Every year, the American Marketing Association (AMA) gives out the coveted Marketer of the Year Award to companies in 26 different categories. Ranging from the Performing Arts or Healthcare to Restaurants or Sports.
For more than 125 years, the Y has served the community through health and wellness programs for children and families.
The Y’s mission to “put Judeo-Christian principles into practice through programs that build healthy spirit, mind and body for all” is carried out through summer camps, community benefit programs and health initiatives.
Congrats on the AMA Houston Marketer of the Year Award for 2013!
Since its creation in 2001, T-Rex has been a leading company in engineering and fabrication for the energy industry both in Houston and around the globe.
They offer equipment and services for offshore drilling for oil and gas and are a leader in EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) for the energy industry.
The Children’s Museum of Houston has been a fixture of Houston since 1980.
With more than 14 exhibits, Children’s Museum of Houston has dedicated itself to “transforming communities through innovative, child-centered learning” and currently sees more than 850,000 people annually through its doors.
As an Analytics nerd, I was thrilled to have lots of registrants for our recent Intro to Google Analytics webinar! We frequently get questions from Tendenci site webmasters on Google Analytics, particularly from clients who aren’t quite sure where to start to interpret all of the data Analytics provides. It can be a lot to sift through.
The focus of this webinar was not only which reports to focus on when reviewing your Google Analytics Data, but also what to do with that data. We spent a lot of time discussing taking action based on the reports you find in Analytics.
A few notes from the webinar on interpreting Google Analytics reports to turn that data into action:
Questions to Ask When Interpreting Any Google Analytics Report
When reviewing any Google Analytics report, take into account the following questions:
How does this compare to last month? Last year?
Is this data what you expected (top keywords, top content, geography, etc.)?
Can you add more content around popular topics/keywords?
Can you make content/keywords you don’t see listed more findable or put a more unique perspective on it?
What keywords are missing from your list? Can you add content around those words?
Look for surprises – is this a rising trend? How can you take advantage?
Ideas for Generating Interesting Content
The best way to rank well for a keyword is to have content on your website around that topic. Once you’ve come up with a list of topics that you would like to bring in traffic around, brainstorm content you could add:
Top 10 Lists
Piggy back off of Hot Topics/In the News
Use Infographics
Post How Tos/FAQs (what questions are you getting asked all the time?)
Tag People (they are likely to share your content!)
Include Local Content
Revisit/Update Popular Content (make it a series)
Think about other types of content you can utilize (your most popular blog post might make a great video)
More Google Analytics Questions?
What other Analytics questions do you have? Leave them in the comments and we’ll do our best to address them in future webinars and blog posts!
Today we wanted to share a quick video from Eloy Zuniga Jr., one of our Tendenci Programmers, as he demos the features of the new Tendenci Dashboard. Check it out!
Tendenci Automatic Updates
Tendenci sites hosted with us get automatically updated as we roll out new features like the Tendenci Dashboard! Look for more coming soon as we continue to add features and expand Tendenci even more!
Questions?
If you have any questions, please contact our Support Team at support.schipul.com or (281) 497-6567 ext 411!
This image came up as a topic of conversation in a meeting we had this morning and I wanted to share it. It is a pretty accurate description of the open source rewrite of Tendenci from the ground up over the last four years. And I’m pretty excited about the software moving away from the squiggly part on the right in this image from Henry Bloget’s blog post.
What People Think Success Looks Like Vs. What It Really Looks Like
Oh don’t worry, we’ll attack new challenges and make new squiggles which will make people think we are off track, or losing it, or “freak them out” as we get to the end of a road and go “oooops, that didn’t work.” But now we know that didn’t work.
It also reminded me of some of Hugh’s quotes in his book Not Sucking that I have always liked. For example:
THERE IS NO SECRET SAUCE
WORK HARD. LIVE QUIETLY. BE FRUGAL. SIMPLIFY. NEVER COMPLAIN. CONSTANTLY ELEVATE YOUR CRAFT.
Sure, a bit of talent and good fortune comes in handy. It’s nice that you could draw better than any other kid in your small town, or that your parents had the money to afford tennis lessons after class.
But that just gets you to the starting line. The actual race is what happens after that, day in, day out, for many years to come.
And the ones who win, the ones who really elevate their craft, are generally the ones who work the hardest. Life is unfair.
