Help Needed With Charity Website Design

by 40 replies
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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
#website design #charity #design #needed #website
  • 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.
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    • 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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  • hello,
    hit me up, i can help you on your website design and others...free of charge
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  • 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.
  • 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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    • -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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    • 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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  • I work with a non-profit, also. We use PayPal for donations/membership payments.
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  • 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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    • WordPress is incredibly easy and you can integrate PayPal for donations quickly.
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  • 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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    • 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:
      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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  • You can PM me if you have any questions, I am really willing to help you
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  • 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?
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    • @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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  • 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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    • @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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  • 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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    • 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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  • 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
  • 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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  • Hi,

    I'm a pro copywriter. If you need help with your content, let me know. I'll do it free.
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  • 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.
  • 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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  • @ 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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  • 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.
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    • @JustinT- Yeah, like the thermit reaction.

      @kittyd 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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  • 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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    • Site Header Pro would solve that problem.
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  • 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.

    YouTube - Change a Joomla Template.mp4
    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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  • 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

    @ 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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    • 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!
  • 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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