First – I know my mom and other folks who are not as tech savvy as others will probably read this – so I’ll answer their question first – what’s a CMS? Well, CMS stands for Content Management System – basically – it’s software to help people manage their content for their websites. I imagine many people reading this will already know that though.
So – now that we’ve gotten that question out of the way…there are many (MANY) Content Management Systems out there. I’m wondering – what are the most popular systems currently on the market?
There are folks in the WordPress community that claim we power >16% of the web. We first heard this stat in 2011. We’re avid fans of both WordPress and Drupal – so we are wondering – is this really true? It turns out – yes – it’s pretty true.
But is this the case for arts organizations and nonprofits? We decided to do some research for ourselves. We took a random sampling of 500 museums and worked to find out what CMS they were using to power their home site.
Here’s what we’ve found so far
More than 10% (55) of the 508 sites we sampled are running WordPress, and 46 (just less than 10%) are running Drupal. All in all, over 20% of museum sites are running open source code. And it looks like WordPress is indeed the most popular open source CMS currently around. While I have not (yet) surveyed every museum and nonprofit out there, this is a good start and I guess is indicative of what we’re looking at.
Well – for starters – we build websites. So, in some ways, it’s a little bit of market research.
Second – because we can 🙂 Who said research wasn’t fun? We’re curious and we want to know how organizations are managing all their incredible content.
Finally – it reinforces our belief that open source is the way to go (only a handful of folks are using Sharepoint, by Microsoft).
If you’d like to participate in this survey, add your data, or share how your organization is managing your web presence…well…there’s a survey for that 🙂
We love teaching. And we’re no strangers to teaching WordPress around these parts. In fact, we’ve spent over 500 hours teaching and training folks on WordPress alone. So we’re really excited to announce these new WordPress classes. In partnership with The Hub (an incubator for “where change happens”), we’ll be teaching a new WordPress in their San Francisco space.
HUB Workbench helps changemakers develop the skills they need to succeed. Our teachers are activists, artists, and social entrepreneurs who envision a new kind of economy and a new definition of success in business. Our community will help you learn skills, build your project, and change the world.
HUB Workbench is a HUB Bay Area program.
The HUB Bay Area is part of a global community taking collaborative action for a better world. The HUB is an inspiring space, meaningful content and a vibrant global community of people.
[button link=”http://hubworkbenchwordpress-eorg.eventbrite.com/”]Register for The Class[/button]
We were recently asked by Dancers Group in San Francisco to write a Top Ten Tips for building out a well performing website. We’ve worked with many arts organizations (including Dancers Group as of 2012), so this was quite fun to do. Especially because we were writing for artists. Below is the full article, as published in the “In Dance” publication. To learn more about Dancers Group, visit http://dancersgroup.org.
Think back to the last dance performance you saw:
How did it inspire you?
What feelings did you have after you left the performance?
How did you hear about it?
If it was truly amazing, did you share it with others?
Perhaps you posted about the experience on Facebook or Twitter?
What did it take to make those projects happen? Grants. Rehearsals. Years of training. A dedicated group of people. And, of course, an audience.
Now, think about the last website you saw:
Did it inspire you?
Did you like it (or hate it)?
How did you hear about it?
If it was truly amazing, did you share it with others?
Perhaps you posted the site on Facebook or Twitter?
Great performances are thoughtful, well-rehearsed, elegant, and help build community. Websites do the same thing. When I started producing websites for dance companies, I was still in grad school at NYU. I applied all the skills I learned in theater school to the online projects I worked on. Because of my theater experience, I thought about all my projects with a target audience in mind. And all those projects went on to be successful because of it.
It didn’t take me very long to realize that great websites contain many of the same components as great stage productions :
solid technical team
consideration for the audience
a planned outcome
So as you plan for your next web project, try approaching it like you would a stage production. And think about how you can incorporate the following items into your process :
1. Develop Passion and Vision – Without passion and vision, a great project simply can’t happen. Once you are able to communicate this passion and vision, the rest of the process will flow much easier. When starting a project from scratch, we often start with a creative brief. This brief works like a blueprint, enabling us to specify what we’re building and why.
2. Create a Production and Rehearsal Schedule – A solid schedule in place leads to accountability. Before diving into a project you must plan milestones, as well as outline the deliverables. While things are subject to change throughout a project, you will always have the initial plan to fall back on.
3. Designate a Stage Manager – A reliable point-person keeps everything running in an orderly fashion. Good productions need a point person to call the shots. Likewise, a good website requires a project owner on both sides; organized people who can move the project forward. While the artistic process can stay flexible, dedicated project managers keep things in order.