People underestimate the power of hard work. I like that he simplifies it all into Creativity, Mastery and Meaning. He doesn’t lie to you about a four hour work week, or tell you you have to wear Gucci to be happy, he doesn’t even list being happy as a goal. Meaning, Mastery and Creativity are how you don’t suck. Being happy is what happens when you don’t suck. But not always, because it’s hard work.
The best way to not suck is to MASTER something useful. Obvious, yes?
The thing is, I know TONS of super successful people, but none of them fit this extreme, celeb-lottery-winner-Reality-TV model. Some of them are actually pretty boring, to be honest. But they lead happy, friendly lives and do VERY well career-wise.
THAT is what most success looks like, if you think about it. The stuff on TV or in the movies just isn’t REAL enough for us to learn that much useful stuff.
So I was thinking about this again, recently, HARD.
What model would work for folk like you and me? A model that didn’t mean you had to sell your soul to Wall Street, Hollywood, Washington or the tabloids? A success model that doesn’t rely solely on the unlikelihood of outrageously good fortune or acts of evil?
Then quite by chance, I saw a great documentary recently: “Jiro Dreams of Sushi”, a film about the world’s greatest sushi master, and a light bulb EXPLODED in my head.
Our man, 85-year-old Jiro Ono is the world’s greatest sushi chef– the only sushi master to ever have been awarded three Michelin stars. He’s also the oldest person to have ever been a recipient of that award.
The thing is, he doesn’t have a lot of money or own a fleet of trendy restaurants in all the world’s capitals, a-la Wolfgang Puck. No syndicated TV shows, celebrity-chef book deals or TV talk-show circuits, either.
He just has just a small, plain, dull, ordinary-looking, low-key sushi bar with ten seats in the basement of a Tokyo office building, near the subway, the kind of nondescript place you’d probably just walk by without stopping, if you saw it. Ten seats! Yet he REALLY IS the best in the world at what he does.
Jiro works seven days a week, over 350 days a year (he hates taking vacation), serves sushi and sashimi to people in very small numbers, and THAT’S IT. Just sushi. No salad, no appetizers, no deserts.
Like I said, JUST SUSHI. And by sticking to this minimalist, bare-bones formula, he’s become the best in the world.
A tiny little sushi bar in some random subway station. Yet people wait in line, people book a stool at his sushi bar as much as a year in advance, at prices starting around $600 a head. People have been known to fly all the way from America or Europe, just to experience a 30-minute meal. In an office basement!
I read that and felt humbled. And befuddled. And yes perhaps a bit justified.
I’m also really happy to know others are like me. I don’t particularly consider myself successful but I expect it will all work out. I have many blessings and I work with great people. I have a wonderful family. I’ve also had my share of loss and plenty of criticism, which I have learned comes with the role of CEO even for a small company (note: there are no books on how to be a CEO. You just do your damndest to learn fast!)
Back to Jiro. I get him. For me, I have been obsessing about one single software product called Tendenci built specifically for associations and non-profits for 13 years now. I’ve had a lot of help. I’ve never wavered nor lost the passion to keep improving it. I’m truly obsessed with making software in a way that makes our CLIENTS successful.
I started it in 2001, (the tech bubble had burst) on the premise, after reading hundreds of marketing books that clients who made money off of your software wouldn’t leave you. That they might forgive a missed deadline, but they would not forgive a security breach. That they wanted the freedom to leave at any time. So all of our clients were sold month to month, export your data and leave whenever you want. (this was before open source was an option and before PHP was around.)
What started on the Microsoft platform is now rewritten by a a great team of programmers who work here, and outsourcers, and hopefully more and more by people in the community. It is now Django/Python/Postgres and Ubuntu. We are working hard, and I am obsessing on adding donor management that integrates with Salesforce Foundation’s free licenses for non-profits. I’m completely obsessed with giving NPOs an alternative – that they can succeed on both bottom lines, financial and causes, and put more of their money and time towards the cause instead of spending 10k/user for Raiser’s Edge.
Can a 13 year old product built on Django give NPOs a real alternative to Raiser’s Edge and Blackbaud? And can it be an OPEN SOURCE product that you can integrate, extend, and experience with no vendor lock in at all? The odds are against me. And there are only 10 stools. And my obsession with achieving this success grows stronger every day, and it is not because I know anyone at Blackbaud.
I’m obsessed with collaboratively building Tendenci not because of what the software itself can do. I’m obsessed and seeking mastery because of what global-non-profits can do with the first open source Python software built specifically for them. That is my passion.
[![image][audience]][audience-link]
[Photo by Eloy Zuniga Jr.][audience-link]
### You’d like it
For those of you who love to tinker with things or reverse engineer them (destroy them) to figure out how they work, [this is your place][pycon-url].
It’s always great to see the latest and greatest being invented by **2500** of your closest friends. When services and features are extremely undervalued and success is at it’s infancy.
Have doubts about the size of this annual event? [Check out the sponsors][sponsors].
I’ve been a programmer now for more than 10 years and a Python developer for over 3 and I can sincerely say I may never grow old of this stuff. It keeps me young, can I say that? Just did.
### What you’ll see and maybe learn
What to expect when your “[Excepting][exceptions],” little bit of nerd humour there, don’t mind if I do. But seriously, what should you expect if you come on down?
[![image][photo-guido]][guido]
[Photo by Ed Schipul][guido]
1. Well we have lightning talks with rapping programmers. [Listen to this intro][lightning-talks].
2. We have the benevolent dictator which only [speaks genius][keynote]. One of these days I’ll be able to understand his entire talk. AKA the creator of Python.
3. [The creator][keynote2] of the [Raspberry Pi][raspberry-pi]. A less-expensive computer that’s providing for those on the other side of the digital divide.
4. People sporting the latest technology such as [Teslas][tesla] and [Google Glasses][glass]. Maybe the car had more to do with the fact we were in California.
[![image][photo-tesla]][tesla]
[Photo by Ed Schipul][tesla]
### Tell me more about these “Lightning Talks”
Anyone attending PyCon can have 5 minutes to talk about anything that is *remotely* associated to Python. Bright minds are sitting in the audience, they could be sitting next to you … you could be one. So why not let them speak.
For 5 minutes you can talk to one of the widest Python audiences you’ll probably ever encounter. Talk about a pet project, do a little venting, bring a community together and promote your conference.
Just be careful, developers tend to be highly sensitive to the ole sales-pitch.
### See you next year
We had a great time — I hope this is obvious — we did a lot of learning, and we hope to see you next year.
[![image][photo-group]][group]
[Photo by Ed Schipul][group]
### References
1. [Full List of PyCon US 2013 Videos][pycon-videos]
2. [Photos taken by Ed Schipul][pycon-photos]
3. [PyCon 2011 Blog Post][pycon-2011-blogpost]
New to Tendenci? Looking for a refresher? Have a new board member, volunteer, or staff member you’d like to train up? Register now for one of our free in person classes!
2013 is in full swing and we’re getting things started right by ramping up our Tendenci Training Classes! We’ve added SIX new Tendenci 5 Training Events to the calendar!
These events will be hands on training in our offices in Houston, Texas covering the Tendenci 5 software platform with our team members.
These classes are FREE but space is limited, so please Register to reserve your spot using the links below or the Tendenci events calendar!
See all upcoming Tendenci Events on our events calendar at Tendenci.com/events
See all upcoming Tendenci Events on our Tendenci Events Calendar at Tendenci.com/events
Questions? Let us know!
If you have any questions about this workshop, if it applies to your website software, or suggestions for future Tendenci Live Workshop events, then contact us and we’ll help you out!
Coming to Tendenci Websites in 2013: Event Management and Registration Features You’ll Love for Your Festivals, Galas, and Fundraising Events!
2013’s going to be a Big Year, and Tendenci’s working on new updates to your online calendar and event registration module because we want to make sure this is your biggest year yet!
On the 12th Day of Christmas, Tendenci’s Gift to You: Twelve New Updates to the Events Calendar Module!
Here’s 12 new featuresand updates we’re making this year to the Tendenci Events Calendar module to help you manage online registrations for your association programs and fundraising Gala’s.
** We’ve got even more event module updates planned for Tendenci’s 2013 Roadmap, and this list is just to give you a taste of the delicious treats we’ll be adding to Tendenci in 2013!
You’ll Love Creating New Events With These New Features
1) Import and Export Events
Soon You Can Import Multiple Events with a CSV Template!
We’re super excited about this feature because it will make it faster for you to create multiple events simply by importing all of the text and dates in a spreadsheet, instead of having to create and type in all of this information manually for each event.
2) Default Custom Event Registration Forms
Now you have the choice of using the default event registration form, or our improved custom event registration forms. We listened to your feedback this year and the new custom registration forms now have predefined fields that integrate with the website’s database and user records for reporting and simplify the time it takes you to create and customize a new registration form.
