Help Needed With Charity Website Design

40 replies
  • WEB DESIGN
  • |
Hi Everyone

My name is Justin and I'm extremely impressed with this forum! There's a wealth of information and some very smart people on this forum - I've already signed up as a war room member.

I am part of a registered charity called CORE (City Outreach & Empowerment). We work with homeless people and prostitutes living in London. We give them warm clothing, sleeping bags, food, drink and (perhaps most importantly) information about their entitlements and places where they can get help. We also have some limited housing in East London where we take people off the streets and help them to rebuild their lives.

My experience with website design, however, is very limited and I would love to learn this skill to improve CORE's website so that we can get our message out. Also, very tragically, we lost some potential corporate support last weekend because our website was simply not up to standard.

Are there any suggestions on what we could do to improve our website? You'll notice that we don't even have a page for donations.. how do most people make these?

Please visit our website if you get the chance and we would appreciate any comments, criticism or feedback.

www.CoreUK.org

Thank you so much for reading!
Justin
#charity #design #needed #website
  • Profile picture of the author LucindaWatrous
    I'm not too terribly familiar with Joomla. It's something I need to strengthen my skills on, but here are a few suggestions.

    Your header is too large. It would be better if users did not have to scroll down to see the message from the director.

    I love the colors, and the general idea of the website. Also a wonderful cause. I'll see what I can do to figure out how to help you get a donations page on there.
    Signature

    Lucinda Watrous--Freelance Writer and Web Designer
    http://lucindauncensored.com
    http://itsfoodtastic.com

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    • Profile picture of the author wardo
      Hi

      Your website needs a lot of work and Joomla is a fairly complex system. If you get in touch with me via 2scopedesign.co.uk I may be able to help you out free of charge.
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  • Profile picture of the author happy_benjie
    hello,
    hit me up, i can help you on your website design and others...free of charge
    Signature
    Affordable Quality Websites
    Manila Web Designs - beyond just designs
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  • Profile picture of the author JustinT
    Thank you for your advice Lucinda, I really appreciate it and I agree with you. The size of the header definitely needs to be reduced. We also need to make the message of the director easier to read.

    I too am unfamiliar with Joomla are there any other programs that you would recommend using instead?

    Thank you once again for your advice - I will contact our website creator so that we can implement those changes.
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  • Profile picture of the author JustinT
    Hi Wardo and Benjie

    Thank you so much for your replies!

    Again, I really appreciate all of your help - I will contact you both very shortly about our website.

    I will also contact our website creator and let her know that we need to change from joomla to something else!
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    • Profile picture of the author waitstate
      -Header too big.
      -Letter from director pretty unreadable
      -Fluid width: with my 16:9 screen the words spread out over the page; the lines are long and hard to read.
      -Low contrast: the grey-on-grey stuff is all very designery, but is difficult for some people to read. The text could be brightened up a little too.
      -The images at the top of the pages look a little silly/isolated
      -The colour scheme is possibly a little dark and evil for a charity.
      -Joomla!

      Wordpress would do the job better -particularly as regards SEO- and is much easier to update than Joomla.
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      • Profile picture of the author battery4laptop
        Originally Posted by waitstate View Post

        -Header too big.
        -Letter from director pretty unreadable
        -Fluid width: with my 16:9 screen the words spread out over the page; the lines are long and hard to read.
        -Low contrast: the grey-on-grey stuff is all very designery, but is difficult for some people to read. The text could be brightened up a little too.
        -The images at the top of the pages look a little silly/isolated
        -The colour scheme is possibly a little dark and evil for a charity.
        -Joomla!

        Wordpress would do the job better -particularly as regards SEO- and is much easier to update than Joomla.
        It's very useful.
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    • Profile picture of the author kittyd
      Originally Posted by JustinT View Post


      I will also contact our website creator and let her know that we need to change from joomla to something else!
      Don`t do it, please!

      Don`t get youself fooled by all people that only know how to use wordpress, and that is why the reccomend it over and over again.

      For a corporate site Joomla is a much more of a better choice than wordpress. WP is for BLOGS!

      i really like the color scheme & the logo. And i can also help you with the Joomla site if you ned it, but if you say you already have a webdesigner, don`t fire him. He did made the best choice using Joomla!
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  • Profile picture of the author Aronya
    I work with a non-profit, also. We use PayPal for donations/membership payments.
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  • Profile picture of the author JustinT
    Hi Waitstate

    Thanks for your feedback, that is exactly what we're looking for. I agree, the colour scheme is rather gloomy isn't it! We will definitely take all of that on board - it is really great to receive a fresh perspective on our website and thanks to your suggestions we will now be able to make it much better.

