Sections Overview

You just love me for my content We need funding! Security, Privacy and tracking users The next steps Other resources

Section 1: Love Me

Site Technologies - quick and dirty Some site guidelines Hosting Options Domain names Advertising Start a mailing list Search Engines demystified

Technologies

HTML! Hypertext Markup Language A universal standard for the way things are displayed In a

browser<b>Fred</b> = Fred

Scripting Can run on web server or on the client computer.

http://www.w3schools.com/js/tryit.asp?filename=tryjs_formattext

Essentially small computer programs Make web pages Alive! Example: display the current date on a web page <%=DATE%> in VbScript Getdate function in JavaScript

Technologies part 2

JAVA A programming language that has found its home on the

internet as it is cross platform (Mac/Unix/Windows) Promised to easily deploy and maintain Full blown applications. In reality JAVA is slow, cumbersome and 80% of enterprise

implementations fail.

.NET Microsoft's answer to JAVA Instead of one JAVA language that’ll run on many OS’s its one

OS with many languages that will easily work together. VB, C#, J#.... Cobol.NET

Basic Site guidelines

Don’t have anything constantly moving unless you want people to move on

Use light on dark not dark on light for your pages. When in doubt. Leave it out. If it might be annoying it probably is. Check your spelling Plan your site for 800X600 screen resolution. Check your spelling again. PLAN AHEAD 95% of your work will be maintenance of the original

site Update your site on a regular basis. Once a week is good. Two at

the outside. Nothing says “cruddy web site” more then bad links on pages.

Basic Site Guide slide 2

Nothing says good web site more then valid links pointing to good content. If you get lost on your own site your users will too. Always include a site map. ALWAYS have a link to your main web page on every page in a the same

spot. Navigation buttons are for logical navigation first - pretty buttons second. Amazon & My Yahoo are the only sites that has ever used tabs effectively You won’t be the third to use tabs effectively. Spell check again. While you are at it have your mate check your grammar. Flash can be annoying! Be careful!

Hosting options

Some of your organizations’ national chapters will offer hosting for free. Buy my own server or rent some space?

Having your own allows for complete freedom of OS and administration! Great! Now what?

Pay a server admin and pay for the always on internet connection ……..

Cost benefits to sharing space on another server can far outweigh the drawbacks

At someone elses mercy for quality of service and uptime.

There are many hosting companies. Pick yours carefully Co-location servers. A neat alternative “Ask me what this is”

Domain Names

www.WesternPAnonprofittechsupport.org

Rolls right off the tongue!

Instead www.PittFreeTech.org

Don’t worry there are lots of good domain names left.

Advertising!

Your web site is a form of advertising Make it known by seeing that it is indexed on other

sites with common interests. If you link to them MAYBE they should link to you?

Put you web address on EVERYTHINGFlyers, Business cards, T-shirts. Etc…..

Start a mailing list

NO SPAM! Do not send unsolicited messages! Allow users to sign up for a mailing list

where you can update people on what is going on in your organization.

Big organization? Try a message forum. NO SPAM! It tastes awful on toast!

Demystified Search Engines

Web Spider A program that searches the web and collects

the content of a page. Then it returns toi the web to get more data

META tags are unseen text on a web page that allow the user to describe content of page.

Other progam builds a list of words and where they are found on page.

Index the words According to a defined weight.

Example: Words like An, A, or would have a low weight

Encode data

Share search engine with World

Image from howstuffworks.com

Section 2: Transactions/Fundraising Shopping Technologies - quick and dirty Accepting Payments Refunds and Exchanges Bid more, it’s for charity! -Online Auctions Regulation of Internet fundraising

Transaction technologies/Accepting Payments Where internet technologies and security technologies meet.

Methods to “skin the cat” Allow someone else to handle the transaction

Yahoo or Verio or another host (they take a cut) all e –commerce functionality.

They have canned websites you can customize

Virtual host that will manage a good portion of the transaction

The host handles much of the above but you design site and database. Similar to external web host in section 1.

Enterprise You own the server and handle everything from taking

credit cards to creating icons

We got Orders! Now what?

All the other “business stuff” still applies. If you have mail order in place you’ll be in good

shape If not you have to set up a system….

How will you deal with…..customer servicereturns or exchanges?

Online Auctions

Lots of places allow you to conduct online auctions at a discount.

http://pages.ebay.com/charity/ Even E-bay lets you have auctions

These are great! I even got some cool stuff from a charity that I just needed.

Bob Regan will celebrate the day goodwill opens an online storefront!

BIG BROTHER!

NEWS FLASH: The government regulates you! Moving to the Internet can cause unknown violations of OBRA ’93

Law that dictates who is entitled to what information from and ABOUT YOU if they donate.

IRS also entitles people to have information about donations over a certain amount ($250)

The above are not new but can be harder if you accept donations online and less face to face.

A clever alternative is to put a wish list on your web site and let people donate goods or funds to buy it.

*I AM NOT A LAWYER

Section 3:Security, Privacy and tracking users Are you secure? Thoughts on your network Internet Security Privacy of data Tracking users

Cookies Server Logs

Off Topic

Is your network secure? A LOT of you have private data about people they

don’t want public. If you are connected to the internet you may be vulnerable

Do you have a firewall & antiviral scanners? Security policies?

About data About use of computers…. Think about where your data is……….. Historically, The best way to get at data is to ask for it from an

employee...

Internet Security

Encryption the activity of converting from plain text into code

SSL -Secure socket layer You have used this if you bought anything online It encrypts information so that only you and the other party

can read using public keys. Hard to grasp past the fact that it works.

PGP -Pretty Good privacy Learn more at Pgp.com Works similar to SSL.

Privacy

Have a written privacy policy about what people submit on your web site readily availible

Explicitly says what you will and will not do with their information

Will you sell contact information etc….

Tracking Users

A blessing and a curse.Blessing

Track scum who try to hack your site. Track usage statistics of who is visiting from where Find out what content people are using on your

site Curse

People don’t like being tracked without their knowledge

Cookies

A cookie is a piece of text that a Web server can store on a user's hard disk. Cookies allow a Web site to store information on a user's machine and later retrieve it. The pieces of information are stored as name-value pairs

UserID A9A3BECE0563982D www.goto.com/ //sample cookie

Thanks to Howstuffworks.com for this definition

Web Server Logs

Any good hosting company will provide access to your logs so you can see who is visitingFrom whereWhat they looked atHow long they stayed

Section 4: The Next Steps

Planning for the futureXHTMLWireless web

What do these mean for me?

Updating your site

Buzzword Bingo

XML Used for data about your data.

HTML Markup and display

XHTML Enforces a more well formed and syntactic valid html

code. Intermediate step to making content based markup

WIRELESS…..?

Gearing up for handheld devices takes some planning but not impossible

Wouldn’t it be nice if….People could report possible illegal dumping

from their palms or cell phones electronically?

Not cheap to implement but it is possible!

Updating your site

USE TECHNOLOGY Make life easier by making it easy to update and

make changes to your site. Possibly have a separate secure update site so

people can update your sites w/o knowing how to code?

Planning this into initial phase is the single best thing you can do to ensure you stay current.

Other Resources:Books on this Topic

Note on books

Both were written in ~1999 in the heyday of 5000+ NASDAQ + New Economy BS

Both have some very good information but there is also a lot of marketing hype.

Web Sites

I did not find any I referred to more then once? HAVE YOU?

Please share….

QUESTIONS?

Thanks! dap177@hotmail.com http://visc.sis.pitt.edu