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| 10/6/2008 7:39:10 AM |
| ianwi-78.86.65.19 |
| 10/6/2008 7:10:58 AM |
| 94.102.60.15 |
| 10/6/2008 6:07:52 AM |
| Janette Hunckler-78.47.100.185 |
| 10/6/2008 5:49:49 AM |
| Jamie Ferguson-94.102.60.15 |
| 10/6/2008 5:42:46 AM |
| Camille Molina-85.154.249.139 |
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I'm writing this article for charities and small organisations that want to create a web presence. Charities often have a great cause to promote but have precious little funds and not a lot of skills available them. The Internet provides a great opportunity for them to get their message out.
The rest of this article will look at what options are available for creating a web presence and introduce an easy to use Content Management System called Mambo Server that I've successfully introduced to a couple of charities.
There are a few ways to build a website. Let's take a look at the three most viable options.
A good approach if you have the funds. Even a simple site will cost a few hundred pounds, most will cost several hundred and it's not hard to spend thousands. This route is usually not affordable and even if it was, it's better to spend the money on charity work.
You can treat a website like writing a document with a word processor. Typically, you'll want more than one page. If you're writing the pages, you also need to write all the links between them and make sure the layout and graphics are consistent between each page.
Two popular tools for writing a website this way are Macromedia Dreamweaver and Microsoft Frontpage.
At first this might seem like an eay way to create a website. It's attractive because many people are quite capable of writing a document on a computer and it's only a small step to start writing web pages. You can even use Microsoft Word. However, it soon gets difficult as you add more pages and you want to update your web site more often. Some of the disadvantages are:
These kinds of website generally resemble a brochure and indeed are often labeled as "brochureware". It's a reasonable approach if your web presence is nothing more than a fairly static brochure comprised of a few pages. One advantage of this kind of website is that it's very easy and cheap to find a web host for them.
A related approach is to create the website using a technology called Flash rather than HTML. This allows you to use a much more graphic intensive approach that looks very flashy and slick. It also requires a lot of skill to create which quickly rules it out.
The fundamental problem with the previous approach is that the stuff you're writing about - called the "content" - gets completely mixed up with the layout and design of the website. You can avoid this by using something called a Content Management System or CMS. A CMS keeps these things seperate. It stores your content in a database and keeps the layout in individual template files. When a user wants to view your page, it builds it on the fly and displays it to the user.
Sounds difficult and complex, right?
Actually, once the Content Management System is setup, it's all very simple. A user usually just enters the new content using a straightforward web form and posts it to the website. The CMS automatically creates and maintain links. Layout and design changes can be done quickly and simply by someone with HTML skills.
A good CMS can also impose a publishing process. This allows you to delegate content creation to various people but still allows one or more editors to control when it gets published. This allows an orderly review cycle to be maintained.
The fact is that every significant website on the Internet is created and managed using a Content Management System of some kind.
Of course, if it's good enough for everyone else, it's good enough for a charity or a small organisation as well. Let's assume we want to use a Content Management System for our website then.
Now, the good news is that there are a lot of CMS products available. The bad news is that there are a lot CMS products available! Some are free while others can cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. Naturally, there is a wide range of features and abilities.
If you want to find what's available, take a look at these websites:
Since my main concern here is charities with precious little funding, I'm going to focus on freely available CMS's. These CMS's are most often developed under an Open Source philosophy. Their source code is given away for free. You shouldn't assume that they can't be very good if they're free; some are very sophiscated.
You can find information about Open Source Content Management Systems here:
In fact you can actually try some of these CMS's out right now by visiting:
Reviewing all the CMS products and matching them to your needs is a complex process. These websites will help you if you want to go through a formal selection process. Most charities simple don't have the time or expertise to do this. On behalf of a couple of charities, I went searching for something I could recommend and boiled it down to two candidates:
I found Mambo Server to be good enough so I never did evaluate eZ Publish but you can find it here: http://www.ez.no/
Mambo Server is one of many Open Source CMS's out there. It's got a particularly good reputation for being easy to use. Ease of use is critical for charities since they are often relying on volunteers or part-timers and don't have a training budget. It's easy to administer too. It's also has lots of community support which is critical when you do find you need to get some help.
The official Mambo website is here:
But there's a great portal website for all things Mambo here:
A fantastic strength of Mambo is that lots of different people have contributed very nice free templates for instantly making your website look good. You can try them out just by going here:
You can then download these templates from:
Not only can you get templates but you can download other modules and components that add more features to your website. This includes things like picture galleries, document libraries, discussion forums and dozens of other features. You can download these from:
That last link is the main place from where you can download Mambo Server itself.
Mambo Server is relatively easy to setup but it's not trivial. It requires someone with some knowledge of how web servers and databases work. The biggest challenge is setting up permissions correctly on a Linux server.
The first step is to buy a name and some website space from an Internet Service Provider (ISP). This can be quite a tricky process in it's own right since there are dozens and dozens of package permutations. It would help your search if you first establish a rough idea of how much web space and bandwidth you will need to use as a basis for comparison. Meanwhile, if you budget £180 per year for ISP fee's you'll probably do fine.
You need to find a package that includes:
It's a good idea to read the System Requirements for Mambo Server before you sign up with the ISP or just send email to the ISP and ask whether they support Mambo Server. It's popular enough that they should be able to tell you.
The good news is that some ISP's will even install Mambo for you! If you're really strapped for someone to help you, consider looking at these services:
As part of signing up with an ISP, you'll also need to buy a domain name. This is the name users type in the browser to get to your website.
Installing Mambo basically requires the following steps:
There are a few issues that can surface but that's the basic procedure. After this is working, you just need to login as the Mambo administrator and start customising your website. In a few minutes, you can be publishing your own content.
I've noticed that many charities could exploit the ability to reach out through the Internet and use if far more effectively if they only knew how. Using Mambo Server, they can easily create and run a highly dynamic feature rich website for relatively little effort and cost. My hope is that this article might help a few get started down this path.