We’ve simplified custom event registration forms for you!
If you want to use a custom registration form now, you already will find a default form with the standard contact information handy to add or remove to your form simply by checking a box. You can also customize which fields on the custom form also display on the event roster. Now you can ask what t-shirt size or special meal requests your guests have without the time involved with creating a brand new form.
3) Schedule Automatic Email Reminders to Attendees
Upload Images and Format Event Reminders to Match Your Association’s Brand
When you create new events, you’ll find a new option that enables you to send email reminders to your attendees that you create and schedule. Tendenci will automatically send the reminder for you, so you don’t have to remember to remind your registrants!
4, 5, & 6) Three New Ways to Promote, Search and Display Your Events
4) More Search Options
We’re adding more searchable field filters to the events module so your members can find the events most relevant to each of them. You’ll be able to search your events by date, event type, membership and user group permissions, and more!
5) New Priority Event Feature
You’ll soon find a new Priority checkbox on your new event forms. When you check this, Tendenci will keep your events on top of your events search list, and add a Star icon to your month view calendar. Now you can highlight your main events each month to help your members decide which events to attend.
Tendenci Makes Your Top Events Our Priority Too!
Here’s some fun ideas on how you can use the new Priority Event feature:
National Associations can feature a different Chapter’s programs and events each month to increase engagement from your different local chapter members!
Use the Priority events to promote membership engagement and offer prizes for those who attend every featured event this year!
Increase Corporate Sponsorship and Corporate Membership dollars by offering to add your supporting partners’ events to your calendar with the Priority feature setting for higher level packages.
6) Group-based Permission Settings for Displaying Events
This feature will enable you to designate certain events as “belonging” to certain user groups or membership types and allow you to do some really fun things with how events are displayed on your website. For example, one of your study groups could have their monthly study meetup on your event calendar and you’d assign the event to their study group.
Then, you could create a sidebar or box that would only display upcoming events from your event calendar that are assigned to that study group on the study group’s main information page. Members of the study group could visit the study group page and also see upcoming events specific to the group and you only have to add the event once to your calendar to share it in multiple places on your site!
Better Registration Experience for Your Users!
You want your website to be fun for your users and members in addition to your staff, and we’re making big changes across our website to provide better user experiences for your online community members. Here’s some of the ways we’re making registration for events simpler for attendees.
7) Fewer Steps to Register and Pay for an Event
We’re streamlining our registration form so that event registrants can go through as few clicks as possible when purchasing tickets and RSVP’ing for your association events. For most events, your users will be able to add multiple event attendees, select member versus non-member pricing, and view their total all from one registration page.
Adding new registrants is as easy as clicking a button – literally! Just click “Add Another Registrant” and a new section for the registration form will appear below the first registrant. Click to add as many registrants as you need and then submit just once to register and pay for everyone.
We’re Streamlining Event Registration Process for Your Attendees!
8) Your Users Can Find and Manage Their Events for You!
With the new “My Upcoming Events” option, your members and regular event registrants can now search for events they’ve signed up for, update any of their registration information, cancel events, and add the event to their calendar using the Event ICS option from one place.
Your members can find and manage their event registration information!
Bonus for You and Your Staff: this empowers your members to manage their own event registrations, view outstanding balances, and make payments on your website. This means your event manager doesn’t have to handle as many of these admin tasks and she can focus on all of the important tasks!
9) Updated Email Template for Event Registration Confirmations
We’ve made a few small updates to the default system email template that your website sends to registrants and confirms their registration along with their receipt for paid events.
The new email template includes an image and uses more of the formatting from your events’ description fields to give your event confirmation emails a look and feel that more closely matches your website’s Event Page. We’ve also made some updates to the helpful links section of the email to ensure your event registrants can find all the information about your event details as well as manage their outstanding balances and registration information.
We’re Updating the Look and Feel of Event Confirmation Email Templates!
10) Your Event Roster Now Tracks Attendance
Your event roster has a new “Attend” checkbox where you can mark who attended an event from the roster on your website. If you don’t have internet and a web browser at your event, then you can also print the roster with the Attend checkbox. After the event, take your printout and update the roster on your website with who attended so you can better track and measure attendance for your events.
Tendenci Event Roster to Manage Registrants
This is a huge benefit for large events where you have a team of volunteers handling check-ins. They can all be logged into your website and click to check off the people who they’ve confirmed at the event simultaneously! The next day, you can log into your site and see at a glance who attended and didn’t. You can even view what time they were checked in.
