gdp's Comments

Non-Profit Tech Blog : Blackbaud Sphere Remarkably Bad at Google Analytics Ecommerce Tracking

Tue, 7 Aug 2012 19:55:13 +0000

Hey, do you have screenshots? I'm curious about how your reports look?

Non-Profit Tech Blog : Blackbaud merry-go-round and the cost of closed systems

Wed, 7 Jul 2010 13:25:14 +0000

Todd, you might want to try blackbus.org. There are a ton of Blackbaud users there and I'm sure they can point you to their resources.

Non-Profit Tech Blog : How to Buy a Small Nonprofit IT System

Sun, 6 Jun 2010 15:55:25 +0000

No problem. I should probably update that with thoughts on what\\\'s coming down the pipe IT-wise.

Non-Profit Tech Blog : Mobile phones to the rescue in Indonesia, Philippines and Samoa

Mon, 5 Oct 2009 19:08:14 +0000

Seriously, how about not spamming the blog and instead emailing me. I might have been willing to have you guest post instead and now you're just annoying. I will leave your post up there as evidence of your spammy ways.

Non-Profit Tech Blog : Mobile phones to the rescue in Indonesia, Philippines and Samoa

Mon, 5 Oct 2009 19:07:21 +0000

Thanks Buday -- please see his blog post at http://immateur.blogspot.com/2009/09/ondoy-relief... And they're not just your countrymen, I'm Filipino American so I have a lot of interest in what's going on over there.

Non-Profit Tech Blog : Advertise On This Blog

Fri, 2 Oct 2009 03:58:37 +0000

I know I know. It looks insanely difficult. I prefer that Google handle the ads and not me so I can insulate myself from the need to attract more eyeballs just to help out the advertiser. That said, I'm also too lazy to use my own ad server nor have I joined a particular ad network that might better serve me.

Non-Profit Tech Blog : Why Your Nonprofit's Volunteer Base Should Blog for Your Nonprofit

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 01:19:18 +0000

Thanks, Craig, I'm going to update this article soon. Additional data is available now and apaforprogress.org has (according to GA) surpassed the 10,000 visitors per month mark without any significant news stories powering the traffic. In August, APA for Progress created over 6 posts a day which resulted in 9,659 visitors for that month. I don't think APAP can hit that mark again this mark but there's been a surge in search engine traffic to the site because people are looking for Obama's health care summary. I would probably say that any news cycle related to political issues will increase traffic to the APAP site. We're also seeing a rather significant uptick in direct traffic to the site as well suggest that users are getting used to looking for Asian American political news on the site.

Non-Profit Tech Blog : How to Buy a Small Nonprofit IT System

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 12:19:24 +0000

And that's the problem with using Macs or Linux. This is why I don't recommend either OS for nonprofits if they are using fundraising software. Linux and the Mac OS are both great operating systems but at this time, they're suboptimal if you want to raise money. This is a case where the IT department must align itself with the business needs of the organization despite the problems behind Windows. Sorry, IEgea, I think you need to get your sys admin to install Parallel on your Mac. This is not a technical issue but a business decision has to be made to re-align your IT assets with your strategy.

Non-Profit Tech Blog : How to Buy a Small Nonprofit IT System

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 11:47:48 +0000

I normally do promote free software but generally speaking, not Linux. The problem is that a lot of desktop fundraising software doesn't run on Linux. Most of them are Windows-based. However, If a nonprofit is comfortable with using CiviCRM or salesforce.com or Convio's Common Ground, it's well worth the look. At this time, I am unwilling to commit nonprofits to an immature codebase in regards to Linux and say the offline edition of salesforce.com for nonprofits.

Non-Profit Tech Blog : Blogging Budget For Nonprofits

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:48:19 +0000

Sorry AMH, but I laughed when I read your comment. I think you should always try free but the problem isn\\\'t the free part so much as the lack of thinking on your part. Yes, you can start a blog for free but your traffic isn\\\'t going anywhere if you stop at that point. There\\\'s a lot of real thinking that needs to occur if you plan on growing traffic and your comments only serve to exacerbate an intellectual laziness that I find often among techies. If the technical object of a blog were to simply create the blog, then free would be fine. However, you\\\'d have a hell of a time convincing managers that that makes sense as a business proposition.

Non-Profit Tech Blog : Blogging Budget For Nonprofits

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:37:50 +0000

And what exactly was your blog's traffic? Did it grow? How much staff time was spent on the blog? Did you account for those counts? I ask these questions simply because your answer sounds more like a techie's answer and doesn't address the concerns of nonprofit management. "The Management" wants to know how much time is being spent on the blog and wants to know how much it will cost. Your costs are very similar to the costs listed in my blog post but without the wireframes and the IA, I don't think you're really helping organizations out. Seriously, I'm just as tired of techies who don't understand management concerns as I am of managers who don't understand tech. And just saying you did it for super cheap doesn't allow for any context regarding staff time. Let's get real here, for most nonprofits, tech is cheap. The problem is staffing.

