In part one of this 2-part series, I talked about the problems with many nonprofit websites that are driving potential donors away. In the second post, I’m going to give you 5 changes you can make to your website to increase your online donor conversions.
5 Minor Changes You Can Do Today
1) Strengthen your Call to Action
The last thing you want is for a visitor to come to your website looking for a way to get involved and not being able to find the information. Your site needs a clear call to action that asks visitors to become members, donate, or register for an event.
Make it as simple as possible for your visitors to convert into supporters on your website. Identify the actions your site visitors take on most often and least often. Then, log out of your site and go through each of those actions from a visitor’s perspective.
As you go through the sign-up process, ask yourself, “How easy is it and how long does it take you to complete a transaction?”, to help you figure out how you could make the process better
Test both the most and least popular actions and then compare the experiences. Sometimes, this activity reveals ways that some actions are complicated and time consuming for visitors and that’s driving potential donors away.
3) Move Your Email Newsletter Sign-up Above the Fold
“Above the Fold” is a term for the portion of a web page that you have to scroll down to view. Think of “the fold” as ending about where you might fold down your laptop screen.
According to another study by Jakob Nielsen, content below the fold is only viewed by about 20% of your total site’s visitors. This means that any content you place below the fold is only going to be seen by 1/5th of your visitors. Important items you want to have above the fold include: your email newsletter sign-up form, a clear call to action, a strong headline and links to find out more about your organization.
4) Give Donors What They Want
The Children’s Museum of Houston Gives Visitors 1-Click Access to Information.
Donors want to know more about your nonprofit before they donate. They also prefer to go online to research information about your organization themselves before making a decision to support your mission
Donors want information that communicates what your organization does, how you spend donations and who you have helped.
If you also have memberships, then you want to also consider that new members want to know about member benefits, costs, and find out about programs and events you have for your members.
Learn more about creating engaging content for your website in the presentation Writing for the Web by Katrina Esco, Account Executive on Schipul’s Creative Services team.
5) Use Digital Media to Create Compelling Stories
You know you should use storytelling to share your NonProfit’s Mission and Vision to attract new donors. Crafting great stories can be a challenge. Take photos and videos from your events, of your volunteers and staff, and of the people you’ve helped.
For example let’s look at the homepage for Camp For All, a camp program for kids with a variety of different health problems:
The Camp has a photo of a kid swimming on their homepage and just look at how happy this kid is. This photo shows new visitors that Camp For All is making a difference in children’s lives and that’s far more powerful than if Camp For All had used text to say the same thing.
Tendenci websites include all the tools your nonprofit organization needs to create a website that will attract donors, volunteers and members and make it easy for them to get involved.
According to a study published in the NonProfit Trends, 34.8% of last year’s online donations occurred after October, November and December. For most nonprofit organizations, the Holiday Season are when you generate the majority of your annual online revenue from donations, holiday gala fundraisers, and membership renewals coming due.
Is Your Website Ready for the Holiday Rush?
If your nonprofit’s online fundraising isn’t performing as well as you’d like, you aren’t alone. A recent Usability Study of nonprofit websites found that it is 7% harder, on average, for someone to make a donation than it is for them to make an e-commerce purchase.
In this two part blog post, I’m going to share the research on which elements are frustrating and driving away potential donors who come to your site and can’t find what they were looking for. The second post will give you 5 minor changes you can quickly make that will get your website ready well to attract new donors just in time for the holidays.
Nonprofit Site User Experience is Falling Behind
Over half of all NonProfit Websites have missing or outdated content.
The usability study, led by noted web usabilty expert Jakob Nielsen, tested common activities that a visitor to a nonprofit website might do and found some surprising results:
Making first-time and repeat monetary donations on nonprofit websites – on average, online donations tooks 7% longer than a typical e-commerce site’s shopping cart check-out. 17% of the nonprofit websites made it extremely difficult for visitors to even find the online donation option.
Donating tangible items like furniture, canned foods, and used clothing online – this received the lowest user experience rating of all the tested activities and in nearly all cases, site visitors went to multiple nonprofit websites before finally finding an organization with clear and complete information on how to go about donating.
Researching how to volunteer online – communicating Volunteer information was the one thing most nonprofit websites are getting right. The study gave this the highest user satisfaction ranking and reported that the one item most nonprofits forget on the volunteer pages is way to contact the organization.