11) Search and Manage Event Registrants Individually
The Event Roster is more intended for you to use to manage all of your event registrants in a batch, and when you need to find a specific registration to cancel or edit – you’ll be seeing some updates here also. We’re adding more information about the registrants to the view, and we’re integrating the event registrant’s contact information and site activity with their user profile on your website.
Manage Individual Event Registrations in Tendenci!
12) Improved Batch Management for Events
On the 10th Day of Christmas, we shared our updates coming to your site’s Admin Backend. You’ll love the updates we’re making that enable batch filtering, editing, and deleting event types, custom event registration forms, and discount codes from the Admin Backend.
Here’s a preview of a new feature that will let you reassign event types:
Keep Your Events Calendar Up-to-Date with Your Association’s Many Changes!
You can quickly change all of the events of one type to another type. Most associations experience lots of changes as they grow and we see features like this helping you keep your website fresh and reflecting the latest changes without demanding lots of time from you and your staff.
Sign-Up for Tendenci 2013 Updates
Keep an eye out on the Tendenci Events Calendar because in 2013, we’re adding new training and workshops for our Advanced Tendenci users. We’ll also start posting scheduled maintenance and software updates, speaking events, and major announcements to help keep you in the loop with what we’re doing at Tendenci.
We are constantly exploring new ways to keep you in the loop with what we’re changing here at Tendenci. Let us know how you like to find out what’s going on here at Tendenci!
MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM TENDENCI!
We’re celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas with daily previews of the all new Tendenci Features coming to your association website in 2013! Join us each day to “open new gifts” filled with feature updates for your website! Visit our Twelve Days of Christmas Main Page to find new gifts for each day from now until January 5th!
We love to hear your questions and comments about Tendenci, the open source CMS for Association’s – leave a reply below in our comments section or send us your thoughts via email to support@tendenci.com.
We’re Welcoming in the New Year with a Fabulous New Tendenci Theme!
In celebration of both the 8th day of Christmas and the New Year, we’ve got a very special gift for you from all of us at Tendenci – the first Tendenci Community Theme specifically built for Associations.
You’ll be able to find TwentyThirteen available to download beginning in late January, 2013.
SignUp below to be the first to find out when the new theme is available:
We’ll be adding the theme to Tendenci’s Open Source Github Theme folder and you’ll be able to download the theme for free and Tendenci Community hosted sites can request TwentyThirteen for Jumpstart Packages and we’ll personalize the theme to match your association’s Brand.
And Now…
We’re Pleased to Introduce TwentyThirteen
TwentyThirteen includes all of the features your association website needs right from the beginning to start accepting donations, building your contacts list, and manage member programs and events plus so much more!
TwentyThirteen HomePage Features
Associations and nonprofits have a unique set of requirements for websites that corporations don’t face. Here’s some of the different ways that we’ve tailored TwentyThirteen for Associations so that you can have a professional looking website and easy online community management tools that work.
TwentyThirteen “Above the Fold”
Above the Fold
The section above the fold on a website is typically referred to as the area on your web browser that you see when you first load a website page, before you scroll down. On average, about 80% of website visitors will click through to an inside page before they scroll down the homepage. This means your most important content should be top and center of your homepage.
Here’s what’s front and center on TwentyThirteen’s homepage:
Your Association’s Logo and Tagline – Your website needs to communicate to your visitors who you are and what you do immediately and that’s why your Association’s logo and tagline are prominently featured in the Header of every page, including your homepage template.
Large Rotating Banner – Visually share your association’s stories to increase engagement with site visitors with TwentyThirteen’s large homepage banner. Update your featured homepage content automatically with the stories module’s start and expiration options and your association’s latest news. Learn more about Tendenci’s stories module.
TwentyThirteen Navigation Menu
Call to Action and Social Media Buttons – We’ve added call to action buttons to donate and join your association as well as social media profile buttons that you can quickly personalize to your own account links. Your website will be able to immediately start building your online community through donations, members, and new social media fans.
Flexible and Customizable Main Navigation Menu – TwentyThirteen’s main navigation comes “pre-loaded” with the top modules used by association websites including membership information, job board, donations form, contact form and more.
Below the Fold
TwentyThirteen “Below the Fold”Hover to Edit Content
Here’s What’s Below the Fold:
Featured Content Boxes that are fast to update with information about your association or nonprofit including your staff, volunteers, programs and job openings, and practically anything you need to share on your website.