4. Assign a Producer – a solid producer will help with the budget, finances, and managing the overall team. While day-to-day operations are handled by a project manager, a good producer can help manage finances and the scope of work. By having someone regularly checking in on the budget and overall resource allocation, the project can easily stay on course financially.
5. Assemble a Talented Team and Supporting Cast – ultimately, great shows come together with fantastic performers and a great collaborative team. A solid front-line of people doing the work will help the product shine. Work with talented people that you connect with.
6. Get Your Tech Team in Place – surround yourself with a knowledgeable tech team that can bring your vision to fruition. Like a great lighting designer, a great web development team can make your basic pas de deux look like a pas de deux grand.
7. Think About Your Audience – know your audience. Survey them. Talk to them. Learn what they want. Take time to observe how they use your site. Do user-testing. You wouldn’t open a show without a dress rehearsal. Why would you launch a site without previewing it to others?
8. Make it Beautiful – without great design and solid visuals, your project can very easily blend in with others. And good design comes from understanding your audiences. Dance translates very well to the web. Invest in good photography. It matters.
9. Communicate – your project should contain different kinds of media. Text, visuals, video, audio, and photos appeal to different people in various ways. Communicating through multiple media will help you reach a broader audience.
10. Find a Secure Venue – without good infrastructure in place, the project you just completed can very easily stall. Invest in solid web hosting, not a cheap alternative (a $5 GoDaddy account just won’t cut it).
Now that you’ve got all your pieces in place, don’t forget to Plan for the Future. Consider how the site will be maintained after launch.
What grants are needed to keep things moving? Who will keep the site running in the future and manage the show going forward? We can write a whole article on support and maintenance, suffice to say, make sure to have this conversation with your web developer before you start the project. Don’t worry if your tech to goes wrong. It usually does. The key here is to have a good team in place when it does go awry. With the right people and a solid plan, your next website project (and dance performance) will be fantastic!
Exciting news! We started working with Fractured Atlas this past Summer on a new WordPress plugin for Artful.ly. And now – the WordPress plugin we’ve been working has just been released and ready for downloads. Why is this exciting? What does it do? And what is Artful.ly?
Well – for answers to this and more – take a look at the blog post on the Fractured Atlas blog :
Selling tickets and taking donations on your own website has been a unique feature of our Artful.ly software for over a year. For any event, an Artful.ly user can copy a bit of JavaScript and CSS from Artful.ly and paste it into her website code. Then, like holiday magic, a ticket selector and shopping cart is installed on her site. These elements can be easily tweaked to match the themes and style of the rest of her site. We call this clump of code “the widget” and it’s pretty simple to use if you’re a programmer. But, if you don’t know HTML from a spruce tree, you’d need some help from a friendly tech elf…For instructions on installing and using the WordPress plugin, check out the Artful.ly Knowledge Base.
We just posted this on our Status Blog, but thought we’d post it here as well. Our Status Blog is mainly for clients that are hosted with us. More on that later. For now, here’s the WordPress 3.5 announcement :
There’s a new version of WordPress due out today. WordPress 3.5 includes many new features. We’re excited to roll this out to our clients and will be automatically updating their sites across our network. If you need help upgrading your WordPress site to 3.5, send us a support ticket via our helpdesk.
On October 19th, I was hit by a car while riding my bike.
5 months later, I did my first ever triathlon with my sister. Below is my story of how and why.
Sunrise in South Beach
First – a little bit about my injury.
When I was hit by the car, I was launched off my bike and did about 2 ½ turns in mid-air. I track some of my bike rides through Runkeeper, an iPhone app, and was able to see my speed at the point of impact: http://runkeeper.com/user/jakilevy/activity/56798303.
When I was hit, I was going approximately 2 miles per hour. I landed right on my hip. Ouch.
The driver was nice enough to stop and call an ambulance. I was immediately taken to the hospital. They had to leave my bike behind at the scene of the incident. The cops on the scene locked up my bike. They were nice enough to secure the front wheel to the body of the bike so nobody would steal it while I made way to the ER.
At the hospital, I had X-Rays taken of both my hip and back. They didn’t find any fractures or broken bones. So they let me “walk” out of the hospital. Unfortunately, I was in a sh#t ton of pain, and couldn’t put any weight on my right leg or hip. I hopped out of the hospital and was on my way.
Fortunately, I already had a scheduled acupuncture session with Garden Acupuncture, my regular acupuncture folks in Brooklyn for the very next day. I had been going there before my accident to treat my stress and general health, but never thought I would be going to them to treat trauma. When I arrived at the office on October 20th, I was soon introduced to the crazy world of New York State’s No-Fault insurance laws. To put it simply, New York State No Fault law states the driver’s insurance must pay for any legitimate injuries sustained in accident, regardless of whose fault the accident was. You can read a bit more about No Fault here.
