Credit

Profiles, Groups, or Pages?

When creating a Facebook presence for your nonprofit, you need to decide which kind of presence to use.

In addition to creating a Facebook Cause—which you should consider as a supporting service rather than a primary presence—you really have three options: a Profile, a Group, or a Page.

Profiles are intended for individuals; Pages are intended for brands and organizations; and Groups are generally more informal, may give you less control, and (not coincidentally) seem more prone to going viral.

Choices, Choices

There’s been much discussion of the trade-offs between these options for a nonprofit, so I won’t do my own detailed analysis here.

Unfortunately, much of the information you’ll find is from before March when Facebook made some important enhancements to fan pages. The following resources reflect the new changes, though, and can help you think through your decision:

• The Difference between a Facebook Profile, Facebook Group and a Facebook Fan Page
• Facebook Pages vs Facebook Groups: What’s the Difference?
• Facebook Business Presence – Page, Group or Profile?
• Which is Better: A Facebook Group or a Facebook Page?
• Facebook Profile, Group or Page?

My feeling is that in general a Facebook Page is the best approach, so I wrote instructions on creating one. But Groups have their place too. Sometimes it makes sense to have both a Page and a Group if their purposes are distinct.

Profiles, though… not so much.

Forbidden (?) Profiles

For quite some time Facebook has been unhappy about people using Profiles to represent organizations, fictional people, or doppelganger copies of themselves (for example, having one business presence and one personal presence), at times threatening to shut down offenders’ Facebook access. In fact, the enhancements they made to Facebook Pages in March were apparently to pull people toward Pages with a Carrot, rather than just relying on the Stick of their terms-of-service (TOS).

Which raises an interesting fact: Facebook appears to have removed their profile-prohibiting language from their terms of service.

Previously the TOS included this language, as it still appears on the nonprofit IT blog Wild Apricot: you “agree not to use the Service or the Site to … register for more than one User account, register for a User account on behalf of an individual other than yourself, or register for a User account on behalf of any group or entity” (emphasis added by Wild Apricot).

This restriction is conspicuously missing from the Facebook terms of service as of Fall 2009.

Whence Profile Prohibition?

Why did they drop it? I haven’t seen an explanation, but I’m confident it’s not because they want organizations to use Profiles. The TOS still strongly implies that Profiles are for individuals.

Maybe they got tired of taking crap for their far-reaching TOS and decided to friendly it up somehow. Maybe fewer organizations were bothering with Profiles because the Facebook Page has become much more attractive. Maybe they just decided they didn’t care anymore.

Regardless, if you do have an existing Profile for your nonprofit, it appears you’re no longer living under the threat of Facebook shutting down your account. As discussed by the blog posts above, there are still lots of other good reasons to avoid Profiles for organizations. But at least fear is no longer one of them.

In a 75 minute talk (including discussion) I’ll only be able to scratch the surface of this enormous topic, so I’m providing them with additional resources to help with later planning and learning. I thought I’d post the resource list here for anyone else who’d find it useful.

Take the Plunge! (Credit)

P.S. If your nonprofit isn’t trying out social media yet, go ahead. Take the plunge. Don’t count on magical results, but do count on finding important new ways of connecting with the people who are most important to you.

1. General Reference

1.1. Big Picture / Social Media Overview

Social Media for Non Profits
A slide show with a good overview of the topic.

Creating Your Organization’s Social Media Strategy Map
By Beth Kanter, widely recognized guru in nonprofit social media.

Britt Bravo Getting The Word Out About Your Cause With Blogs, Podcasts & Social Networks
Includes many examples of nonprofits using these tools.

Example: Social Media Handbook for Red Cross Chapters (Wendy Harman)

1.2. Resource Portals

These sites each offer a wide array of resources related to nonprofit social media.

We Are Media
NTEN provides this excellent depot of resources for nonprofits that want to learn about and use social media. Among other resources the site includes online training modules and resources for a wide range of topics; some are in progress, others are relatively complete. There is also a Social Media Toolbox with information organized by type of technology: Blogs, Podcasts, Social Networking, etc.