Researching nonprofits on Facebook – the study found that people don’t like to donate on Facebook and that visitors except a nonprofit’s website to have far more content than your Facebook page does. The report explains that potential donors go to a nonprofit’s Facebook page to read the stories of the people who benefit from the nonprofit’s work.
The study showed that over 53% of the nonprofit websites had missing and outdated content and 47% of the websites were not designed to be intuitive and user-friendly. The report states that you could increase your online donations by 10% or more just by making some minor changes to your site’s usability and improving your content.
A 10% increase is almost $14,000 if you fall within the median online revenue earned from first time gifts*.
*The average online revenue earned from first time gifts in 2011 was about $136,625 according to Nonprofit Marketing Guide *
If your nonprofit site is chasing new donors away, this means you’re missing out on thousands of dollars in online donations.
Is Your Website a Donor Magnet?
If your nonprofit organization’s website is one of the roughly 50% that is unknowingly chasing off site visitors, then we’re going to fix that starting right now. You can use the study’s recommended best usability practices with your Tendenci website to give your site visitors a great online experience and increase your donations, memberships, and volunteer applications.
The key is to have content on your site that potential donors are looking for that is easy for visitors to find and tells the visitors how to donate and why they want to donate to your organization.
Crafting the elements within your site that will attract new donors requires time, research, and lots of creativity!
In Part Two of this series, I’ll give you 5 seemingly minor things that you can change on your site that will increase your online fundraising efforts and get you ready for the holiday fundraising rush.
Last week, I attended SURGE Day 2012, a day-long graduation celebration for 10 new Technology Start-ups that just graduated from the SURGE Accelerator incubator program.
Jason Dorsey, noted author of “My Reality Check Bounced” and expert on communicating across generations, was the morning keynote speaker. Jason shared his advice on how to gain a better perspective on how each of the other generations view the world.
Jason Dorsey, Keynote Speaker at SURGE Day 2012
StartUps and NonProfits
I often think that startups and nonprofits have a lot in common. In both cases, the founders are incredibly passionate about their ideas and missions, incredibly overworked, and spend a lot of time asking people to give them money for their organization.
At the heart of both startups and nonprofits, funding and passion are the keys to success.
As Jason talked about the best ways managers and executives in older generations could support and get along with the younger Gen Y crowd, I saw correlations beyond just the workplace.
A recent study by the Kauffman Foundation shared that more than 54% of Gen Y’s are either already entrepreneurs or plan to start their own company and one thing Gen Y definitely has in abundance is passion!
Gen Y’s Spending Power Now and in the Future
On the other hand, most Gen Y’s don’t have an abundance of money – something that’s been true for all generations when they’re still in their 20’s. Gen Y startups often seek outside funding from angel investors and VCs before seeking to bootstrap their ideas. As Jason explained this trait: “Most Gen Y’s are willing to take a substantial paycut just to get their idea off the ground – after all, their parents are still supporting them.”
Gen Y’s Catching Up Fast
Jason Dorsey’s company, The Center for Generational Kinetics has done a number of studies across generations to identify the key traits that distinguish each generation from the others. Gen Y is the fastest growing demographic in the energy, software, and marketplace and by 2017, Gen Y will be outspending Baby Boomers.
Until now, no other generation has matched Boomer spending. Boomer spending accounts for 94% of spending on consumer packaged goods, 80% of luxury travel spending, 62.5% of annual new car sales, and they even account for the majority of online spending according to a report by boomer marketing expert Nancy Padberg
Gen Y is going to have a significant economic impact in the U.S. in the coming years. There are some absolutely great tips on Jason’s blog “What the Gen” about Gen Y’s consumer purchasing habits and I encourage anyone selling something to check out the blog.
Capture Gen Y’s Attention
The key to reaching Gen Y’s to grab their attention and motivate them to spend money with your organization is to communicate with them in their space. Jason Dorsey shared Gen Y’s most preferred ways to communicate:
Gen Y’s most preferred method of communicating is text messaging
Gen Y’s 2nd most preferred method of communicating is email
Gen Y’s LEAST preferred method of communication is talking on the phone
A really interesting fact about the my generation is that 51% of Gen Y’s are more likely to trust the opinions of a stranger who shares a review on a social media network than if their friends and family verbally make a suggestion. This is a significant difference from other generations, who tend to be more skeptical of the people they run into on the Web.
