When planning your site here are some useful links for you to check out.
Comparing the hosted options
Make a Website Hub reviews the choices between the hosted options below. Visit their sites to check out the current offers and pricing plans:
WordPress: .com and .org
WordPress.com and WordPress.org are easily confused but there is help at hand…
See this article from WPBeginner comparing WordPress.com with WordPress.org
WordPress.com explain the difference in detail and so do WordPress.org.
Website planning
I strongly recommend The Web Style Guide for planning websites. It’s a long and detailed read but full of useful information. You will need to adapt some of the exercises if you’re a small organisation, but the general thinking and principles still apply.
Another great book which will help you set your website within an overall marketing strategy is Dee Blick’s The 15 Essential Marketing Master Classes For Your Small Business. In my view it translates well to the third sector. Chapter 5 covers websites in some detail.
Written content
The following blog posts have useful links and tips in them:
- writing content for your site
- links to get you started
- also check out Rachel Extance’s site on storytelling
Visual content
My blog posts on choosing images for your website includes lots of useful links to chase up. Check out unsplash.com and istockphoto.com for great images.
Social Media
Lenka Koppova maintains and excellent blog and set of resources as well as running Cambridge Social Media events and conferences. In particular check out the section on this guest blog by Zuzana Kunckova on WordPress and social media.
If you have a WordPress website this blog from Rachel McCollin teaches you how to connect your WordPress site with numerous social media platforms to allow automated sharing of content.
Learning more
There are many websites, forums and sites out there for support. If you prefer to learn in a class check out the WordPress for Beginners course at Hills Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge – a 10 week evening class. Check out the Hills Road site to see if there are any planned, or get in touch with me direct.
This is one of several blog posts aimed at charities on how to approach website design on a budget and with limited time. Altogether they are:
