Web Basics - who is the site for?

Once you have defined your objectives for a new site, you need to consider who your audiences are. This means thinking about both types of audience and age groups.

Defining your audiences is critical because you need to find a way to get people too the content you want them to see. Audience types vary according to the type of organisation. They may include service users, supporters, clients, campaigners and many more. But they will probably also include groups we tend to forget, such as peers, decision-makers, advocates, the media, trustees and staff. Each of these audiences is a group you want to direct to specific content.

When you have defined your list, think about activities and internet skill levels. This will help define what you can expect people to do and what you need to provide for them.

If your key audience includes groups under 25, then the site needs to be bright, lively and full of interactive content - opportunities for them to get involved and contribute.

If your key audience is over 55 then the tone and design may be different and the functionality may be toned down. Offering RSS news feeds and twitter to older audiences may be a waste of your resources and a distraction on the site.

Offering the wrong content and functionality to the wrong audience will put people off, discourage their involvement and may even alienate them from the cause.

The media want quick access to news stories and a public relations contact. Teachers want lesson plans and teaching aids. Donors want ways to donate and campaigners need content that sparks their interest.

Each of the audiences you define needs to be able to navigate quickly and easily to relevant content, and should be presented with an appropriate tone and functionality.

Web Basics - what's your site for?

Before starting to develop a website, it is essential to have a specification of what you want it to do.

The first question to ask is the purpose of the site. That may sound daft, but too many sites are launched without objectives - and it shows in the lack of clarity in the home page and the structure.

The objectives you set may be the same as those of your organisation, or they may be a sub-section. They might include fundraising, campaigning, capacity building, service provision, recruitment and so on. These are broad brush strokes, but they will help to define what the site needs to deliver.

Once you have a list of objectives, put them in priority order. This will help define both your navigation and your home page.

Brand building is one underlying purpose of having a site. But people who visit your site are actually users who come to do something. What you want them to do defines the objectives of the site and should define the content and signposts of your home page.

Defining your objectives will also give you both an outline of the functionality your site needs and a measure against which to judge it when it is done. You may find that you cannot afford or manage everything in one phase, and prioritising gives a structure to what is most important.

If you want people to use your services, you shouldn't be burying them under a welter of content and clicks. A link to your services should be at the forefront of the whole site, and in bold.

What makes Amazon, eBay and Google so successful is a clarity of purpose. When you visit their sites, you have no doubt what they are for. We need the same clarity of purpose to make our sites usable for visitors.

When does personal profile overtake the brand?

Last week it was reported by Sagecircle that Forrester Research had implemented a policy under which Forrester staff with personal blogs about their work related technology markets would be required to ditch them and instead publish their blogs on Forrester.com.

You can understand Forrester's position. When staff use content being which contains information developed for Forrester and if blogs are written during business hours, Forrester probably has a legitimate legal claim to that content. As many social network watchers have commented, it goes against the grain and looks heavy handed. But Forrester don’t pay their staff to do client analysis and use that learning to build their own profiles so they can eventually set up in competition with Forrester.

It does raise the question about how far the benefit of branding goes, compared to the control of paid for information, something we don’t have to worry about in the NFP sector. But where does the brand benefit of having staff blogging about their work on personal social networks end? When very high profile people in the Web2 space build their charities profiles up via personal spaces what will happen when they eventually leave?

None of us want to restrict positive branding but we do need to keep an eye to the future. How do we ensure that the brand doesn’t get so associated with the individual that it will disappear if the individual stops creating a buzz?

Web Basics - now you need a website

Before you start creating a website there are various questions to consider so you can write a specification of requirements. The only technical decision at this stage is what platform your site will use.

Using a content management system makes it easier to update your site without needing to understand any code. It also offers publication rights management on templates and CSS files - which define the look of web pages - to standardise your site. But there are many types and levels of CMS.

At the bottom end of the spectrum is Dreamweaver. This isn't really a CMS at all, but a coding tool. Unless you have the skills to use it properly, you will not end up with a good site.
Next are the many new tools that have appeared to facilitate blogs and Web 2.0 sites, such as WordPress. They are easy to use and, with the right developer, can produce good, simple sites.

Then there are the free open source CMSs, such as Joomla and Drupal. The licence for these is free, and they are extremely good at integrating Web 2.0 tools, but some non-techies find them hard to use. They are capable of everything, if you have a good developer.

Finally, there are the traditional proprietary CMSs, written and managed by web development agencies - either open source or Microsoft language-based. These systems are very user -friendly and easy for non-techies to understand.

With whatever you choose, the usability is key. Can you manage everything on the page, or do you need to pay the developer even for small changes?

Most important of all is the developer. Can you work with them, trust them and sustain a long-term relationship with them? If not, you are storing up trouble.

Web Basics - you need a Domain Name

Starting right at the very beginning of web development you need a URL (Unique Resource Locator) or Domain Name.

First you need to find a domain name to buy - so find a “domain registrar” on a search engine and search for a domain as close as possible to your real name.

Think about which URL ending you want - .org and .org.uk are the standard, .com and .co.uk for companies, but there are alternates such as .net which might be available.. It is also worth checking whether the other Top Level Domains (TLDs) such as .com and .co.uk are in use. You may decide to go ahead even if they are taken – but check what sort of site they are – would going there by accident upset your supporters? If you are known by an acronym then you need to buy the acronym as well.

There are lots of sites which sell URLs and companies which will do it for you. Ask your peers or search online to find one which is recommended. Although the online ones can be very cheap you get very little (if any) customer support. So when you need to change the records, add a website and email records you might find them harder to user – all for £10 a year in savings.

So now you've purchased a URL. What do you do with it?

First and foremost, look after it. Make sure you print and file the confirmation of ownership along with the username and password if you bought it online. Losing this information is like losing your passport - it can be expensive and time-consuming to get it back.

When you buy a URL you are buying only a name. On its own it isn't a website or even web hosting.

You can now start using it for your own email address. A POP 3 email account can be set up by the company you bought the URL from, and you can open it on any email package, such as Outlook Express. Many companies that sell URLs offer a number of free POP3 accounts as part of the package, so you can have several email addresses set up.

If you want to take the next step and start a website, you need to buy web services - a 'hosting package'. These can be very cheap, but before you buy you need to know what language you are going to have the website written in. There are different hosting packages for html and php sites, and you will need different services depending on whether you have a FrontPage, open source or SQL-based site.

When you buy web services they will link your URL to the IP address of the server where your website is stored and your email is collected. That link is held on a domain name server (DNS) record, a database that holds billions of IP addresses, URLs and links between them.

Whether you are going to hand-code a little website, use an open source tool or buy a content management system, the URL record is the basic foundation by which the rest of the internet - and that includes email - knows how to find you. Just think of it as your internet postcode.