Homepage Sidebar that dynamically pull in content from other modules on your site: upcoming events, the latest news, and Sponsor spotlights and features them in your homepage and internal page sidebar templates.
Secondary Image Slider displays additional rotating content on your homepage below the fold.
TwentyThirteen Secondary Homepage Slider
Inside Peek at the TwentyThirteen Events Calendar
TwentyThirteen Month Event Calendar View
MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM TENDENCI!
We’re celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas with daily previews of the all new Tendenci Features coming to your association website in 2013! Join us each day to “open new gifts” filled with feature updates for your website! Visit our Twelve Days of Christmas Main Page to find new gifts for each day from now until January 5th! We love to hear your questions and comments about Tendenci, the open source CMS for Association’s – leave a reply below in our comments section or send us your thoughts via email to support@tendenci.com.
ON THE SIXTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS… TENDENCI’S GIFT TO YOU: Six Free Plugins Specifically for Associations!
One of the unique benefits Tendenci’s open source CMS gives Associations is the fact that the software was developed specifically to meet your association’s unique and complex requirements, without making your life harder. Our plugins are also designed with your needs in mind, not the corporate world’s requirements like most apps first to market are.
We’re incredibly excited to be able to announce new plugins coming in 2013 that will super-charge your Association’s website! And did we mention that they’ll be absolutely free?!
Here’s an Inside Sneak Peak at 6 New Plugins Coming to Tendenci Sites in 2013:
Donations
Need a way to start accepting donations on your website immediately, without the hassle of building custom forms? If so, you’ll love our Donations plugin! Our donations plugin automatically creates a donation form for your association and integrates the form with your website’s merchant account and invoice modules.
The Donations Plugin Provides Instant Integration with Your Website’s Payment Processing Module!
The donations settings are customizable and enable you to add the different programs and chapters at your Association, select what payment types you accept online, and set preset donation values – or leave the donation value blank and let Donors enter their own dollar amount.
Your Donors can Specify Which Chapter or Program Their Gifts are Delivered to!
Staff
The Staff Plugin offers your team a place to showcase their skills and introduce your website visitors to the people at your association who work tirelessly for your cause. Your staff can add their personal social media and blog profiles and share their work experience and skills. The Staff plugin puts Faces to your Association for new site visitors and shows who’s behind the work you’re doing.
Committees
Tendenci Committees are special User Groups you can create with this new plugin that helps you manage your Association’s different committees on your website. With the Committees plugin, you’ll be able to create committee groups on your website and easily populate the committee’s officer positions with your users’ information. Members of a committee can find contact information for other group members and share files and content through your Association’s website.
Increase Team Collaboration with Tendenci Committees!
Study Groups
Study Groups Bring Your Members Together for Learning!
Study Groups are another type of specialized User Group that your website users can join or be assigned to. The Study Groups plugin is great for Associations who need an online place for sharing ideas, discussions, files, and lesson plans and managing your training and study groups through your website.
Case Studies
Use Case Studies to Share the Good Work You’re Doing with Supporters!
Tendenci’s Case Studies plugin gives you a pre-formatted content module to share your success stories and showcase the work your nonprofit association is doing in the community. There are 3 separate rich-text editor (WYSIWYG) boxes plus custom image fields to upload photos that communicate your story. Case Studies is designed to make it easier for you to quickly write new content on your website that will increase your fundraising efforts.
Here’s an Example of How to Use Case Studies for Your Association or NonProfit website:
* Overview: This field is where you’ll share a few sentences (or more if you’d like) about the specific campaign or fundraising project. You might want to include the goals that you were hoping to achieve, and any specific challenges you faced.
* Execution: Use the execution field to describe how your association solved your challenges, and achieved your goals. For example, if you’re showcasing a recent fundraising campaign for a new homeless shelter, talk about how you were able to raise the money successfully. This is a great place to thank your donors and perhaps include special mentions to any volunteers, staff, and corporate partners/sponsors who helped with your success.
* Results: Did you succeed at your goals stated in the Overview? If so – share! Use this field to say what happened, and using the example in the previous execution section – include stories of the homeless people who now have a shelter to stay at because this will communicate to new visitors what your mission is best and help drive new donors and memberships.
Speakers
We originally developed the Speakers plugin for our 2011 user conference at SchipulCon and now we’re updating the module so you can showcase your big conference Speakers on your website!