Generation Y trusts technology more than previous generations, and we trust the people who are using technology the same way that we are more than past generations would. Organizations that recognize this and customize their messages to Gen Y differently from their other constituents and donors will see better results from the next generation.
Here’s 5 Tips to Increase Donations from Gen Y
Capture Gen Y’s Attention and Their Passion for Your NonProfit
Even though NonProfit organizations aren’t specifically selling something, you are asking for money in exchange for the benefits you offer your donors and members. Give your fundraising a boost by using these tips to talk to Gen Y’s in their language this year.
1) Keep Donation Amounts Small and Flexible
Gen Y is cash-poor and we aren’t known to save money typically. A donation of even $50 is daunting to Gen Y’s so offer smaller donation amounts. You can also include a “Suggest a Donation” field and let us decide how much we want to give.
That’s one of the reasons that we included the option to allow your donors to suggest the payment amount on Custom donation forms in Tendenci.
2) Accept Credit Card Donations on Your Website
Most Gen Y’s have credit cards and a debit card. Most of us do not have a check handy and we really aren’t fans of having to pay with cash. Make it simple for us to give you money when we are ready and accept online donations via credit cards. The easier you make it for us to donate, the more likely we are to do so.
3) Share Your NonProfit’s Stories on Social Media
Studies show that people don’t like to go to their Facebook Wall or Twitter feed and see organizations asking them to donate. The most successful social media campaigns for nonprofits revolve around storytelling and sharing what you are doing to make the world a better place. Use your social media channels to highlight the kids you fed, the puppies you rescued, and the people who have a better life now because of your work.
Then, make it easy for them to find your website so they can donate and support your cause. Once they’ve donated, let your Gen Y supporter tweet or +1 or “Like” your organization and share that they donated to their network. Talk about others, and let others talk about you for greater results.
4) Don’t call Gen Y’s – Use Text and Email
Remember Jason Dorsey’s report saying Gen Y’s preferred text messaging, followed by email for communicating and save the personal phone calls for your boomer supporters. You’ll need to get permission before you text and email, and then you’ll have a far better chance of getting your message through to Gen Y’s.
In fact- give them a way to donate via text like Mobile Loaves and Fishes did in their campaign to fight homelessness.
5) Give Gen Y’s Non-Monetary Ways to Donate
Gen Y’s often just don’t have the financial resources to give money to a cause. Many of us are still finding our talents and way in life and if you believe one of your Gen Y supporters has skills that could help your organization, ask them to volunteer. We are always surprised and honored by requests to help and our time is something we usually have more of to give than our cash.
Gen Y’s are also more familiar with technology and can help with your email marketing, website, social media, and with text messaging. NonProfits often struggle to find the resources and funds to manage their technology, so find some Gen Y’s who are passionate about your cause and ask if they’ll donate tech and web support!
Tendenci Announcements
We have some exciting things happening over here. First, come check out this past week’s software updates for Version 5.0.78 and find out the latest features and functionality added to make it easier for you to manage your website.
Here’s the highlights from this week’s updates:
1) Sortable Fields for Reports – Reports now have sort options using the field headers.
2) Tendenci first will check if an email address is associated with an existing user before it creates a username using the available email address during a membership import
3) WYSIWYG Rich Text Editors have been added for Organizer, Location, and Speakers on the Event Add form
New Summer Training and Events
We are adding several new training webinars, workshops, and events to our Tendenci Training Calendar. We are always looking for suggestions so if you don’t see a topic on the calendar, leave a comment below or contact us with your suggestions!
The software technology industry is on constantly changing. Our application developers and programmers for the Tendenci CMS platform are always seeking innovative and more advanced ways to make your websites better for you to use.
Change, in our business, is necessary to stay competitive and provide a valuable product that people want to pay for. We realize that when we make changes with Tendenci, we are making changes in your website.
Change is Hard
This week, I had the opportunity to attend an Inc. Magazine Business Building Breakfast featuring keynote speaker Dan Heath, co-author of Switch. Switch is a book about how to make Change easier for yourself and your organization.
Dan describes the two different systems that control what a person does, like a rider on an elephant:
The “Rider” is Rational, Conscious, Deliberative
The “Elephant” is Emotional, Unconscious, Automatic
Using an analogy from The Happiness Hypothesis, by Jonathan Haidt, Switch explains that each of us has these two different systems fighting each other inside – and it isn’t a fair fight. The Elephant in us often is more powerful and much bigger than the Rider.