Non-Profit Tech Blog : Leaderboard

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:31:59 +0000

You mean like Capwiz or DIA's Salsa? They're all different unfortunately and not as nicely architected as say JS-Kit or even Intensedebate. You'll find that that sort of thing is roughly 5 years behind the state of the art as they haven't been really updated in around that amount of time. Frankly, it's a problem in that political tech is several years behind from the state of the art almost all the time. That's what you get when you try to do software development in DC instead of NYC or Silicon Valley. As a developer when I ask for a REST API from these vendors they look at me like I'm from another planet. It's sad.

Non-Profit Tech Blog : Towards a New Kind of Nonprofit Website, Part II

Thu, 2 Jul 2009 16:24:18 +0000

Hey righini, thanks for your reply. I'm just going to address on where we differ. Remember, I came into Drupal as a past Joomla and Wordpress user so I'm not totally always in lockstep with what Drupalistas tend to say about Drupal. That said, Wordpress could learn a LOT from Drupal (and vice versa). 1. I don't think you quite understand the difference between a multi-blogger community and a blog with multiple users. Wordpress is only good for the latter. Wordpress MU is good for the former. 2. Automated image galleries is not the same as context-sensitive resizing of images. Both Drupal and Wordpress have automated image galleries. However, only Drupal has context-sensitive resizing. You probably could do it in Wordpress if you took the time to code but it still wouldn't be integrated in a SQL query builder like it can be done in Drupal. Drupal is a couple of intuitive leaps ahead of Wordpress on this issue. 3. I strongly urge you to do an install of Drupal 6 and play around with CCK and Views. It will blow your mind. 4. Hmm I can't really evaluate this plugin as much of the homepage for it is in Japanese. However, the "some coding is required" issue is a problem for many nonprofits. They don't have custom coding resources. 6. Custom excerpts in Wordpress are nice but that assumes users are going to write them in. Drupal does not. You don't have to ask bloggers to write a custom excerpt. Drupal (most of the time) just figures it out. 8. I doubt you could do a magazine layout in the context of a multi-user blogging community with Wordpress alone. You would need Wordpress MU and then you'd have to check if your custom plugins work properly with WPMU. That's a big issue. If you ever do a migration from WP to WPMU -- come back here and tell how many of your plugins survived the migration.

Non-Profit Tech Blog : Towards a New Kind of Nonprofit Website, Part II

Thu, 2 Jul 2009 16:07:42 +0000

Actually, I disagree on this one and I have installed and deployed emfield. Right out of the box, Drupal doesn't support unassisted embedding of video and audio. In fact, I had to install emfield because many of APAP's bloggers had problems with embeds in Drupal. It's definitely not as easy as Wordpress to use. It's a sore point with me that Drupalistas sometimes have a tin ear when it comes to usability issues and this is one of them.

Non-Profit Tech Blog : Towards a New Kind of Nonprofit Website, Part II

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 23:59:22 +0000

Yes, it is HuffPo. I never made the claim that HuffPo is run on Drupal. It's on Movable Type. I was talking about the "design pattern" behind HuffPo. That design pattern is pretty prevalent all over the Web. That's why I also used the MSN News site as another example and also pointed out Drudge Report as another example. In this case, you need to distinguish the difference between the technology (Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla, etc) from the design patterns that are part of the user experience on news websites.