Use the Speakers plugin to add multiple images and more details about your speakers such as their bio and links to their social media networks. Site visitors can quickly search the Speakers module to find out more information about your presenters plus the module makes it faster for you to promote the thought leaders that your events attracts!
MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM TENDENCI!
We’re celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas with daily previews of the all new Tendenci Features coming to your association website in 2013! Join us each day to “open new gifts” filled with feature updates for your website!
We love to hear your questions and comments about Tendenci, the open source CMS for Association’s – leave a reply below in our comments section or send us your thoughts via email to support@tendenci.com.
ON THE FIFTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS… TENDENCI’S GIFT TO YOU: Real Choices for hosting your open source Tendenci website yourself!
This past year has been exciting and fast paced for the Tendenci team with the release of our open source software. We’re breaking new grounds in nonprofit, open source technology, and we’re focusing more of our efforts in 2013 on ease of use for you and your staff.
One major to-do we’re finally able to check off our list is simplifying the installation process so you can set-up and manage a Tendenci website on the hosting provider of your choosing. We’ve been testing Tendenci open source installations on different hosting providers and documenting the steps for you.
We’ve currently written documentation for Rackspace and Linode cloud hosting installation instructions:
We’ll be documenting additional hosting providers in the coming weeks, and we’re interested in finding out what hosting provider you want to use with Tendenci. We’ll test and document the installation process for your preferred hosting vendors. Suggest a vendor as a Comment below or email us to ‘toss’ your cloud host’s name in the ‘hat’.
3 Questions to Ask Before You Select Your Hosting Partner
We believe that website management shouldn’t be a struggle for Associations. Managing both Members and Content on your website is a complex process that Tendenci was specifically designed to help manage, enabling you to focus on your cause. Just like you need a website platform specifically developed for your nonprofit, you also need a hosting partner that understands the unique technology requirements that associations and nonprofits have.
Here’s three questions you definitely should ask potential hosting providers to make sure you get a good fit!
1) What extra services and products does your hosting provider offer?
Often, people think that their association’s staff email addresses come from the same company that they paid for the custom domain URL, or they think that things like back-ups, security updates and monitoring are included in that $6.99 monthly hosting plan. In most cases, the cheapest hosting plans out there aren’t intended to support the kind of traffic and User activity that a nonprofit or association website is going to require.
Make sure that your hosting provider offers a package that includes the type of options your association will require. For example, with Tendenci websites – you’ll need to make sure you find a hosting partner with VPS (virtual private server) root access.
2) What level of support does the hosting company offer?
It’s great if you have an experienced IT staff to manage your website’s critical maintenance tasks like back-ups, security updates, and plugin management. If your association doesn’t have someone on staff to manage your IT and website hosting services, then you’ll want to find a hosting provider with a strong support department who can be your external IT team.
Make an honest evaluation of your association’s ability to provide the time and expertise required to ensure your website receives the ongoing maintenance, back-ups, and security updates required to run smoothly. Find a hosting provider with services that compliment your association’s IT capabilities.
3) How will the hosting provider manage an unpredictable spike in traffic to your site?
Imagine your nonprofit gets a lucky break and your Executive Director is going to be on the Today Show! Suddenly, tens of thousands of people are trying to access your website – and you’ve never had more than a hundred visitors at one time before. Will your site go down because you have limits on your platform?
Probably – most sites who experience a massive spike in traffic experience a short period of downtime. That downtime can range from a few minutes to several hours, depending on the level of support your receiving from your hosting provider. How fast can your hosting provider get your site back up and live when traffic spikes? Can they get you up before your live Today Show interview is over? Or will you be down until later in the evening, when viewers earlier have forgotten and moved on to other priorities with their families and dinner?
These are all important questions to consider and I hope they help you select the right website host for your association!
History of Open Source
Here’s a great infographic that shares some fun history facts about open source software via SourceNinja.com!
We’re celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas with daily previews of the all new Tendenci Features coming to your association website in 2013! Join us each day to “open new gifts” filled with feature updates for your website!
We love to hear your questions and comments about Tendenci, the open source CMS for Association’s – leave a reply below in our comments section or send us your thoughts via email to support@tendenci.com.
YMCA of Greater Houston
T-Rex Engineering + Construction
Miller Outdoor Theatre
Coming to Tendenci Websites in 2013: Event Management and Registration Features You’ll Love for Your Festivals, Galas, and Fundraising Events!
