Proudly providing web design to charities, NGOs, social enterprises and other not for profit organisations since 1997.
APIs: Demystified
If you’re involved in managing your organisation’s online presence it’s very likely you have come across the term “API”. So what is it? Application Programming Interface is the full term, but all you need to know is that an API is a toolkit that allows different online services to talk to each other. The services may be your customer database, financial software, social media platforms or your web site.
Many online services offer an API that is free to use and is generally compatible with most websites. The great thing about having these services speak to each other directly is that you don’t need to manually intervene to export information, key data in twice or reconcile information in two different places. It’s all done for you automatically. It’s faster and more accurate than the manual alternative.
Let’s look at a simple example. Say you post news to your website, but you also manage a Twitter account. Each time you have a big announcement to make you need to login to your CMS and create the news post. You then need to login to Twitter and repeat the procedure. Using an API to connect the two services allows you create the news post once and have it automatically feed through to your Twitter account. The reverse is also true if you want to be able to tweet something and have it appear on your web site automatically.
Another example might be the contact form on your web site. When visitors complete the form you probably get an email with the information which you then add manually to your customer database. An API-enabled database (such as Salesforce) allows the information to be written directly from the website to the database and sends an alert the relevant person in your organisation automatically. No more data entry, the customer has done it for you!
Today almost all organisations have multiple social media accounts and a growing number of clients are shifting to web-based customer relationship management (CRM) systems. With so many different tools to manage, API integration saves time, improves accuracy and allows you to make the most of your online presence.
Creative Commons Images
A wise person once said that a picture is worth a thousand words, wise words indeed. So we begin our search for the perfect image. Faced with the prospect of handing over extortionate wads of cash, that frankly, even a corrupt despote would be proud of, to professional image libraries like Getty, most of us retreat to taking our chances with the free Google image search. However, I challenge you to type in such innocuous phrases as ‘mother and son’ with safe search off. Unless of course, men in nappies is what you are after, but I don’t think it is quite the blissful image most people associate with the parent-child bond.
Over the last few years a network of sites offering royalty free images for no cost have sprung up such as stock.xchang and Freerange. These are limited to a relatively small pool of images to choose from, unless tacky 80’s-style posed images is your kind of thing; but hey, that’s fashionable at the moment isn’t it. Luckily there is an alternative out there, Creative Commons.
If you don’t already know, Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation that provides a simple way for people around the world to freely license their work. Creative Commons was invented to create a more flexible copyright model, replacing “all rights reserved” with “some rights reserved”. These licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive for the benefit of others. There’s a plethora of licences available for images, video, fonts, skateboarding penguins, that last one is a blatent lie, but you never know. The great thing is that high-quality shared content is available without fear of archaic copyright law.
The tool I’ve found most useful when deadlines are looming is Compfight, the alternative Flickr search tool. Tucked away in Flickr’s native search is a way to filter the results so that only images that are freely available under a Creative Commons licence are shown, but it’s not the simplest system to use and can be a bit slow. Compfight takes all the Flickr functionality and makes light work of the arduous task of finding that perfect image. One thing I would say is that some mean spirited people out there don’t license their work for commercial use, but Compfight thought about this providing a tool to filter these out. When using Creative Commons images make sure to credit the creator somewhere. A link in the footer to a credits page listing their details normally does the trick.
Well as they say, the perfect picture is worth a thousand words, but now it doesn’t have to cost £1000. Below are some links to useful free stock image sites and if you’re feeling decadent I’ve included a few pay-for services for good measure.
What does the EU Cookie Policy mean for our charity?
That’s a very good question, and one we would like to know the answer to ourselves!
What we know:
- If your website uses cookies, you will have to disclose that to users and ask their permission to store a cookie.
What we don’t know:
- How you are supposed to ask for permission from your users and what to do if permission is denied. For instance, if you ask a user permission to use a cookie and they say no, yet that cookie is essential for the website’s function, what happens? What happens if that user clicks on to another page on the site, will you have to ask for their permission again?
There has been very little guidance from the EU on how to implement this policy, and so far none of the big movers (like Amazon) have unveiled their plan. Which means most of us in the tech world are sitting tight, hoping for more information.
We don’t want to advise our clients to do costly work on websites, only to be told in three month’s time it’s wrong. The EU Cookie legislation will not be enforced until May 2012. However, that doesn’t mean you should leave all action until then. So what to do?
We are advising our clients to learn what cookies your site uses, if any, and add a statement to your website describing how they are used and why. And, of course, we are here to help do this.
In the meantime, keep an eye on our blog and we’ll be updating it as soon as we know more from the EU.
The Raven Housing Trust Ecohouse Project shortlisted for awards, including “Best website or microsite”!
We’re chuffed that our clients, Raven Housing Trust, have been nominated for several awards for their Merstham Ecohouse website and project.
The Chartered Institute of Public Relations PRide Awards recognise outstanding PR work across the UK. The Merstham Ecohouse was shortlisted for best website from over 1000 entries. Well done! Our designers Danny and Derry had a blast creating the illustrations for the Ecohouse. We’ll find out the results sometime before December, fingers crossed!