    Hi Aronya

    So you use paypal for your donations, awesome! Also, congratulations on your work with your charity - it's really good to hear that you've been able to set up a nice website. What cause does your charity support?
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  • Profile picture of the author JustinT
    Hi Lucinda

    Good to hear from you again! Awesome, I am looking up the paypal website to see how it works. It sounds like paypal would be the best place for us to start - ideally our aim is to have something like this:

    http://england.shelter.org.uk/donating

    Does anyone know what program that is?

    Hi KittyD

    Thank you for your feedback and your reply about Joomla! As you can tell, I don't really know much about the programs availible. It is really good (and relieving) to hear the pros of using joomla. Do you use Joomla a lot?

    Also, thanks for the positive comments about the colour scheme and logo

    Many thanks
    Justin

    ps don't worry, we won't fire our web designer! She has a very busy life yet she volunteered her time to create our page for us and we think she's done a marvellous job. We are very grateful for her work in setting up our website, we just need to "tweak" the page a bit and make it a little bit more corporate friendly.
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    • Profile picture of the author waitstate
      For a corporate site Joomla is a much more of a better choice than wordpress. WP is for BLOGS!
      I beg to differ with you there. Blogging has been totally optional for some time with wordpress, and it is the work of seconds to switch the blogging part off entirely (or re-purpose it to a 'news' page).

      The increasing popularity of WP has led to a flood of plugins and for some time now I would suggest that there is NOTHING you can do in Joomla that you can't in WP; probably in less time.

      WP scores over Joomla in (at least) 3 different ways:
      -It is excellent at getting itself indexed by search engines; particularly when you add in a (free) SEO plugin
      -There are more free plugins available for it (ie, there's less chance that a particular job will require a paid plugin)
      -Considerably easier to setup and use; both initially, and for the end customer; the learning curve is pretty shallow

      There is a paid WP solution to getting people's donations in regularly here:
      tipsandtricks-hqDOTcom/products
      (the $55 WP eMember Plugin + WP eStore Plugin pack). I expect there's a freebie solution somewhere, but I don't have time to look.
      EDIT:
      Don`t get youself fooled by all people that only know how to use wordpress, and that is why the reccomend it over and over again.
      I use WordPress because I design sites for a living and it's the way of achieving a desired result in the minimum time. If I need something off-piste, I'll use Drupal or custom-code it from scratch...but for most people's needs WP does the job with ease.
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      • Profile picture of the author kittyd
        Originally Posted by waitstate View Post

        I beg to differ with you there. Blogging has been totally optional for some time with wordpress, and it is the work of seconds to switch the blogging part off entirely (or re-purpose it to a 'news' page).
        You can switch the blogging off? Well, indeed, you add just pages. But they will still look like a blog post most of the time.

        Originally Posted by waitstate View Post

        The increasing popularity of WP has led to a flood of plugins and for some time now
        oh dear, you have no idea how many plugins, modules & components Joomla has. And somebody using it daily knows the best and the free what can do. And there are always enaugh to make you accomplis anything, freely

        Originally Posted by waitstate View Post

        I would suggest that there is NOTHING you can do in Joomla that you can't in WP; probably in less time.
        hmm, let`s see:
        -assign diferent menus to diferent pages
        -assign diferent templates to diferent pages
        -order the articles anyway you wish, not just by time posted
        -provide both front end and back end editing
        -placing any module or any menu or anytext anyway you wish, even in articles
        -and having more menus
        -full control over registration process using free plugins

        and i can go on and on..