After filling out a sh#t ton of paperwork, I started receiving treatment within 24 hours of my accident, and it helped ease some of the pain. But because of those crazy no fault insurance laws, I wasn’t able to get an MRI scheduled until 7 days after the accident. 7 days. That’s 7 days of now knowing what happened to my body. And even longer to get my MRI results back. I didn’t actually find out that I fractured my hip, herniated the lower disc on my lower back, and tore my meniscus until 2 weeks into my treatment. Nevertheless, I was receiving treatment the entire time.
The Healing Process
About 4 times / week, I would go in for acupuncture with the folks at Garden Acupuncture, and an adjustment with my chiropractor. Rehab was (and continues to be) like another part-time job. But I knew how necessary it was to give my body the time it needed to heal and to go through the treatment. And it took time for me to start seeing any results. Well into my treatment, I was still worried I would need surgery, or that I wouldn’t be able to ride a bike again.
The acupuncture, though, helped tremendously. In addition to the physical pain I was experiencing, I was beginning to get very anxious and worried about missing so much time from work, dealing with the physical adjustments, while also absorbing the shock of trauma. I was also due to move out of my apartment on November 1st (12 days after my accident), and was going through a break up with my live-in girlfriend at the same time. The timing of this accident couldn’t have been any better.
This also happened to be the first time I had dealt with a major injury – I didn’t realize how the pain would morph and develop over time. For example, it wasn’t until a few weeks later that I started feeling a coldness across my right thigh and knee. I had never experienced that before, so I knew it was a result of some nerve damage that didn’t manifest itself until now.
I also had lots of trouble getting around. I like to think that I lived an active life in New York, but now I couldn’t even do regular day-to-day things like cooking for myself, doing my laundry, folding my clothes, or shower standing up. I spent ALOT of time lying in bed, icing my hip, and eating greens, and drinking tea.
The good news finally came in 7 weeks later – I didn’t need a hip replacement, but I did require knee surgery. And I also learned what a CPM (continuous passive motion) machine was.
So how did I go from almost needing a hip replacement to becoming a triathlete?
#1 : Support
I had tremendous support from all of my friends – particularly, my best friend Sam. He helped me move out of my place, was there to help me cook meals, provided me a kick in the pants when I needed it, and kept the business running while I was spending time in treatment.
The team I have here at Arrow Root Media is incredibly talented. Though there were definitely real impacts on our project timelines, it was because of them that things were still getting done, albeit late.
I also had incredible support from my family, my life coach, and of course, my medical team.
#2 : Inspiration and Vision
2 weeks after my accident, my mom and sister came up to visit me and help me out. It turns out that they arrived the day of the NYC Marathon – my sister had never seen it before and we watched the whole thing go down from the window of my temporary apartment.
I was truly inspired and impressed. But inspiration only gets you so far in life.
#3 : Commitment
During the procession of marathon runners, my sister and I noticed a blind man running the marathon. He was holding a stick, and was guided by someone running in front of him, holding that same stick.
We were both inspired. She decided to do something about it and committed to signing up to run her first ever half marathon (13.1 miles). She had about 12 weeks to train for the Miami Marathon. Given that she had never run a race before in her life, she had a challenge ahead of her. I knew I couldn’t be there to run with her, but I could be there to support her at the finish line.
On January 27th, we attended the marathon expo together to pick up her marathon gear and registration materials. At the expo, we saw an ad for an upcoming triathlon in South Beach.
While I was still injured and had not been active for months, I had made significant progress and wanted to get active again. I knew doing this triathlon would be a good goal for me, but I needed a partner in the race. If my sister could train for a half marathon in 3 months, I had confidence I could get in good enough shape to swim and bike. Knowing my sister would be there to finish the run gave me the support I needed to sign on. So we registered as a relay team. Our first ever triathlon. Neither one of us could have done it alone, but we could definitely do the tri together.
For training and exercise, I focused on swimming. I started slow with 30 minute workouts, and worked my way up over time. It was critical for me to keep going to acupuncture on a regular basis. When I started excercising again, I had already been to over 60 prickly sessions. I was seeing incredible results and didn’t want to take any steps back. Given my leg was still getting that weird cold feeling, and I was still having pain, I didn’t want to spend another Winter in New York City. I was lucky enough to have family in Florida, so I spent part of the Winter down south – training, working, and healing.