Non-Profit Tech Blog : Towards a New Kind of Nonprofit Website, Part II

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:00:18 +0000

righini, thank you for following up! Let me try to answer your comments one at a time. 1. I'm discussing Wordpress not Wordpress MU which is an entirely different beast altogether. I think Wordpress MU (with the addition of Buddypress) has improved greatly in the last few months but from what I understand, it's still iffy in that there isn't a 1 to 1 correspondence between Wordpress plugins and Wordpress MU. Has this been resolved yet? I started working on the APAP website in January of this year and many of those issues were still in the air. Until April of this year, SEO and Sitemap plugins that I normally used weren't fully compatible with Wordpress MU and in fact, there were numerous caveats on Wordpress MU about those support issues. 2. Automated image formatting -- there's a big difference between the way Drupal imagecache module does formatting vs. the way Wordpress does it. In Wordpress 2.8, you only can use three thumbnail sizes and it's assuming that the user will manually insert the thumbnails into each post as they see fit. Drupal is superior in that you can actually change the context and thumbnail sizes in three separate contexts: when the user posts, when only a teaser is being shown and most importantly, when the content is being shown as part of a view. And more significantly, the user need only insert the image once. 3. Complex data manipulation and presentation -- seriously , righini, you should try out Drupal Views. It's basically a SQL query builder that allows you to slice and dice your content (and even use relationships between content types) to your heart's content. You can certainly write this in PHP code in Wordpress but productivity gains are enabled because it's a point and click interface. Writing custom SQL queries and PHP code is just out of the question for most users. 4. Custom content types -- righini you're talking about file types not content types. In Wordpress, there are only blogs entries and pages. In Drupal, you can make ANY kind of content type by building a form out of any custom fields you want to make. On the APAP site, we created a content type called "jobs" that allows admins to post jobs to the site in a particular format that couldn't be easily encapsulated within a blog entry. There is no equivalent in Wordpress. 5. High amount of training for new bloggers -- actually, this is a big PLUS for Wordpress. What I mean was that is was actually easy for new bloggers to maniuplate Wordpress and start making blog entries on their own. Unfortunately, Drupal falls down in the user experience surrounding blog entries. Drupal definitely requires more training for users. 6. I evaluated lots of magazine layouts for Wordpress and even looked at a magazine layout (called magazeen) that was available both as a Drupal theme AND a Wordpress theme. However, maintaining the integrity of a Wordpress theme over time is difficult and requires that each user always remember a set of content formatting rules in order to keep the look the same. This is because Wordpress assumes that a user will only post the content once and present it once. Drupal doesn't assume that. It assumes that content is a set of data fields that can be manipulated to be shown in different contexts. That's what makes magazine layouts work. The abilty to present the same content in different contexts is all important. You can actually "force" consistent design on the part of the user using Drupal. 7. Unassisted embedding of video and audio - Yes, we are in agreement here. Wordpress is better at it than Drupal. Drupal is getting better but still behind Wordpress on that score. 8. CRM integration with Drupal is mostly done through CiviCRM. My guess is that the level of integration between CivICRM and Drupal is greater than that you can reach with existing integration between Wordpress and CRM. CivICRM can do user membership syncs and pass on permissions rules to Drupal so that users can be locked out from seeing content based on their membership status. It also does single-sign on between CiviCRM and Drupal. I don't think you can do this in Wordpress without a ton of custom work. I think you assume that CRM integration is fairly simple like an email signup where you just plop some javascript on a page and voila "crm integration complete!". This is an incomplete solution for nonprofits as their business logic is quite a bit more sophisticated than that. Would love to hear your replies but I might just expand this into a blog post later on down the line.

Non-Profit Tech Blog : Towards a New Kind of Nonprofit Website, Part II

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:30:38 +0000

Again, please list the "nos" that you object to and specific plugins that you think will resolve those issues.

Non-Profit Tech Blog : Towards a New Kind of Nonprofit Website, Part II

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:30:02 +0000

Have at it, Matt! Which nos do you think are inaccurate? And by dig in a bit, do you mean writing code or do you mean using existing plugins. And why didn't you introduce yourself? Photomatt is Matt Mullenweg, the guy who runs Automattic and the guy who helped craft Wordpress from it's origins in another CMS project, B2. And to help us to avoid yet another platform "war", let's preface this by saying that I'm a long-time user of Wordpress but I also believe in not saddling nonprofits with a lot of custom code. I believe that if Wordpress wanted to solve some of the issues I wanted to solve for nonprofits that it would require custom code. Matt, I'd love for you to list specific plug-ins that you think can resolve those issues. I'd also love to know if there was a Wordpress equivalent to the CCK, Views, nodequeue and imagecache Drupal modules and I will gladly rewrite the article with those findings in mind.

Non-Profit Tech Blog : Towards a New Kind of Nonprofit Website, Part II

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:38:01 +0000

Yes, I know. Can you point out where in the article I made that claim?

Non-Profit Tech Blog : Towards a New Kind of Nonprofit Website, Part I

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:04:19 +0000

Aww, you want all my secrets? OK, here is yet another one. Google drives people to /tag pages. I don't know why. Do a quick search on "Sandra Otaka" in Google. Notice that APAP has a search result there. However, it's the search result for a page in the /tag directory. What IS interesting is that I seem to have not set up auto-fill for meta keywords on these pages. It could be the TITLE of the page has Sandra Otaka in it but then again so does every other page in the search result set. Slightly over 10% of APAP's traffic on "sandra otaka" or "otaka" has come from that /tag URL. Overall, 4.89% of the last month's traffic for APAP was on these pages. It's definitely a good reason to keep them around. It's on my list of to-dos to also enhance these taxonomy pages so that they're built out further. My guess is that the old idea that Google likes in-depth pages with lots of content on it has been confirmed again. Notice that HuffPo has the same model with its "Big Pages" feature.