        Originally Posted by waitstate View Post

        WP scores over Joomla in (at least) 3 different ways:
        -It is excellent at getting itself indexed by search engines; particularly when you add in a (free) SEO plugin
        joomla`s out of the box SEO does quite a fine job if you are paying attention to your alias & menus. I read an article some other day that took the words out of my mouth: its not the CMS that makes the SEO, is the webmaster. You can screw your SEO quite easy with WP too.

        besides, the only real reason WP gets higher scores as what google likes, it because most WP sites are BLOGS, and therefore their 1st page changes OFTEN according to each new post, and THAT is what Google likes, not wp or any other cms especially. and as a matter a fact, joomla can be set to have front page changed as often as WP.
        Not to mention that WP has more duplicate content links than Joomla

        Originally Posted by waitstate View Post

        -There are more free plugins available for it (ie, there's less chance that a particular job will require a paid plugin)
        you know there are more because you serached more for WP. I know there are more for Joomla because i searched more for Joomla. There are thousands on both sides, both free and paid, this is not a valid criteria for wp to win over Joomla

        Originally Posted by waitstate View Post

        -Considerably easier to setup and use; both initially, and for the end customer; the learning curve is pretty shallow
        both setups are step by step click through processes, bth require 1 database, whare is the diference?
        and joomla has more out of the box functionalities than WP

        as for the learning curve, well, indeed, this is what scares most of the poeple. Its nothing compared to drupal, and i learnt joomla faster than i learnt wordpress. this is subjective

        more, for the client, what easiers learning curve should be found than tell him to log in on site, click the edit buto from fron end, and editing the article is a WYSIWYG editor, never having to mess with the back end/administrator area?

        Originally Posted by waitstate View Post

        There is a paid WP solution to getting people's donations in regularly here:
        tipsandtricks-hqDOTcom/products
        (the $55 WP eMember Plugin + WP eStore Plugin pack). I expect there's a freebie solution somewhere, but I don't have time to look.
        Well, there are more free joomla plugins that do that too
        just take a look at how many are out there, most of them free: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensi...erce/donations

        Originally Posted by waitstate View Post

        I use WordPress because I design sites for a living and it's the way of achieving a desired result in the minimum time.
        Same here using Joomla

        So, actually, there is prety much nothing that WP can do and joomla can`t, while there are so many things joomla can while WP fails

        And both need 3rd party extensions to do absolutely everything.

        but WP is never easier than Joomla, joomla is LOGiC, WP is chaotic & random, according to each theme designer. Joomla works the same no matter what design you use.
        Also, when you change a theme in WP, you can loose alot of the site`s features. In Joomla that ain`t ever gonna happen.

        well, that would be my 2 cents. Is not a post against WP, it is a post pro Joomla.

        And from my experience, a person that never used WP nor Joomla ever, when you first give them both Admin Panels, one will find its way easier in Joomla than in WP. But ppl are descouraged to try ifst Joomla because it is "complex". but complex doesn`t not mean difficult, it means i can really do more & better things
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  • Profile picture of the author krikkod
    From a design perspective you could have done alot better.

    I look at the site and immediately i think whoever built it gave no real consideration to your charity.

    By that i mean there is no theme-ing, palette, composition or images which visually support what you're about.

    Whoever designed this for you should have known better, and no offense but whoever hired your designer should have put more time into their due diligence. If the web designer was hired on price though - well you got what you paid for.

    Cheap design is everywhere because everyone thinks they know photoshop.

    I know how to mow the lawn - should you then hire me to design your garden?
    Signature
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    • Profile picture of the author waitstate
      @kittyd- This is obviously turning into a religious argument and -much as I could use the post count boost, and fun as it would undoubtedly be- there isn't a lot of point continuing.

      The strength of Joomla and -conversely- the bit I find most irritating is you have to adjust every single element of it as the defaults seem to never be what I need. Pro Joomla, this means you have plenty of options for everything, so it does score over WP there. Anti Joomla, my experience is that you spend a lot of time adjusting and tweaking bits that you really shouldn't have to.
      And I personally find the setup very counterintuitive. I'm sure that if I had to use it all day so I knew where everything was "in the bone", so to speak, I'd like it more.

      For me, WP does the job for simpler sites; and that's what many of my clients want; simple fast and cheap. I can slap a custom theme on and upload the content into a WP straight out of the box and I know it'll do the job.

      @JustinT- Apologies for getting all religious in your thread. Let me know if I can help. I could probably knock up a more corporate Joomla theme for your site that you can slap over the top and change the look.
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  • Profile picture of the author kittyd
    i find no point in continuing either, this will be a neverending story, even though i still believe in Joomla being the winner

    just as you said "I'm sure that if I had to use it all day so I knew where everything was "in the bone", so to speak, I'd like it more", anyone who would dare step over WP & try it will end up liking it more...
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    • Profile picture of the author waitstate
      @kittyd- Notwithstanding your usually concise, sometimes coherent and occasionally convincing arguments; the fact remains that research has shown that Joomla smells of poo. So nyer, nyer, nyer.

