This week I'm helping Sallie Owen and her intrepid group of small nonprofits look at how to use Wetpaint to build a free website. Today I'm going to start by exploring why I think a wiki can work as an organizational website and why I think Wetpaint is a good option for nonprofits that want to go this route. Let me first say, though, that there are other options that... Read more →

A few weeks ago, Sallie Owen, Communications Director for the A+ Education Foundation, e-mailed me: Saturday I was a presenter for the Alabama Organizing Project, a year-long leadership training program for grassroots organizers. I mentioned wikis as a sidenote about Web 2.0 and the idea of free or very cheap websites that were easy to update, which turned out to spark a lot of questions. Sallie went on to tell... Read more →

A few tools and resources hanging out in my feed reader: 26 Free Tools for Buzz Monitoring Most companies already know that they should be monitoring the Web to see what's being said about them. Others may not realize this is becoming a necessity. Whether you're a nonprofit looking to see what bloggers think of your cause or an individual wondering what people might find about you online, these tools... Read more →

Thinking about launching a blog for your nonprofit? How would you like to get 6,312 subscribers to your new blog in one day? This Copyblogger case study from Brian Clarke offers some powerful lessons in launching your blog with a bang, based on the experiences of Tom Kuhlman and Articulate, a company that sells rapid e-learning software. Offer Value to Existing and New Readers There's a tendency for most nonprofits... Read more →

Visit Building a Better Blog Over the past few days, the Building a Better Blog challenge participants have been emailing about the end of the challenge and the fact that we were going to really miss this community of bloggers we'd begun. We also discovered that many of us wanted to continue with challenging ourselves on a regular basis to improve our blogs and to have a forum where we... Read more →

Steve Thiel of HotPress Web emailed me yesterday to let me know that his Denver-based web design company will be giving away a free website worth $5,000 to any charity, church or nonprofit. All you have to do is complete this application by September 30 and Steve and company will select and announce the winner the next day. If selected, your organization will get: 25 pages Site architecture planning Custom... Read more →

It's been about a year since I began The Bamboo Project (the exact date is lost in the mists of time and a move from one Typepad account to another). It seems fitting, then, that a great post this morning from Darren Rowse reminds me of those first days and months of pouring my heart into the digital void and how often it felt like I was talking to myself.... Read more →

Regular readers know that I think you should have downloaded Firefox and given up on Internet Explorer a long time ago. However many people cling to the old ways, so if you still use Explorer, you need this tip from Amit Agarwal on a download that will allow you to auto-restore your browser to the session you were in when Explorer crashes or hangs inexplicably. No more searching through your... Read more →

Yesterday's task in the 31 Day Project was to "stickify" my blog--that is, to turn one-time readers into RSS subscribers by either driving them deeper into other blog posts so they get hooked and want to subscribe or by getting them to subscribe on the basis of a strong post. To do this, I headed back into Google Analytics to take a look at my most popular pages. Many of... Read more →

A lot of email in my inbox is of the "Check out this link!" variety. This morning, Harold Jarche reminds us, in a post entitled "Free Your Bookmarks," how social bookmarking through sites like del.icio.us can cut email clutter. Instead of emailing links to everyone you know (we're begging you to stop!), set up tags in del.icio.us or any other social bookmarking site. You can create categories for friends, family,... Read more →