Best Practices for Nonprofit Websites

Smashing Magazine is a great resource for print and web design and consistently puts out great content. They recently had an article about best practices for nonprofit websites that I wanted to share. As the article puts it:

A non profit’s website needs to make it easy to find out more about their cause, to donate money, and to become more involved. It needs to make it easy for media contacts to find the information they need and the contact information of key personnel. And it needs to do all this in a way that’s inviting to the organization’s targeted donors and/or volunteers.

Read the full article to see examples of how to make your content the center of your website, increase volunteers and donors and keep people coming back often. If you'd like to show off your own website, leave a link in the comments for others to see.

The 20-Minute Test Environment, Part II

Last week you set up a Patron Edge test environment, and now you're ready to get going with the web side of things. Here is how to get your Patron Edge Online test environment up and running in 20 minutes.

Restore some data
We're switching this up a bit from last time, since PEO doesn't use the Blackbaud Management Console. Through SQL Management Studio, create a backup of your live PEO database and restore it on your test machine. For the sake of speed, run the DB Cleaner function before backing up.

Install Patron Edge Online
Run the PEO installer, choosing all three components when asked what to install (website files, PE communication components, and PEO communication components). There are a couple of places where it will ask you to make a connection to your PEO and PE databases. For simplicity, choose SQL Authentication on these screens and use the 'sa' account. You'll be able to pick your PE and PEO databases from a list. On any screen that asks for an IP address, use 127.0.0.1, and leave all of the ports at their defaults. Don't check any boxes on screens where it talks about internal/external IP stuff, just click Next to fly right through those.

Copy custom files and images
There are many ways to get your stuff across, but for the sake of getting this thing running in 20 minutes, here's what to do:

• Grab a copy of your live PEOSite folder and move it to the desktop of the test machine.
• Open the folder and delete the file called global.asa.
• Drag the folder into C:\Program Files\Blackbaud\The Patron Edge Online and click Yes to All when prompted.

If you have any customizations that use DLLs, you'll need to copy those over as well and register them. This differs from site to site, so you'll just have to know what any custom DLLs are named and where they are located.

And that's PEO in 20 minutes! Are you experiencing any problems while setting up your test system, or did I cover it pretty well? Leave a note in the comments.

The 20-Minute Test Environment, Part I

Things have been quiet on the blogging front for the last couple of weeks; I've been playing with some cool technologies like the CodeIgniter framework for creating web applications and the jQuery library (with these awesome video tutorials) for doing fun web stuff without having to learn a ton of JavaScript.

In light of my recent attempts at developing cool features and tools, I'm throwing out some instructions to help you build your own test environment. Being a tech support guy, I am a big fan of having separate machines for production and testing. It can be really cumbersome to try to put both the test and production systems on the same machine. In some cases there is even potential to break the live system by putting a test system right beside it. With that in mind, here is the 20-minute, four-step version of creating a test box. Use it for everything from developing your own custom reports, to testing new coupon schemes, to performing a big batch of merges.

Find a machine
You need a machine first, but it doesn't have to be a real one. The cheapest solution (under $150) is to download the free and excellent VMWare Server. Install Windows XP Professional and SQL 2005 Developer Edition, both with the latest service packs. SQL Dev Edition is only $49 and you can find XP Pro online for under $100.

Install Patron Edge
Since everything is going on one machine, just run the Patron Edge installer on the test machine and hit Next, Next, Finish. Leave everything at the default setting.

Restore some data
Grab last night's backup of your Patron Edge database and restore it onto the test box. Knowledgebase is your friend on this one if you're not very familiar with making and restoring from backups.

Set up credit cards

• Take a copy of payment.ini from the live system and put it in C:\Program Files\The Patron Edge on the test box.
• While you're in there, find Tix_PSC and do Send to Desktop to make a shortcut.
• Install PCCharge (again, it's just a Next, Next, Finish deal).
• Edit your PCCharge shortcut and add the /DEMO switch in the Target field. This puts it in demo mode so that cards aren't really charged
• Edit your Tix_PSC shortcut and add the /a /online /force switches.

If you add in time to copy files onto the test system and restore the database, it may take a little while depending on your network speed and the size of your database. However, getting PE installed and credit cards working will only take about 20 minutes. Next week we'll do a Patron Edge Online test system in 20 minutes, followed by a Patron Edge/Raiser's Edge integrated system. By the end of the series, you will be able to create a full test environment in just an hour!

What does your test environment look like? Share your best practices in the comments.