      @JustinT-I've attached a Joomla theme for your site. If your site been done properly -ie, content and theme totally separated- You should just be able to slap this over the top and instantly have a more corporate (and still melancholy) look. That letter from the Director has to go though....that 'parchment and handwriting' thing only really works for single paragraphs and quotes, as you need the writing to be much bigger than it is on your site. If you don't like the theme, or part of it doesn't work for you; just switch it back. Totally reversible.
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  • Profile picture of the author JustinT
    Hi Everyone

    I hope you're all well and thanks for your posts! I think I have learnt a lot more about web design, joomla and WP over the last three days than I could imagine - I almost sound like a pro when I talk to people

    Also, don't worry about getting "religious" and all - for someone like me who doesn't know the difference between the two, it's actually very interesting! I'm actually really glad that I've been able to get both sides points of view because at the end of the day, we'll still need to decide which is best for CORE - whether we should stick with joomla or change over to WP.

    @justcrowd: thank you for your kind offer, i have just sent you a pm

    @krikkod: thanks for your feedback about our website, it's good to know where we are going wrong and we will definitely take it all on board and make our new website more suitable

    @kittyd: thanks for explaining joomla and thanks for the joomla donation plugins website! that is awesome, i'm looking at the "joom donation" product right now and it looks good - i know that we can put this on the site.

    @waitstate: thank you so much for your joomla theme for our website! wow! that is awesome, i'm going to forward that on to our web person so that she can open it up and take a look at it - i'm really excited! and again, no worries about turning the thread into a "religious argument" it's been very educational for me.
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    • Profile picture of the author waitstate
      No problem. I have saved the working file, so can easily make tweaks and changes. Or generate a new one if you don't like the colours or something like that. There's a contact form on the site listed in my signature if you need to get hold of me.
      +1 for hostgator; also justhost, hostmonster, bluehost, fatcow all seem to be getting reasonable reviews at the moment. Not Godaddy though.
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      • Profile picture of the author kittyd
        don`t go to justhost. I`m there and i don`t like it

        @kittyd- Notwithstanding your usually concise, sometimes coherent and occasionally convincing arguments; the fact remains that research has shown that Joomla smells of poo. So nyer, nyer, nyer.
        waitstate, if your aim was to make me dizzy, you have succeded! Congrats! I would have apreciate more if you would have actually had any contra-arguments to mine, then just the "labels" you had aplied to them.

        But if you`ll show me a scientific valid research with the right sized focus group & pattern, that will prove to me that Joomla actually "smells", i`ll bow before you

        P.S. My time for a meany comment: LOOOL, you make templates with Artisteeer!!!! ROTFLMAO
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        • Profile picture of the author waitstate
          Sorry JustinT, I can't send PMs yet, so: It's a template; so you just unzip all the files; upload the whole folder-full to the /templates/ directory on your webhost and select the theme in the admin panel in Joomla. Then if you don't like it, select the one you have now again.

          LOOOL, you make templates with Artisteeer!!!! ROTFLMAO
          Don't care. It works & it's quick. Made you look.

          EDIT: Early indications on the scientific enquiry would seem to point to you getting your kneepads on.
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          • Profile picture of the author kittyd
            Originally Posted by waitstate View Post


            Don't care. It works & it's quick. Made you look.
            You should care. It works but has broken code. It`s quick but it`s so limited. Of course i looked, i don`t believe in curiosity killing cats...

            Originally Posted by waitstate View Post

            EDIT: Early indications on the scientific enquiry would seem to point to you getting your kneepads on.
            it`s irrelevant for the world and its a known fact that non-geek IM`ers know only WP... However, i`ll prepare the kneepads for whenever the number of poll respondants reaches 1200 ppl, that is the minimum accepted as relevant polls
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            • Profile picture of the author waitstate
              Quote:Originally Posted by waitstate

              Don't care. It works & it's quick. Made you look.