This is in addition to the Trust’s earlier nomination at the Sustainable Housing Awards for the most innovative approach to green housing, and a nomination in the “Excellence in Carbon Reduction – Small Company” category at the Energy Awards 2011.
We are thrilled to be working with Raven on their website projects. Their ethos and commitment to environmental sustainability resonates with us. It warms our cockles to see such good work recognised.
Bravo!
Fantastic, simple effective—a social media campaign example
When it comes to campaigning, sometimes less really is more. I recently came across a very simple and effective Facebook widget campaign, courtesy of the Guide Dogs for the Blind charity. On their Facebook page, they placed a simple widget with a form.
It ticks several boxes:
- It explains the campaign and why it’s important
- It collects and stores supporter information
- It sends through to a petition
- It converts people from simply clicking “like” to taking action for the organisation
This is a great example of campaigning with social media. Widgets like this can also be linked back to your fundraising and campaign databases, or email newsletter software. This gives you the opportunity to ask them for their support on future actions in a more direct, personal way than through mass Facebook postings.
Oh, I do love a good widget.
If you’d like to ask us about developing widgets for your social media campaign, pop us a comment below!
Top tips for writing an effective social media strategy
Someone’s told you that your organisation needs to be using social media. Maybe your colleagues are badgering you about why there isn’t a Facebook page. Maybe you feel panicked that you’re missing out on something because you don’t have a clue how to jump into all this social media malarkey.What is social media, anyway, and what can it do for my charity?
Stop. Take a deep breath. Now, pick up a pen and a piece of paper. I like big sheets of flip chart paper and coloured markers, but go with what you have.
First, write the name of your organisation on the paper. Now, think about who you are and what you do. Write that down too. Always keep this in mind when you think about social media.
Next, write down all the different types of social media you can think of. Ask your co-workers for ideas.
Third, go and research those different types of social media. Find out what similar organisations use, and perhaps ask them how successful they’ve been. Find out how easy they are to update, whether or not they can be customised with your branding, and if they are free. Learn about who uses each type of social media, why they use it, and how they use it, as this will affect how YOU use it.
Now, go back to your piece of paper. Look at all the different types. Which ones help you? That is, which ones relate back to who you are and what you do? For instance, if you find a social media platform designed for teenagers and your audience is generally over 50, you probably don’t need to be worried about it.
For each social media platform, try to decide how it would relate to who you are and what you do. What will you be using it for? Who will be updating it? How often will it be updated? How will you measure success? Where will the content come from? How long will it take to update?
By this point, you should have a much better idea which types of social media will work for you and your organisation. I suggest you then take your piece of paper and sit down to type up your social media strategy.
Write down, for each platform, the answers to the questions above. For instance, you may decide to start a Twitter feed and try tweeting about upcoming events to increase attendance. Set a time period, identify who is going to do the work, and how you will evaluate the results. You may have several different types of campaigns going on, run by different people. What is important is that you keep control of the content and evaluate what effect your efforts are having.
That’s it. You have a strategy. Not so hard, right? All you had to do is find out what you could do and write down how you are going to do it. Remember to revisit it every 6 months or so to see what might need changing. You might also want learn more about developing the right tone for social media.
Reward Footers – because your content is worth it.
I have a recurring nightmare: It’s 1996 and I’m trapped inside Internet Explorer 3.0. I can see the user – as they eagerly surf what exists so far of the world wide web – but they, alas cannot see me.
And let me tell you, I’m not just trapped anywhere inside this archaic space; Dante and his Nine Circles of Hell would be a day out compared to where I keep ending up. For I am cursed to pace the confines of the final circle of the web’s inferno; known better to you and I as – the site footer! Noooooooo!
A day out with Dante
The descent to my current dungeon started in the warm cheery glow of the page masthead or header. Surrounded by proud, perky branding; shiny new logos and boastful straplines that promised the moon on a string, I felt confident and full of hope for the journey ahead. Someone really cares about this space I thought.
As I waved farewell to the main navigation – talking animatedly amongst themselves – I could hear below me the healthy buzz of conversation coming from the home page content features and news headlines. Each page element participating in the healthy hum of debate and fighting for attention. What a party! Pushing my way though the noisy throng I felt I’d arrived at last. Here’s a space my voice could be heard in – if I shouted loud enough.
Sadly – as the ‘Donate now!’ button (what an attention seeker) bossily reminded me - my train didn’t stop here for long; my ticket not valid for this destination. A chill air found my feet and dragged me ever downwards – down, down. The light dimmed and the joyous debate above me faded away into silence punctuated only by a nagging, howling wind.
Rock bottom
In gathering gloom my feet touched page bottom. I could scarcely see my hand in front of my face. Shapes (demons?) formed themselves out of the shadows and tugged at my feet; tumbleweed blowing across a dusty and forgotten part of the page. I shivered and drew my coat around me.
So this was the footer. My final destination: An empty and forlorn place – devoid of content and purpose; drained of hue and form. Lifeless. Even my watch had stopped here.
I looked upward and could see – like a tiny star many galaxies above me – a glint of light that was the page content and the header above it. How different life had been there – how rich and fulfilling – engaging and thought-provoking. How people had cared about that place.