Race day was soon approaching. In addition to all the physical therapy, there was a whole host of other things to prep for the triathlon. I joined a swim team in Florida and practiced in the open ocean water. The race organizers also held a few clinics the day before the race to help with things like transitioning from a swim to cycling. One of the best tips I received was to simply have fun.
Triathlon Clinic in South Beach, by Terrier Tri
Another really good tip I heard was to do some visualizations. I visualized the start of the race. I visualized getting out the water. I visualized taking off my goggles and hopping on my bike. And I visualized taking the relay bracelet off and giving it to my sister to do the run. This kind of vision really helped me prepare mentally and keep me relaxed for the race.
When race day finally came, I made sure to just enjoy the experience. I focused on the task ahead, kept an easy yet challenging pace in the water, and worked through the race to simply keep going.
We received the complete race results the next day. My sister and I swam a 1/2 mile, biked 19 miles, and ran 4 miles in 2 hours 17 minutes and 33 seconds.
I was amazed. And I know I couldn’t have achieved these amazing results without the incredible support network I had around me. My sister kept me going and kept me inspired. And the swim teams and coaches I’ve been working with have been simply awesome. It’s just so nice to exercise with a group of people.
The takeaways?
1. You can’t achieve great things alone. It takes team effort.
2. Inspiration can only get you so far. Vision can get you further. But Commitment is the lynchpin.
3. Acupuncture heals all 🙂
I still experience a sharp pain in my hip and lower back, and there is still coldness in my right leg. I feel these sensations after I exercise, and when I wake up, probably because I’m most in tune with my body at these times. But I’m still regularly going to acupuncture. And I am definitely still feeling all kinds of new sensations of tightness and pain.
Nonetheless, I’m so grateful for the support I received during my recovery. I am much better than I was in October, and know I would not have had such amazing and inspiring results without the care and support I received from Lisa and Alex at Garden Acupuncture.
It feels great to have a vision and reach a goal. It feels even better when you know you did it with an amazing team of people. To all who have been with me during this time – thank you. We’re just getting started…
For those of you who’ve worked with us, you know we regularly use Basecamp to manage all of our client (and internal) projects. It’s been a great place to manage todo’s, milestones, and store those important project files. But many of our clients have said that it’s simply, well…old. And we’ve agreed with them. There are so many bug tracking tools out there that could do the job better. And there are many more systems to track milestones, todo’s client communications (like Pivotal Tracker, and Action Method). But we’re sticking with Basecamp.
We know that innovating a product with so many users can be a tough thing – just think back to when Facebook users would constantly complain every time Facebook would make a minor change to their layout. We think that along with the shiny new features that the Basecamp team has developed, the new layout and ease of use will help us streamline everything across the board including :
reviewing feedback on design revisions
working on contract negotiations
creating contract addendums
completing milestone
processing change requests
generating project overviews
Basecamp has also moved all of the project assets to one page, meaning less clicks and more visibility on project items.
All of these improvements will help projects that much easier to work on (and complete), and improve transparency on projects across the board.
Below is a quick overview of some of the new features on Basecamp :
And here’s a video of the folks over at Happy Cog (a major web shop) talking about why they use Basecamp.
We’re proud to announce that we are partnering with Misnomer Dance Theater to stream their performance live from the Joyce Soho.
The performance and live stream will happen tonight (Friday) at 7:30pm. You can catch the action on the LiveStream channel or watch the embedded video below.
Installing WordPress can be either an easy or difficult process, depending on which hosting company you’re working with. For people using Bluehost, Dreamhost, and Godaddy all you need to do is go into the control panel and do what is called a “one-click installation.” When running a “one-click installation” script you are basically telling the host where on the server you’d like the WordPress files to be placed, and creating a mysql database (with username and password) to house all the information that will be pulled in through the WordPress site. That is the quick and painless way to create a WordPress site, but not all hosting companies are created equal.
Recently, my colleague and I were in the market for a new company to host our client’s sites on. We were in search of a host that has great support, technology to accommodate database driven sites, respects the privacy of its clients, and has security measures in place which will prevent client sites from being hacked. After reviewing a slew of hosting companies we discovered Rackspace. Not only do sites (referred to as Cloud Sites) hosted on Rackspace run fast, but their chat support is informative and efficient. The only downfall to Rackspace is the arduous process required for doing a WordPress installation on a cloud site. Rackspace cloud sites do not have a “one-click installation” option, so to create a WordPress site you must start from scratch, and do it manually.
