Take Control of Your Website Destiny
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This document discusses website creation tools that allow users to easily and inexpensively create and update their own website without depending on a webmaster. It was presented by Samantha Marshall at the Child Care Food Program Roundtable Conference in 2013 and encourages attendees to take control of their website's destiny by using these types of tools.
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Take Control of Your Website Destiny
- 1. Take Destiny of Your Web Create or Update Your Website (easy and cheap) Without Depending on a Webmaster Samantha Kay-Daleiden Marshall Child Care Food Program Roundtable Conference 2013
- 6. I Leave You with This…
- 7. Samantha Marshall samantha@minutemenu.com p 972.671.5211 x0218 ChildCareInfo.com and Social Media Manager Minute Menu Systems, LLC
Editor's Notes
- It’s time that you take control of your web destiny.Websites are essential to providing to sharing information about your agency with the greater public. What are some roadblocks you are having with either 1) updating your website with current information or 2) having a website at all.Problems:don’t have the $$ to get a website made and managedMy webmaster is so expensive or always really busy…it’s hard to get things changedI don’t know how to do itI am part of an R&R and I don’t have access to anything for updating our website about the food programAnswersYou can do it…you don’t need a lot of money if an at allNo webmaster neededI’ll show you in 5 minutesThere are alternatives to updating your providers such as creating a small website, blog or creating a group on a social network.We are going to talk about all of these solutions in this class today.
- There are many different ways you can maintain control over your web presence.Lets talk about the traditional website first.Free website creation tools, in which you can purchase upgrades.Weebly, Wix, and Wordpress are the best examples of this.There is also sites.google.com which is always free aside from a special domain name.Intuit and Webs.com work in similar ways, although there is not a free version.Then there are the big ones…DNN and Joomla. These two Content Management Systems are “open source” website platforms. These are a way to control the content on your website but there is a lot of technical management needed. This is how I manage childcareinfo.com and there are many many things that I can’t do without the assistance of a technical person.If you want to know more about content management systems, I am going to direct you to idealware.org. http://idealware.org/reports/cms2012 This guide is highly researched and written in such a way that you can understand and help you make informed decisions. It looks into 11 options for content management systems if you want a more complex and detailed solution.Today we are going to focus on the free version to get your feet wet, so website creation doesn’t seem so scary and the people that do it don’t seem magical. Are you ready for this? You aren’t going to believe it….
- Alrighty, we are going to jump right in…Weebly.com here we go. This happens to be my favorite because it is so darn easy and you get a lot in the free version.Volunteer 1: someone come up and “add a site”Choose a theme…explain hover over and design choice. Encourage them to choose one.Use the subdomain of weebly. I would recommend just using this when you get started and playing around. Type in CACFP Sponsor and click continueClick PublishCongratulations you just created a website.Volunteer 1: Someone come up and edit the site. Edit Title (at the top of the page)Add a Picture (the main picture)Volunteer 1: Drag and DropColumnImage and textDividerVolunteer 1: Add a pagePagesAdd a pageName the page: Contact UsChoose the page layout, either short header or no headerVolunteer 1: Add Contact form: More Drag and Drop!I will add another pageVolunteer 2: Add embedDrag and drop embed(guide them to embed code) – infogramVolunteer 2: Design ChangeChange the colorStill don’t like it, change themeGo through settings…
- Why would you want alternatives to using a traditional website about your agency?you’re program is part of an R&R and you don’t see the need to have a whole separate website about the food program or 2) you’re nervous about it or don’t want all of the work.Let’s talk specifics. I picked some problems that you might be having and provided some possible solutions. I am sure you have more and if we have time we’ll open it up for discussion.Easy to Update: You do want to educate providers about healthy foods or new things you or your nutritionist learn. Too long for a facebook post and too short for an actual article, the blog is for you. It is also a casual way of writing about things often using I or We in the context.Blogs are another way to have a website but don’t sound so scary. It’s also a really good way to organize the content you’re sharing. Blogger, wordpress, tumblrExamples: http://choices4children.blogspot.com/, http://childcareinfo.com/, http://policyblog.usa.childcareaware.org/2) Trainings. You want to publicize your trainings. There is a nimble way you could do this. Lets focus on Eventbrite and Weebly.com.You could use eventbrite, it is a completely free service if you are not charging for your trainings, which you’re not. Create your event, the amount of people that can be a part of it and publish it. You can then embed buttons or the whole page itself into your website.You could use weebly, the service we just spoke about, as simply an events website. There is also Facebook events, google+ events or evite.Creating Community. You want to be able to easily communicate with providers and parents. Open up communication between providers in your area or state…Ning – Ning is not a free option but it is worth a looksy. It has a full community option. It really encourages conversation. Providers could create groups, you could create groups and moderate. This is a full blown community option. It can also be your website solution as well.Google+ Communities is a good one as well. You can make it private or public. One of the things that irritates me about facebook right now is that when your communitiy posts on your page, it shows up in this little square and then there is not any community engagement because nobody sees the posts. Google+ community is not like that.Facebook GroupsYou want to share relevant resources and information.Sure you can do this in FB but can you ever find it again? This is the value of using social bookmarking sites such as DIIGO and Listly.Listly is my new favorite link sharing tool. You can make lists about a certain subject. Watch this.Diigo is another favorite. I don’t use it as much as the other BUT you can make a group just for your providers and share with them resources and discuss them. Coolest part? Imagine an article is ok but there is one particular section that you think is important for providers or staff to know..you can highlight just that part…providers can go to your group and look at what you highlighted and ocmmented on without even going to the website. Efficiency for all!Other problems that we might want to have web solutions to?Let’s take a looksy at some of theseTumblr, Wordpress, BloggerEventbriteGoogle+ communitiesFacebook groupsDiigoNingNing: $25/month (1,000) or $50/month (10,000)