I bowed my head and slumped into a damp corner of the confine. My foot struck something solid. In the mirky half-light my hand explored a long forgotten and dusty relic. Some brave soul had actually bothered to venture this far down the page before and had left their mark in this God-forsaken spot – now silent and still as a grave. I read their last lonely desperate message to the world: ‘Site Content – Copyright 1996′ – and wept.
A happy ending
These days you don’t have to let your users suffer a similar fate to our allegorical hero as they venture to the bottom of your page. In the renaissance years since the dark ages of the Web 1.0, web designers have woken up to the fact that there is a whole new frontier of the page that they’d cruelly neglected as being ‘beneath (the valley of) the fold’. Here is an unexplored and virgin territory of prime land – ready and fertile for population with the new ideas, content, navigation and take-actions that the Web 2.0 (and beyond) has demanded.
Since 2009 the footer area has been re-claimed, redeveloped and redecorated. Rewarded for their brave and gravity-defying page descents (users do scroll!) today’s would-be web-explorers find a world of footers unrecognisable to their forefathers – a bright, open space for all where the possibilities seem endless and life is just beginning…
Related reading:
AOL circa 1996. The way we were.
Some examples of more rewarding rotund footers 2011 stylee.
© 1996-2011
RSS
RSS(Really Simple Syndication) provides an easy way to gather and display information from different on-line sources including news, events and blog posts.
RSS feeds are generally represented by an icon similar to this: 
.
RSS feeds save you time:
Rather than visiting your 4 or 5 favorite websites and scanning through for new articles, have the rss feed deliver all of these directly to you as the information is posted.
What is it exactly?
Each feed contains a list of articles from the website you have subscribed to. Every time a new article is created, the feed sends through a title, a summary, and a link to the full article for each item (the same goes for blog posts or events). This allows you to quickly scan the articles and decide which ones you want to click through and read in full.
How can I set one up?
The lists are compiled in XML(Extensible Markup Language) and you will need a feed reader like Google Reader to pull in the XML feed and translate it into a readable format.
When you are on your favourite website, click the icon 
(if the website provides one) and follow the instructions.
Click on the following links for an example of RSS readers, happy reading!
Myth Busting and Client Education
I am going to be shouting about the greatness of the following two websites and how much they can help educate you the client to the mysteries and many questions of web design!
The first site I am going to be championing the hell out of is Wee Nudge – Teach your clients the about the mysteries of the web. They have gathered some great resources on all aspects of web design including:
Some of the highlight of the site are the brilliant and simple explanations of each section, for example:
On whitespace: “Not simply ‘blank space’, whitespace is required to let the graphical and typographical elements exist in the desired composition. The print industry has largely contributed to the illusion that empty space is wasted space. Every square inch of room in a newspaper or magazine costs money and it can’t make that money back if it’s not filled.”
On the fold: “The fold is not as important as you think. The concept has entered into common knowledge and this has become a problem for the advancing web industry. Users do know how to scroll. If you squish everything towards the top of the page in an effort to get all your content in front of the user, you will only succeed in created an overcrowded messy page and turning your user off your site altogether.”
The second website that I always use to help clients discover the myths of the web is UXMYTHS. They list the top 32 myths of web design debunking them with real evidence.
Some of the myths that crop up in most client meetings are:
- Myth #2: All pages should be accessible in 3 clicks
- Myth #3: People don’t scroll
- Myth #4: Design is about making a website look good
- Myth #14: You are like your users
and my favourite of the list:
myth #0: If you read lists like this one, you don’t need to do research
Three reasons you need to write a social media strategy right now
Why do you need a social media strategy? Here are three very good reasons: Time, Money, Reputation.
This article will explain how a social media strategy can save you time and money while enhancing and expanding your reputation and brand.
If your organisation has a blog, a Twitter feed, a Facebook page, a YouTube account, or even an e-mail newsletter, you are using social media. This means you need to create a strategy to make effective use of these tools. Consider the following:
For each social media platform, calculate how much time it will take you to keep it up to date and fresh. Who will be generating the content? Does the content already exist somewhere else and can this be adapted?
Will there be a cost for new artwork? Is this a one time only use of that media, or will it be in continuous use?
Does your organisation have branding guidelines for content, graphic use, style, and tone of voice? Will the social media content fit within the guidelines?
Cost is a very important limitation when dealing with social media, and the most expensive part of it is your time. Make sure your organisation has the time and money to dedicate to keep social media streams fresh, lively and relevant.
If approached incorrectly, social media can have negative impacts on your brand. It is important that you develop an appropriate tone of voice and educate yourself on how your social media platform works. For instance, on Twitter it’s important to understand how hashtags and re-tweets work.
If you have a communications officer, you may want to work through your strategy with them and create a “disaster” response in case something goes wrong. What if a well-meaning person sets up a Facebook page for your organisation without your consent? What if your Twitter campaign hashtag gets hijacked by a spam bot? You need to be prepared to respond instantly and positively in these situations.
If you’d like to learn more about creating a social media strategy, see my more detailed post or get in touch!