Whereas your Rider-side may tell you that you need to pay attention in your meeting at work, for example, the elephant-side will be telling you to “keep playing angry birds”.
Dan also points out our Elephant-side also has enormous strengths – our passion, curiosity, and that voice inside our heads that sometimes wonders “wouldn’t it be cool if…?”
Dan wrote the book with his brother, Chip Heath, and they share the 3 surprises about change we need to know before we can lead others to embrace Change joyfully. I am looking forward to reading the book and want to just leap ahead a moment and tell you the 3 surprises of Change that Dan told us in his presentation:
1) Direct the Rider
This is where you determine what it is you want to accomplish and break it down into single, actionable items that you can do as part of a series. Instead of telling your team to go out and raise $100,000 in donations, give them one task that they can do to move towards your fundraising goals like call 10 people from the donor list everyday this week and ask them to donate.
2) Motivate the Elephant
The Elephant in us can be strong-willed and you need to motivate your Elephant towards adopting the change as well. A classic mistake I know I make all the time is thinking that giving people more information will motivate them to change. Dan explained this is not the case and that what motivates people to change, truly, is to See something that makes you Feel something and only then are you motivated to Change. People make changes based on emotions, not reason.
3) Shape the Path
The third part is where you look for ways to make it easier to Change. Give more specific directions, consider the environment and ask yourself and your staff what you can do better to make the path to Change easier. It’s also important to accept that people will fail when they first try something new and we should think more like parents when our child is learning to walk and encourage them to pick themselves up after each stumble.
How Can We Make Change Easier for You?
As I mentioned at the beginning, Tendenci is software and we are always updating it, making changes to the code and your user interface. We want to find out your ideas and suggestions on how we can make managing your website easier for you and your organization’s staff, volunteers, and members.
Our ultimate goal is to make innovative website software that’s really fun to use. Tell us how you’d like to see us change Tendenci.
Change is Fun
We are Updating Tendenci’s Brand Image
The Tendenci blog has been updated with our new colors. If you’ve been by Tendenci.org then you’ll have seen the new logo and we have been sprinkling other content with the new look as we’ve been moving forward – for example Tendenci Admin Navigation menu bars turned blue a couple of weeks ago.
Most of these are cosmetic changes to our own website and marketing material and really won’t affect your Tendenci websites and day-to-day workflows.
Some of the changes, like when we changed the Admin Nav menu from maroon to blue, will affect your website. We hope you like the changes and for the most part, we make them based on our clients’ feedback and requests.
You Can Help Make Changes
We are planning on redesigning Tendenci’s Dashboard to provide more useful functionality and access to help files and reporting tools. This is something we’ve planned since early in the development of Tendenci version 5.0.
We are looking for your feedback on how we can make your Tendenci dashboard more useful. Tell us what you’d like to see in your site Dashboard and help us make some changes!
Some Recent Changes to Tendenci
Here are just a few of the changes we’ve made to all Tendenci websites in the past month. You can view all of our weekly updates in Tendenci’s Software Updates articles.
Tendenci weekly software updates will now go out on Tuesdays, instead of Thursdays.
Anonymous site visitors can now apply for corporate memberships without requiring account registration first.
Individual Membership Exports now include Financials on Membership Dues Paid, Balance Owed, and the Invoice ID number.
We’ve made several updates to the memberships module based on your feedback.
Site-wide searches now display active content on your website before expired content.
Really Big Changes We’ve Got Planned This Year
We have big ideas and we’re making big changes to make your experience setting up and using your website better. Here are a few really exciting changes you can expect to see coming to your Tendenci website throughout the year:
We’re going to change how Tendenci manages permissions settings at a People/User- level to make it easier for Site Admins to control and set-up access to site content and settings for your staff, members, and site users.
We’ll be adding new theme options for Tendenci websites to give you additional options to change the design and colors of your website.
We’ll be releasing more plugins that you’ll be able to opt to install on your site like we just did with the Videos plugin.
We’ll be adding additional documentation for Developers, Designers, and Interactive Agencies to support and grow our brand new open source community.
Tell us what you think! Share your comments below or contact us with your questions.