              You should care. It works but has broken code. It`s quick but it`s so limited. Of course i looked, i don`t believe in curiosity killing cats...
              Really? It's always worked fine for me. As is always the case with software there's been some wobbly bits when new features/releases have been added; but they've always been attended to reasonably quickly. Also as always, if a bit is broken someone pops up on the forums to moan about it and you just avoid that feature or correct it if needed.
              Quote:Originally Posted by waitstate
              EDIT: Early indications on the scientific enquiry would seem to point to you getting your kneepads on.

              it`s irrelevant for the world and its a known fact that non-geek IM`ers know only WP... However, i`ll prepare the kneepads for whenever the number of poll respondants reaches 1200 ppl, that is the minimum accepted as relevant polls
              So you're essentially saying that people who disagree with you are thick? Given that this is a forum for internet marketers -a field where the internet and toys therein are used as tools for a specific purpose (extracting cash)- I would venture to suggest that technical competence and knowledge of the subject at hand is likely to be higher than average here and opinions correspondingly slightly better informed on average. Especially as it's the webdesign forum...a focussing of those skills if you like.
              And where did 1200 people come from? It's unreasonable to start setting conditions just because you're looooooooosing! The poll is perfectly fair and the question is phrased neutrally. All scientific so far. A small sample is still a sample and as such valid. I can therefore make the following 100% true statement:

              In a survey taken by members of a technically literate community; of those who could be arsed to click the form, 80% have so far voted that Joomla smells of poo.

              Actually being properly scientific and eliminating votes that have a vested interest in the outcome (you & me) would bring the Joomla smells of poo vote to 100%. But as our votes cancel each other out, I thought I'd be nice for once and let you have that.

              Kneepad time!
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              • Profile picture of the author kittyd
                Originally Posted by waitstate View Post

                The poll is perfectly fair and the question is phrased neutrally.
                i`m to lazy to answer to all that, but to the little pharse in the quote i will. The phrase is not phrased neutrally, because it contains the negative connotation within itself related to the subject. Neutrally would have been: which smells like poo: joomla or wp. 1200 ppl is a proper focus group for extremely large comunities like this one. Go Google! I might be loosing according to your poor, uneven & flawn standards though, indeed... but i`m never gonna accept those as my standards

                i don`t say ppl not agreeing with me are thick, i`m saying you are. and i do truly believe that many (not all, some are stunning) of the WP sites used by IM`ers are just cheap & esthetically "challenged", even if they do make money.

                so just go away and leave this little topic alone, post your replies in your poll topic if you wish, but you might be speaking alone overe there...
                just go learn to make some templates withouth Artisteer, cheap & broken solutions got the world in crisis in the first place... shoo!
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  • Profile picture of the author JustinT
    Hi Everyone,

    One quick question, we are looking for a new webhost - under our current arrangement we are using someone elses hosting which means that it is hard for us to edit our website due to sharing of login details etc.

    Which host would you recommend? Hostgator?

    Thanks again!
    Justin
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  • Profile picture of the author JKing
    Wow!

    I was going to recommend Dr. Andy Williams' free client side website builder:

    SEO Website Builder at seo-website-builder.com.

    But I think that is all I'm going to add.

    Running off with tail between my legs.

    Ha ha ha ha!

    It was a real treat reading all of this.

    So has anyone checked out the new WordPress "Thelonius" yet?

    Best regards,

    JK
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    Turbo Flex Pro Theme Master - Turn Single Templates and Webpages Into Complete WordPress Blogs!
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  • Profile picture of the author Zentech
    Hi,

    I'm a pro copywriter. If you need help with your content, let me know. I'll do it free.
    Signature
    * Stupid Offer: Killer Sales Letters ***$897*** Just For Warriors. Ethical Clients & Legit Products Only. *
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  • Profile picture of the author JustinT
    Hi Everyone

    Thanks again for all of your posts - the response to this thread has been staggering! I am extremely grateful for all of your posts and the offers for help that we've been receiving.

    This just started off as an idea on Sunday and has really picked up momentum very quickly. I am going to have a meeting with our Director today to sort out our hosting issues and iron out a few other issues.

    During a phone call with him yesterday, he mentioned that he would like to add a page where people interested in volunteering for our outreaches could fill out an online form that then sends their details to a database so that we can contact them - are there any suggestions on how to make one of these?

    @waitstate and kittyd: you guys have such an amazing chemistry! jk

    @JKing: wow, that's a very interesting website and very relevant to our cause. I think it will be important for us to work on our search engine rankings - thanks for lettings us know about that.

    @Zentech: that would be wonderful! thank you for your kind offer. I'm reading your website right now and I've got to say that I'm really impressed with what I am reading - we definitely need help with our content.
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  • Profile picture of the author Technista
    Hi JustinT,

    First let me say that the charity work you are doing is awesome. It's wonderful to see how much people are ready to give to support a worthy cause. So glad to be a part of this great forum.