NetSquared
An initiative of TechSoup Global, this is a community that shares ideas and sponsors challenges related to social change through technology.

TechShop (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
A Service Learning program for UW-Madison students. It connects students with nonprofits on information technology projects, particularly Web 2.0 projects. The goal is not to do projects for nonprofits, but to increase the nonprofits’ capacity to do and maintain projects. This takes the form of teaching them about social media, and doing projects side-by-side with nonprofit staff.

Charityhowto
This is a for-fee video site offering video training for nonprofits. If you can’t or would prefer not to pay for the full training, each of the sessions offers a brief snippet from the training, and the snippets themselves are useful.

1.3. Blogs and Podcasts

I follow all of these blogs and podcasts and have learned a lot about best practices, examples, new tools, and audience demographics. I’ve listed them here in order of their importance to me; the blogs listed earliest are the ones that have taught me the most.

John Haydon

Get Your Sanity Back: Wild Apricot’s Non-Profit Technology Blog
Note: this blog is sponsored by a Wild Apricot, a commercial Membership Management software vendor. However, except for the ads at the top and sides, the information is generally vendor-agnostic, and often very useful.

Socialbrite

Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media (Beth Kanter)

NetWit’s Think Tank

NetSquared Blog

The Bamboo Project (Michele Martin)

Chronicle of Philanthropy: Social Good Podcasts (Allison Fine)

Nonprofit Tech
Not so much a blog as a meta-blog, aggregating stories and resources from many other sites. It covers all forms of technology, but also provides targeted pages for specific technologies, for example, Facebook (http://www.nonprofittech.com/browse/facebook/), Flickr (http://www.nonprofittech.com/browse/facebook/flickr/) and YouTube (http://www.nonprofittech.com/browse/facebook/flickr/youtube/).

1.4. Reference

Socialbrite’s Web 2.0 Tools: List and Recommendations

Socialbrite’s Social Media Glossary

The Buzz Bin’s Social Media Glossary

Nonprofit Social Network Survey

2. Blogging

2.1. Blogging (General)

10 Reasons why Every Nonprofit Must Have a Blog

Integrating a WordPress Blog with Facebook

2.2. Microblogging (Twitter)

Twitter 101 for Nonprofits

Twitter in Plain English — Overview
Twitter in Plain English — Search
These are great videos explaining Twitter simply and digestibly.

How to get more followers on Twitter

An intro to Facebook and Twitter for nonprofits

Twitter.Org: Twitter for Nonprofit Organizations

Publishing Facebook Updates on Twitter

Publishing Twitter Updates on Facebook

3. Social Networking

3.1. Social Networking: General

Nonprofit Social Network Survey Report (NTEN and The Port)

Thinking Through Your Social Networking Tone

3.2. Social Networking: Facebook

3.2.1. Getting Started

An intro to Facebook and Twitter for nonprofits

Facebook for Nonprofit Beginners: Learn the Basics

How To Create A Powerful And Engaging Facebook Page

Whether to Create a Page Or a Group (Mashable)

Whether to Create a Page Or a Group (Wild Apricot)

3.2.2. Beyond Basics

Facebook Privacy: A Guide

How To Use Facebook “Notes” To Get More Traffic

Facebook Best Practices for Nonprofits

4 Facebook Tips for Nonprofit Success

11 Quick Tips to Enhance Your Facebook Fan Page

Washington Post Article on Facebook Causes for Fundraising

4. Video Sharing

See3 Communications: YouTube for Nonprofits — 1 hour web presentation

How Small Charities can Create Effective Videos (Episode 9)

YouTube Nonprofit Program

5. Photo Sharing

Nonprofits and Photosharing: A Cost-Effective Way to Spread Your Message Online

Flickr Nonprofit Groups

6. Collaboration Tools

Google Docs

Adobe Buzzword

Cozimo

Scriblink (Shared online whiteboard)

BaseCamp

7. Coordinating Multiple Social Networks

How To Manage Multiple Social Media Profiles (Mashable)

Publishing Facebook Updates on Twitter

Publishing Twitter Updates on Facebook

Broadcast a message to many networks at once: hellotxt

Broadcast a message to many networks at once: ping.fm

Managing Multiple Photo Sharing Sites

I’ve migrated a few domains recently for myself and others. So far, no thuds. Here’s the process I used.