We’ve all heard the saying “A picture is worth a thousand words”, and this couldn’t be more applicable when we are talking about your nonprofit organization’s website.
Visual storytelling is key to engaging your donors, members, and community online. Last week, I wrote about how to use online video to tell your organization’s story. This week I want to talk about how to use Photographs and Tendenci’s Photo Album module to share your organization’s stories and events and engage with your online audience more effectively.
Photographs Say the Most Awesome Things!
Photos help you share your organization’s stories, people and mission. Your photos also make your website more visually appealing to new visitors. Here are some great ways to use a photograph to say something awesome about your nonprofit and examples of how some of our nonprofit clients are using their Tendenci Photo Album module.
Photos Convey the Human Perspective of Your Mission
Flip through the photos on the Houston Art Car Parade website where they show off their incredible art cars and, more importantly, how the organization introduces you to the people behind the automotive works of art.
Photos Introduce and Promote the People at Your Organization
Your staff, volunteers and Board members do so much and you can show your appreciation using photo albums to showcase their hard work and efforts. You’ll not only make your biggest supporters feel appreciated – you’ll also increase your online donations since studies show that potential Donors are more inclined to give if they can see what your nonprofit’s team is doing relevant to spending donations that effectively advance your mission.
See how the Children’s Assessment Center showcases their volunteers for their Christmas Toy Drive using Photo Albums.
Photos from Your Past Events Increase Registration for Your Upcoming Events
When you post photos from past event that show your members, sponsors, supporters, donors, and staff having a great time – you are showing new site visitors what they have been missing. This will increase attendance at future events.
Check out ThinkLA’s Event Photos as an example of promoting future event registration using past event photos!
Photos Show-Off Your Capabilities
Photos can be used to show what your organization is capable of and what your facilities are like to build trust and increase the chances that a new visitor will become a fan, participant, and donor. For example, Camp For All’s photo tourof their camp facilities shows parents and their children what they can expect during one of their camp programs and this increases both camp registrations plus support from donors.
Photos Bring More Press
The Media needs great visuals for their stories and they love free photos. Create a page on your website and link to your photo albums that are most news-worthy and about your organization’s mission. Tendenci photo albums even include easy copy and paste html code for each photo you upload to an album that allows you to embed the photos in other places on your website. Share the code with your press releases and make it easy for journalists to pick your story and photo.
Miller Outdoor Theatre has a great example of how to make a photo landing page for the Press.
Flip Through Tendenci’s Photo Albums
Come learn about all the features included with Tendenci’s Photos Module in this Video Tour!
Video Training for Tendenci Photos
We also have a 2 Part Video Training Series on how to upload photos to your Tendenci website and edit them to create great looking photo albums on your nonprofit’s website:
I wanted to leave you with one last reason photo albums rock out your website and that’s search engine optimization. Make sure when you are adding your photos that you use the title, description, and tag fields to boost your rankings and attract new visitors. Learn more about optimizing your photos and other content on your Tendenci website in this great article at The SEM Blog on Optimizing Your Tendenci Website for SEO.
Got Questions and Comments?
Share your comments below or contact us with your questions.
We’ve been busy little Web Bees the past week and you’ll find a bunch of new features and updates to your Tendenci websites. To highlight a few of our recent updates:
updated custom forms with the ability to simply drag and drop to rearrange your fields
added additional permissions settings to job boards, directories, and memberships
opened up our plugin app manager to give Site Admins the ability to manage and add new plugins. (The first plugin we’ve released for free is our Videos Plugin – Here’s How to Install it!)
Last week we surprised our Tendenci Enterprise and Tendenci Community site admins with new Admin Nav Menu colors. Why? We are working to make it easier for our clients to know what version of the software you are using and your feedback was that the blue was a better color for your websites than the previous red color.
What Does it Mean?
If your Top Bar Admin Nav Menu is a solid dark blue and looks like this:
… then you are on the Tendenci Enterprise version of our software. Tendenci Enterprise websites have a custom theme and your software updates and hosting services are managed entirely by Schipul – The Web Marketing Company.
If you have a light blue admin bar that looks like this:
… then you are on the Tendenci Community version of our software. Tendenci Community websites are virtually identical to Tendenci Enterprise in their software codebase. The primary difference is that Tendenci Community websites use a template theme instead of a custom theme. Your software updates and hosting services are managed entirely by us.