    Regarding online forms, there are modules for Joomla! that can be configured for your needs. Ask your designer to install one for you. There are plenty to choose from in the Joomla! Extensions Directory:

    Forms - Joomla! Extensions Directory

    I wish you all the best in your endeavors. Do keep us current on the progress of your site!

    T
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  • Profile picture of the author kittyd
    @ Justin - for that database submissions, i have RS form, and stunning joomla form creation component that will both delive to a database & also through email... It`s not free but i have unlimited licence bought, can give you one

    also... i`m a girl
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  • Profile picture of the author Zentech
    Hi Justin,

    This is a great charity. The work you're doing is incredibly important, and too few people are doing it. With that in mind, let me give you some preliminary ideas and impressions.

    The letter-style image with text on your homepage is attractive, but the font is awfully small. It's also not terribly easy to read. I understand that you're going for the "personal" sort of touch, and that's cool, but eyestrain isn't cool and will put visitors off.

    The copy on the home page is pretty decent, but there are some grammatical problems, and you need to double-space-between paragraphs to avoid creating the "wall of text" impression. Some subheadings to break it up would help as well. If you want, I'll rewrite this section for you.

    The same is true for your other pages. The fonts are too small and they also need to be spiced up with some subheadings. I'll go ahead and re-do them in the next few days and PM you the updated text.

    I'm also going to be thinking of ideas for new pages that could help you "sell" the concept of helping the homeless.
    Signature
    * Stupid Offer: Killer Sales Letters ***$897*** Just For Warriors. Ethical Clients & Legit Products Only. *
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    • Profile picture of the author waitstate
      @JustinT- Yeah, like the thermit reaction.

      @kittyd
      Artisteer, cheap & broken solutions
      I've been using it all year with Wordpress, Drupal and (when clients insist) Joomla and I have yet to see it give me a problem or be less that 100% W3C compliant. Nope, tell a lie, I have had to redo a couple done with older versions as the 'backward compatibility mode' for opening the working files isn't all that.
      If there is a genuine problem that you know about then I would be grateful if you were to enlighten me as I would have some fixin' to do.
      If you're just recycling someone's opinion without any testing yourself then I still had to make this post as I'd hate to see a company lose sales because someone is spreading uninformed poison.

      To counter your earlier offer, I will bow before you if you can prove it.

      And to reply to your aesthetics point- to an extent, I agree. Artisteer only (currently) does variations on the Kubrik theme. And there's a little more variety to be had by slicing and dicing the code afterwards; but at the end of the day a template made with Artisteer is recognisably that. But it's good enough in many cases; saves a colossal amount of time and doesn't look that bad. The timesaving is the important bit- if you're an IM-er looking to build hundreds of sites to milk Adsense or if (like me) you do bespoke websites, time saved = profit. The vast majority of my clients want it fast, shiny and delivered yesterday. "Good enough" can be delivered cheaply and on time; and that's what most people want. It's all a compromise. You can also overdesign a site so it's so lovely that it distracts from your message. Anyway, aesthetics is in the eye of the beholder. For me it's all about results achieved in a certain time...to do it any other way would be silly.

      ...which segues me smoothly back to the Wordpress v. Joomla thing. Time. For me, Wordpress is pretty well always the better option of the two because it's faster and more easily explained to clients. It's nothing to do with the fact that I can't use Joomla...I've used both and WP is usually the tool of choice because it works better for me. I'm sure there is a theoretical situation where Joomla would be the best option; but what I've encountered to date is either simple sites that WP can handle or complex sites that neither WP nor Joomla could cope with so it's time to fire up Drupal.
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  • Profile picture of the author turntwo21
    Right now you have the homepage text embedded as an image. Sure it looks great, but remember...

    search engines can't read images.

    This will kill you in Google, Yahoo!, etc....
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    • Profile picture of the author JKing
      Originally Posted by turntwo21 View Post

      Right now you have the homepage text embedded as an image. Sure it looks great, but remember...

      search engines can't read images.

      This will kill you in Google, Yahoo!, etc....
      Site Header Pro would solve that problem.
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      Turbo Flex Pro Theme Master - Turn Single Templates and Webpages Into Complete WordPress Blogs!
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  • Profile picture of the author Justin Wheeler
    Greetings to a fellow Justin from my home city! Anyway just a brief comment on the Joomla vs Wordpress debate. Both are great. I would however agree that Wordpress has a shorter learning curve.

