Is your organization ready for a web presence? Are you on a shoestring budget with not much in the way of technical expertise to draw on? You might consider getting on the web using a free-of-charge blogging site….

But I don’t want a blog! I don’t even know what a blog is!

“Blogs” - the shortened form of the term Weblogs were originally for an eclectic group of web geeks who wanted to keep journals on the web. But, now they are so much more! Using blogging software, such as Wordpress affords one the ease of a simple content management system which makes it easy to keep your site up to date. Using a service such as Blogger or Wordpress.com offers the added benefit of many predefined layouts which can be used “asis” or modified to add your own images, etc.

John Freund is a real fan of Blogger - http://www.blogger.com. The interface is simple to use. The cost is non-existent. And they offer a choice of professionally designed templates to get you started. You can have multiple authors on a blog. If you get brave you can doctor the template to personalize it more.

I am more of the Wordpress.com camp, probably because I deal with Wordpress on a regular basis. Wordpress has developed into more than a blogging platform. The English language Famvin.org is built on a combination of Wordpress and Mediawiki. This allows us to do our editing online from anywhere we might find ourselves - as long as we have internet access.

There are other inexpensive possiblities as well:

Typepad is built on the foundation of MovableType. The entry level is $4.95/mo USD - but you can try it for 30 days before you buy in. This site runs was originally built on an older release of Movable Type.

A couple of spots to look into for this type of website include:

• Wordpress.com
• www.blogger.com
• Typepad - charges a monthly fee, 14 day free trial
• LiveJournal

Read on to discover my very limited evaluations and why this is something that FAMVIN webmasters should know about!

Why use Blogging software or a Content Management System (CMS)?

• Generally, a single template is applied to the entire site making maintenance much, much more simple. Want to change an entry in a menu that goes on every page of your site? Change it in one place, and the entire site changes.
• Separation of content and presentation. This is a biggy for me. For FAMVIN I handle “presentation” - the fundatmental look and feel of the site. I worry about the programming if there is any to be done. The Content folks (John Freund, Julio Suescun, Guiseppe Turati) use a web browser to enter the news articles and other information for the site. Sometimes we get together, but they really don’t have to worry me, and I don’t have to worry them.

Those 2 reasons alone are enough for me! But add to this the fact that the software that runs the site also creates the RSS news feed which any of you can use, and that’s even better. An example is the “What’s New on FAMVIN” email that John Freund distributes. It is created from the RSS feed for FAMVIN, formatted with a program (see the article on RSS on this site) and then emailed.

Now for the particulars:

FAMVIN.org has been a PHPNuke site since January 2000. PHPNuke and programs like it provide the content management, and some “blogging” type functions. A single template is in effect for the entire site. The data (read articles) are stored in a database (we use MySQL as the backend database for FAMVIN content. [The spanish, english and italian sites that is. French is a different story for a different article]

PHPNuke provides the News function, the functionality that creates “Special Collections”, the ability to allow readers to comment and rate articles. It keeps track of how many times an article has been viewed online. There are other modules that we don’t use, such as Journals, Reviews, the Encyclopedia, FAQ’s. We do use the “contact us” and submit news heavily.

PHPNuke is one of the most popular CMS’s, but there are others to consider: PostNuke ( a fork of PHPNuke), PHPWebsite (developed at Appalachian State University), Mambo (I’m just beginning to explore this one.

That’s Overkill! What about Blogging?

On a slightly different level you find Blogging software. OK, what’s a Blog? It’s an abbreviated word for WebLog, which started out as a sort of online public journalling craze. And it’s gone wild. Almost anybody can put up a Blog and expound on anything and everything. This site is a Blog. You can get free hosting at Blogger.com and be up and running in about 5 minutes. Check out FamvinNotes to see an example of a blogger.com blog. Granted, I use the option to move it to my own webspace so I don’t have to put up with the ads (nothing is truly free), but the layout is one of the ready made templates available at blogger.com, and the editing is done using a web browser.

That’s the simplest, cheapest one I know of right now. But, there are others. My newest venture is with Wordpress which rapidly becoming my top choice.

With MT and Wordpress you can actually extend the use so that you have a simple CMS using blogging software. In addition, if you visit the sites referenced here, you can usually find a place that offers webhosting with the application installed for you. That is true for the CMS software and the Blog software.

I’ll continue this in another article that will be more specific in how to do it. For now, just check out the software itself!

“Whazzat?” you ask.

Did you ever notice those little [usually orange] icons that look something like this: ? Did you ever click on one of these? Or did you just wonder what that was?

RSS feeds (Atom is a variation on this) are basically files of news headlines generated by one site for use by other sites. Most of the Famvin family of site have RSS feeds. We even share them from one part of FAMVIN with another.

“OK - what does do for me?” you ponder.

So - if you want to keep up with the new postings on all of the above mentioned sites - an many more - you can download a desktop aggregator, or set up an account on Bloglines and grab the headlines from all of the news sites you are interested in.

“How do I do that?” - you’re getting interested now.

“But what are the addresses for these RSS feeds?”

Famvin.org (English)

Famvin.org (Spanish) http://www.famvin.org/es/backend.php
Famvin.com

Go for it! Give it a whirl. See if you like it! And, then, you can suggest other sites to us.

For an idea of just what is possible with CSS, check out CSSZengarden. The game here folks is this: there is an html file, all tagged up neatly so that it validates and is accessible and all that good stuff. And, the designer gets to make it look like whatever he/she wants visually using css ( a separate file that is linked to the html). No javascript or any programmer stuff like that. Just styles (which include graphic images) and the original markup. As you flip through the site take not of the fact that the content on every page is identical - just displayed in different ways.