If you do not have a top bar Admin menu at all, and when you login you see a dashboard that looks like this:
… then you are on our previous version of Tendenci (Tendenci 4.0). We released the newest version of Tendenci (Tendenci 5.0) about 18 months ago and we recommend you begin planning to migrate your Tendenci 4.0 website as soon as possible. We’ve talked about this before in other blog posts and we 100% understand that costs and other factors make the migration a challenge for some of our clients.
To help you with your decision of when to migrate and how to budget for it, we’re offering a free report with personalized details about the costs and timeline involved with migration for your website and organization. We’ll also include free recommendations on ways you can improve your web marketing now with your current website.
Great question! We are always looking at ways to add new features, more functionality, and improve the user accessibility of our Tendenci CMS. Here are just a few of the awesome updates our programming team has planned this summer to make Tendenci work better for you:
Easier application process for your site visitors applying to become Corporate Members
Updates to Custom Forms to make this module even more versatile
Increased Functionality for Tendenci Community to auto-complete site settings during creation based on sign-up information
More ways to manage and organize online invoices and payments made through your Tendenci website payment gateway
More Print and Export to PDF options for content on the site like Pages and Membership applications
Want Something Not on the List?
Our products are customer-driven and we keep a priority queue for development based entirely on the features and modules with the most client requests. Send us your feature suggestions and help us make Tendenci the perfect CMS platform for your organization’s website!
Questions and Comments?
We love to hear from you so please leave your comments below or contact us with your questions!
For our Tendenci 4 clients: I encourage you to complete our Is It Time to Migrate? form if you are wondering whether or not you can afford to upgrade your website or should start setting aside the budget for a new website soon.
Today, we released the Tendenci CMS open source (view the Tendenci GitHub Repository here). Tendenci CMS, or Content Management System, is the software that powers your website. We value you, and all our clients, tremendously and want to make sure we reach out to answer some questions you may have about this announcement and how it affects you.
What Does “Open Source” Mean?
Open Source means that the Tendenci code will be available from Schipul for anyone to download and install on a server to create a Tendenci website. The code is free, but it does require a specific hosting environment and programming knowledge to deploy a site. Open Source also means that other developers outside of our programming team can contribute to the code – build plugins, make changes to the interface, etc. The Tendenci “committers” (lead programmers) will remain gatekeepers of the core code, and incorporate the work of these outside developers as we see the benefit to clients.
What Does Open Source Tendenci Mean for Current Tendenci Clients?
In the short term, you probably won’t notice a difference. Your hosting won’t change, your cost won’t change, and your site won’t appear or operate differently.
Long term – The goal in going open source is to develop a larger ecosystem of developers who can update, add on to, and create websites with Tendenci (outside of the Schipul team). For you, this means more features available in Tendenci that aren’t currently, and the ability to customize your site to your specific needs. This also means that if you decide to, you can host your website internally or have another developer host or make updates to your website without Schipul’s involvement. We will do our best to keep our pricing competitive and maintain excellent customer service to continue providing the most value to those hosting with us.
What About Tendenci 4.0 Websites?
If your dashboard looks like the screenshot to the right, your website is currently powered by Tendenci 4.0 – the previous version of the Tendenci software, written in the programming language .ASP.
Since 2009 we have been rewriting Tendenci – Tendenci 5.0 – in the programming language Python, a more advanced programming language that gives us greater flexibility.
All Tendenci 4.0 clients have the same set of modules and features. In the past if a client requested a custom feature, we had to either find a way to roll it out to all client sites, or say no. Several features (for instance a searchable database of Attorneys) are not applicable to all clients, but exist on every Tendenci 4.0 site. The latest version of Tendenci works in a different way. Tendenci 5.0 has a Core that include pages, forms, users, events, etc. that apply to virtually all clients. From there we install additional features that are custom to each client using Plugins. For instance, a client may want a Staff module, Video Gallery, or Locations Module depending on the organization’s needs. Things like workflow, interface, and design can be custom to your organization.
Tendenci 5 is the version of Tendenci that we will be taking Open Source.
I Have a Tendenci 4 Site. Should I Upgrade to Tendenci 5?