    Im not convinced that Wordpress is much better than Joomla for SEO and indeed a new site I am in the process of launching on Joomla got indexed just as fast as any Wordpress site I create.

    Joomla is definitely more sophisticated than Wordpress in many ways which is why I choose it for some sites and design in both.

    I would agree with Kitty that Joomla is better than Wordpress in many ways for many of the reasons she states and indeed I cannot think of a single large corporate entity using Wordpress but can think of several using Joomla.

    All that being said Wordpress is quite possibly a better option for the coreuk site than for Joomla as I suspect that it won't need much of the additional functionality that Joomla can provide. There again it is already created now and if you change the template to the one that waitstait provided it will make a huge difference to how the site looks so you are possibly better off stickng with what you have.

    It really is incredibly simple to change the template for a Joomla site and I recorded a quick video for you to try it out.


    With regards to hosting I use Bluehost mainly and have done for years. I think they are fantastic and one of the big pluses from my point of view is that they have a 24 hour a day voice and instant text chat support system which is great for clients once I have finished a site. If you wanted to buy it would be happy to donate back to Core Uk the affiliate commission they paid me, alternatively you may find some happy warrior who has a Hostgator reseller account that might be happy to donate you hosting.
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    I sell my own products and training via www.marketerspassport.com
    I review products and offer bonuses at www.wantabonus.com
    I blog personally, infrequently and a little randomly at www.justinwheeler.net
    And I run a Web Development and Social Media Consultancy at www.vashonmedia.com
    Look forward to knowing you... Drop by on Facebook
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  • Profile picture of the author JustinT
    Hi Everyone

    Wow, a big thank you for all of your posts over the weekend! Thanks also for all of the information for getting form templates to get people’s details. We have just got the all clear to get our own hosting which I will organise this week – I will get our webmaster to copy our existing site and email addresses over to the new hosting place.

    Ok, here are my quick replies to everyone who’s posted – I’m sorry for being brief but please know that we really really do value all of your input!

    @ technista: thanks for sending that link to all of the free joomla forms! I will send them to our webmaster and have her take a look at which ones will be suitable.

    @ kittyd: wow, that’s so generous of you to offer us a free licence for your joomla forms! when we organise our new hosting and get access to our website, we will start making some changes

    ps i thought you were a girl J

    @ zentech: yeah, I totally agree with you, we do need to work on our font and text to make it more user friendly.. and yes! that would be great if you could re-write our copy.. “add the bomb” we would love that! thanks so much!

    @ waitstate: haha that’s right

    @ turntwo21: that’s exactly right, it will be the first thing that we change – i’ve told our director about this he’s already given the go ahead to change the letter into proper text

    @ jking: thanks for your suggestion! i’ll take a look into Site Header Pro however (as you can probably tell) given the feedback from everyone else, we’ll be changing the director’s letter into text.

    @justinw: another londoner called justin! that is wicked man! thanks for your video, it was really very helpful and for your advice regarding joomla. Also, thanks for your advice with hosting and offer to donate your affiliate commission, that’s so generous of you. At the moment we are looking at dreamhost, hostgator and bluehost – we will let you know if we decide to go with blue host and get your affiliate link.
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    • Profile picture of the author JKing
      Originally Posted by JustinT View Post

      @ jking: thanks for your suggestion! i’ll take a look into Site Header Pro however (as you can probably tell) given the feedback from everyone else, we’ll be changing the director’s letter into text.
      That is why I suggested Site Header Pro. It produces search engine readable headers and content while still using all the images and layout that you want.

      Basically the same as you have it now, but search engine readable for the search engine spiders to index.

      If you are interested, let me know and I will give it to you as a donation toward your cause.

      I can do that because I am the software auther and owner of Site Header Pro.

      Site Header Pro Website Header Builder Software!
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      Turbo Flex Pro Theme Master - Turn Single Templates and Webpages Into Complete WordPress Blogs!
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  • Profile picture of the author ninal
    I agree with waitstate's list. I think you will have to prioritize making your header smaller so that part of the content will appear above the fold. You may want to consider a fixed-width layout or at least indicate a max-width so the content doesn't stretch on wider screens. The text becomes very hard to read when it's stretching too far. Maybe have the navigation on top or on the left side for easier navigation? Pictures of people,activities,volunteers may also help, most charity sites are very visual in nature.
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