Now - if that doesn’t get you interested I just about give up… but I would recommend that you do learn about style sheet basics. Like, how to make it easy to get all of your titles to display in the same font, size, color and alignment without using the accursed tag. Go forth and learn!

• Use “alt” with your images. Say What? if you have
  ever created a web page by coding the bare-metal html, you probably
  already know this. If not, hang on. When you insert an image into
  a web document you generally have some html that looks like:
  <img src=”mypicture.gif”>
  This just says - “I’m an image [img] and my name is “mypicture.gif”
  [src].” Now, have you ever seen those pictures where you roll
  the mouse over and suddenly a little box pops up that shows the name
  or an explanation? That is the result of the “alt”. So now
  the image tag looks like:
  <img src=”mypicture.gif” alt=”mypicture”/>
  

  Roll your mouse over this copy of the image and see the little box pop up. If you have users with vision problems who use screen readers, this is how they know what the graphic/picture is.

  If you use an html editor, such as Dreamweaver or Frontpage, you
  can find a place to put the “alt” text when you insert
  or modify the image. Do it!

• Put a Title in your page. Again, easy but easily overlooked.
  The <title> tag is in the top part (the <head>) of your
  html document. When you look at a page on the web using Explorer,
  or Netscape or some other browser, there is a title bar at the very
  top of the browser window. Ever wonder how the titles get into that
  bar? It’s from the <title> tag. Also makes your page come up
  better in search engines. In most html editors you have a place to set up or modify your page
  properties. The Title field in this space is the one I’m talking about.

Copy this code to add it to your site:

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

You can click on the Grab this Headline link and add it to your webpage.

We also offer another bit of Javascript to place the contents of the feed into a webpage on your site. The results will look like this:

Copy this bit of code and place it in your page to include the daily headlines:

<p style="border: 1px solid #000000; padding: 10px"> <script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/FamvinEnglish?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript"></script><noscript> <p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/FamvinEnglish"></a><br />Powered by FeedBurner</p> <p> </noscript></p>


The basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing. (from opensource.org).

For more information on the Open Source Initiative (OSI), a non-profit corporation dedicated to managing and promoting the Open Source Definition for the good of the community, specifically through the OSI Certified Open Source Software certification mark and program, check out the OpenSource.org website. For the Open Source Definition, check out this page.

• www.hotscripts.com

  This is one of the first places I go when I’m looking for new software
  and scripts. You can find not only PHP resources, but Perl, ASP, Java,
  Javascript, C and C++ and other utilities. They have scripts, tutorials
  and other resources.

• www.weberdev.com
  Another good resource site for scripts and tutorials. They will send
  you a newletter (e-mail) if you want.
• Javascript Source

  This site specializes in javascript code. It was one of the first
  I discovered, and I go by and visit often. Most of the scripts are
  posted in such a way that you can see them in action, and easily download
  the code, or have it emailed to you.

• DHTML Diner
  This section of a larger site (www.webreference.com) has a nice collection
  of tips, techniques and code for dhtml.

Previous Page

www.apache.org

“The Apache Software Foundation provides support for the Apache community of open-source software projects. The Apache projects are characterized by a collaborative, consensus based development process, an open and pragmatic software license, and a desire to create high quality software that leads the way in its field. We consider ourselves not simply a group of projects sharing a server, but rather a community of developers and users.” (from www.apache.org). Therefore, it seems quite in line with the collaborative spirit of the Vincentian Family that we use this software on our web server. Besides - it’s right at the top of the list for good webserver software.

www.mysql.com

“MySQL is the world’s most popular Open Source Database, designed for speed, power and precision in mission critical, heavy load use. MySQL AB is the company owned by the MySQL founders.” (from www.mysql.com).

I can’t verify or argue with this claim. We use MySQL (no license fee) successfully on the FAMVIN sites. It too comes in flavors for Unix and Windows systems.

www.phpnuke.org

Description (from the website): “PHP-Nuke is a Web Portal System, storytelling software, News system, online community or whatever you want to call it. The goal of PHP-Nuke is to have an automated web site to distribute news and articles with users system. Each user can submit comments to discuss the articles, just similar to Slashdot and many others. Main features include: web based admin, surveys, top page, access stats page with counter, user customizable box, themes manager for registered users, friendly administration GUI with graphic topic manager, option to edit or delete stories, option to delete comments, moderation system, Referers page to know who link us, sections manager, customizable HTML blocks, user and authors edit, an integrated Banners Ads system, search engine, backend/headlines generation (RSS/RDF format), and many, many more friendly functions. PHP-Nuke is written 100% in PHP and requires Apache Web server, PHP and a SQL (MySQL, mSQL, PostgreSQL, ODBC, ODBC_Adabas, Sybase or Interbase). Support for 25 languages, Yahoo like search engine, Comments option in Polls, lot of themes, Ephemerids manager, File Manager, Headlines, download manager, faq manager, advanced blocks systems, reviews system, newsletter, categorized articles, multilanguage content management and a lot more.”

www.php.net

What is PHP? (from the website)

“PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML.” As with Apache and MySQL, the documentation is available on-line. There are also tutorials available to help you learn to use this scripting language.

• Summary of Web Accessibility Standards
• Getting Started: Making a Web Site Accessible (this is from the WAI - Web Accessibility Initiative page - good stuf to know)
• QUICK TIPS TO MAKE ACCESSIBLE WEB SITES (from the www.w3.org website)
For Complete Guidelines & Checklist: www.w3.org/WAI