Web technology changes frequently. We recommend clients consider revamping their website about every 5 years – so you are utilizing the latest technology and your website reflects your brand in the most current light. That being said, upgrading a website is a process and represents a cost, so for some organizations we understand that budget constraints mean a website redesign may not be at the top of your priority list. We aren’t going to stop supporting Tendenci 4, yet long term all of our clients will need to upgrade to keep up with the latest technology. We hope that the additional features of Tendenci 5 & the lower hosting cost as a result of new efficiencies is compelling to upgrade.
The caveat here is that while Tendenci 5 is far advanced beyond Tendenci 4.0 in many ways, there are specific features that are not yet available in Tendenci 5. For a list of Modules that have changed in the new version, visit this help file.
If you are interested in learning more about upgrading to Tendenci 5, please contact our Business Development team at 281.497.6567 ext 700
How Can I Learn More About Tendenci Open Source?
The details of Tendenci Open Source CMS are available at tendenci.org.
Also follow us online to keep up to date with the latest Tendenci Open Source details:
Maintenance Announcement | Planned Website Outage to Upgrade Your Tendenci Database
Sunday January 22nd, 2011 Between 1:00AM and 2:00AM CST:
Some Tendenci Sites will experience a 10 to 15min downtime early this Sunday morning while we upgrade Tendenci 5.0 MySQL Database on client websites. Please contact us at support@tendenci.com if you have any questions.
Check out all of our awesome updates this week on your Tendenci software for association website management!
Our biggest update this week is our addition of the physical location application – enabling your site visitors to search for the nearest physical location of your organization on your website!
Your Campaign Monitor subscriber lists now automatically sync when subscribers are imported into a group
Click Here to learn how to improve your email marketing using Tendenci’s Newsletter Marketing Dashboard integrated with Campaign Monitor’s email marketing software and find other resources for email marketing success!
Not using Tendenci for your website CMS?
Find out all the awesome things Tendenci can do for your Association with our 30-Day FREE Trial. Then – show us what you can do with your Tendenci website!
We made some new updates to our Tendenci software for association website management this week.
Check out all the awesome things Tendenci can do for your Association with our 30-Day FREE Trial. Then – show us what you can do with your Tendenci website!
Added Payment Method as a Field Label on custom forms.
Added Two new search filters for user profile search, allowing administrators to search users to view all users with a specific level of permissions and view all users capped at a specific level of permissions.
Updated some of the base template code to prevent page display errors when admins forget to upload media to custom page templates.
Updated the corporate membership module to allow more design option in custom template designs for corporate memberships.
Updated membership entry approval email that goes to administrators with more links to the membership applicant data.
Added more information on corporate membership renewal notification.
Improved credit card payment verification process for corporate memberships.
All memberships now require a membership type at the database level to ensure content validity.
Moved the Corporate Memberships Tendenci Navigation Tab to the Membership Entry Application Page, replacing the News Tab.
Administrators will now see the Total Number of Memberships when they search Membership Entries.
Added a balance to membership entries, which links to the member’s invoice. This will help administrators better manage their association’s finances and account receivables.
Added a new email notification that will send trial/self sign-up customers an email notification 1 week prior to their trial expiration period to inform them their trial period is ending.
Currently – trial/self sign-up customers will not have their site disabled when their 30-day trial is over. We will receive a notice and send them an email the day their site has expired and will update them when the Beta testing has ended at least 2 weeks before we would disable their trial website.
Click Here to learn how to improve your email marketing using Tendenci’s Newsletter Marketing Dashboard integrated with Campaign Monitor’s email marketing software and find other resources for email marketing success!
UPDATE: All Tendenci Sites are Back to Normal – Content is Displaying Correctly
As of 12:45 PM Central, Tendenci sites are displaying all current content once again. If you have any questions, please contact our Support team at support@tendenci.com or call 281-497-6567 ext 411.
Don’t Worry – Your Site Will Return to Normal Before Lunchtime
Newer Tendenci websites are hosted with Amazon Web Services and last night, Amazon updated their servers. As a result, our index servers did not successfully come back online last night.
What This Means to You
Your website may not show current information and in some cases, you may not see recently added content when you log on to your website this morning.
No Data is Missing
Your data is safe and sound in the database, it may not be displaying correctly on your website.
We are restarting the production index servers and your website is re-indexing as I write this.
Our estimated timeline for all Tendenci websites to be back to normal is approximately 2 hours.
If you have any questions or concerns about something – please contact our Support team at support@tendenci.com or call 281-497-6567 ext 411.