Oh no! My dog ate my website! That is exactly what it feels like when you upgrade your WordPress site and your older plugins don’t exactly get along with the new software. When dealing with WordPress, it is not uncommon to run into a few bugs and hiccups. Sometimes you upgrade for security (like when a new version of WordPress is released). Or maybe the newer version of that plugin you love runs much faster or looks much sleeker than its crusty predecessor. Whatever reason you chose to modify your WordPress setup, it is imperative that you back everything up – just in case things go wrong (and they do).
So – without ado – here are a few options that will help (and most likely save) you or your client’s website. Read more
Twitter is one of the fastest growing destinations on the web today. People from all walks of life are tweeting about what’s going on the world, and why it’s important to them. But, like the old saying goes, “there is more than one way to skin a cat” there are many ways to use Twitter and ride the wave of its ever-growing popularity. Some people believe that Twitter should be able to do more than it already does. We like to call these people perfectionists, and they have taken the time to build tools to not only enable the “missing” functionality, but help make Twitter even better for normal users like you and I. Below are 7 tools that are sure to enhance the Twitter dance. Use them with caution. They are highly addictive.
Tech4Good is a meetup group that connects people from all types of industries. Whether you are a non-profit organization, a funder, a programmer, an individual with a great idea, or a social changemaker, this meetup group will welcome you.
As most good meetups do, members are encouraged to share, learn and collaborate.
This month’s speaker, Justin Isaf, briefed folks about the benefits of managing communities. Justin currently manages 4 million comments a month for the Huffington Post Media Group, and has eight years of experience building highly leveraged online communities.
He covered topics like :
– how to spot the trolls who spam communities
– the importance of reaching critical mass of contributors and commenters
– how to get people talking to each other
– and…a URL to download an e-book version of Randy Farmer’s Building Web Reputation Systems.
Justin also offered three tactical approaches to leveraging communities (Twitter, Forums, and Blogs) while giving insight into their strengths and weaknesses. Twitter, for example, can be used to build conversations between followers, but those kinds of communities will never grow as large as the more traditional Forums. Blogs, on the other hand, give Community Managers more control over their communities than the other two approaches. Justin also discussed the Pros and Cons of being a community manager. “You need to have thick skin to do this work,” he stated after describing an experience where one of his former community leaders started spreading rumors about him on the web.
The last few blog posts I’ve posted here have all started out with “exciting news” – this one’s no different as we’re doing a Giveaway of a WordPress book!
WordPress 3 Complete by April Silver is a thorough guide on all things WordPress and even includes code samples if you get the e-book. We’ve got an advance copy and will be posting a review soon. But you don’t have to wait for my review – you can win a copy today. To enter to win a copy of the book, simply post a comment on why you want this book, how you would use it, or simply link to your current WordPress site. A winner will be chosen randomly using random.org.
What you will learn from this book :
Install WordPress in a variety of environments
Upgrade WordPress from older installations
Add images, videos, tags, and categories to blog posts
Personalize and control the content of your website
Manage the look and feel of your site with customized themes
Allow users to have a variety of control over content
Link your website to the outside world through feeds, syndication, and podcasting
Create custom post types to manage books, movies, people, or anything else you can imagine
Design and create your own themes and plugins from scratch
So – leave a comment! Let us know in the comments section why you could use this book and you could win a free copy. Good luck!
There’s no other way to say this – we’re really proud to announce the launch of NDNF’s new site : http://newdirectors.org.
In collaboration with the MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, we built a custom WordPress theme to house the film festival’s lineup. In celebration of the festival’s 40th anniversary, we developed a few custom post types to store the 300+ films in their archives. The website includes a directory of films, along their directors, and an interactive timeline.
The design was put together by MoMA’s fabulously talented Art Director, Brigitta Bungard.
For a preview of what’s to come on the big screen, take a look at the listing of this year’s films.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
UPDATE : You can read a bit more about the festival on the NYTimes.
We’ve got super exciting news – a project we’ve been working on with MTV + Purpose is finally out in the wild!
Together with the fantastic design and strategy team at Purpose, we developed a custom wordpress plugin for MTV’s Act Blog, helping move people towards collective action.
Some of the basic tech details …
Our custom plugin utilizes custom post types to allow MTV to build a directory of actions. The plugin also connects directly to the Social Actions database and gives the MTV bloggers access to a large set of actions to plug into their posts.
We also worked with the Gigya API – this particular piece encourages visitors to share their actions with their friends.
Many thanks to all the folks who spent countless hours working on this!
Either you’ve got a Facebook page (or you about to set one up). Either way, you’re probably wondering how to use that page to generate some cash. You’re not the only one. So the good folks at Nonprofit Webinars put together this great webinar on just that – how to use facebook to help your organization raise money. This particular webinar and series of slides was put together by the very fantastic Jeff Patrick, President & Founder of Common Knowledge.
