occur when dealing with technology issues.

By: O Boy

O Boy — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 05:25:19 +0000

The real issue that vendors – whether they offer networking, web sites, software etc.. take advantage of the fact that nonprofits don't usually know what a complete end product looks like. They charge full rates for half finished work, because its easy, quick and no one usually finds out until the next vendor comes in. I won't even get into the number of sub par CMS software packages that have been dumped on nonprofits. SMH. Quite a few IT employees at nonprofits are also taking advantage of their employer's lack of knowledge.

By: Allan Benamer

Allan Benamer — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 12:47:45 +0000

Carlos, I looked up "keyword stuffing" (just to jog my memory) on Wikipedia and it states:

Keyword stuffing occurs when a web page is loaded with keywords in the meta tags or in content. The repetition of words in meta tags may explain why many search engines no longer use these tags.

Historically, people used to do keyword stuffing within the meta tags. At least, that's how I remember it back in the day. People did end up doing it within content (hidden divs and other crap like that) but the "original" attempts at keyword stuffing were within the meta tags.

And no, donors don't make donation decisions based on whether a site has <TITLE> tags. However, Google does make decisions on your PageRank based on those simple tags being used properly. Basically, they just ask you not to abuse HTML for your nefarious SEO purposes. I tend to agree.

I think some of these sites were using CMS software yet not using them properly. You can see them having a space for META description or keywords but there was nothing in there. It was weird to look at.

Sure, some of these sites could be using server log files on the backend. I've found server log files to be useful but they're not as accepted as Google Analytics is these days when you're discussing your site traffic. This is a decision about the social acceptability of your stats more than a discussion about the technical merits of log file analysis vs. Javascript-based trackers.

We definitely agree — let's get nonprofit managers thinking more about how their sites can be managed to their mission statements and not to their egos.

By: Carlos Thomas

Carlos Thomas — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 06:51:30 +0000

Allan, I read the link you posted about Google and keywords. This does not talk about the META tag at all, but seems to discuss the use of keywords within your page. I would not fault any site for not using the keyword META tag. The description tag is generally a good idea because Google uses the content from this tag in the results pages.

I'm all for standards-compliant code, but I think it's way more important to have a decent looking website with accessible information. Everything comes down to the goals for your website. I don't think too many donors are basing donations decisions on most of the criteria you mentioned.

In terms of web analytics packages, it is also possible some of these website could have server-side software doing this task.

Your overall point that orgs need to think about functionality, not only form is right on. It takes more than a good design to make a website that works. And a website that works really needs to include title tags.

By: Nonprofit tech blog about proper NGO websites - ben

Nonprofit tech blog about proper NGO websites - ben — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:26:49 +0000

[...] some small things, standards for web design Nonprofits should bother having on their web presence. You can read the post here. And heres my comment about it: All in all, NGOs should consider using one of the plenty available [...]