The following assumes (1) you already have a website hosted somewhere and (2) you want to move it to a new web host, keeping the same domain name. (You’ll probably find this guide helpful even if one of those two assumptions is wrong.)

The Scenario

So. Let’s say you’re going to move your nonprofit’s website:

• Domain name: peace-n-hope.org
• Old web host: evil-R-us.com
• New web host: HopeSpringsEternal.net

Overview

1. Pick a good web host.
2. Sign up for an account.
3. Set up the new web host.
4. Prepare the new host to receive email.
5. Change your domain to point at the new web host.
6. Watch for the change to happen.
7. Do some final testing and tweaking.
8. Kick back and bask in your geekiness.

Important Background: Domain Name Servers

Computers on the Internet don’t refer to each other by name. They refer to each other by their Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. The most common internet addresses look like four numbers separated by periods. For example, your current IP address is 74.125.158.82. (I’m not making that up; I just checked.)

When you enter www.peace-n-hope.org in your browser’s address bar, or when you send an email to i…@peace-n-hope.org, somehow that human-friendly domain name has to get converted into a computer-friendly IP address.

The gadget that handles the conversion is called a Domain Name Server (DNS). It sits on a computer somewhere out in the Internet, and it has an enormous table of entries saying “requests for domain name X should be routed to IP Address Y”. At most recent count there were just over 2.3 gajillion domain name servers scattered around the Internet.

Some DNSs are cooler (more authoritative) for certain things that others, but let’s not get into that right now. For now all you need to know is that when anyone uses a domain name for anything, there’s a DNS somewhere that decides which computer that request should get routed to.

So to start with you have one web host, and all of the DNSs in the Internet point at it. Your world looks like this:

Your initial setup: you have one web host and all of the world’s DNSs are pointing at it.

Pick a Good Web Host

A good host makes all the different if migration turns ugly. There’s a good chance you’ll hit some glitch or another: probably minor, and possibly your fault. Maybe you can figure it out yourself, but a good host might figure it out it faster. And often you’ll need the host’s help to actually fix it.

I recently offered statistics to help you choose a web host. You can use my numbers or research on your own, but look before you sign up for an account.

Information you need

Your new host, HopeSpringsEternal.net, should have given you the following information. If not, ask for it:

• The location of a web page (often called a “control panel” page) where you can manage things like email accounts, file access, etc.
• Login information for the control panel
• Information on transferring files to/from the site using File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
• The addresses of the new host’s DNSs

Limbo: Set Up The New Web Host

Once you’ve created an account with HopeSpringsEternal.net you have two hosts:

1. Your active host, evil-R-us.com, which everyone is using for peace-n-hope.org’s email and website, and
2. Your dormant host, HopeSpringsEternal.net, which no one knows about but you.

For the next steps you’ll need some way to move information from your current evil-R-us.com host and to your new HopeSpringsEternal.net host. FTP is the most widely available way to do this is through. When you signed up for an account, HopeSpringsEternal.net should have provide you with information on connecting to your account via FTP.

If you don’t have this information for your old or new web hosts, you’ll need to contact them to get it.

Some hosts offer other file transfer methods. In the worst case you can download your current website by using a web copier program, or (ugh) by visiting every page through your web browser and doing a “Save As” to save the page on your local hard drive. But only do this if there’s no other way around it.

1. Back up your site.

Download all of your content from your current web host. You should make a backup on your local computer plus additional copies just in case—to CDs and/or DVDs and/or a secondary hard-drive and/or an online back up service.

Be sure to get all of the content from your site, for example:

1. Web pages;
2. Log files;
3. Other files from your site that you’d like to keep;
4. The contents of any databases; for example, if you use a blogging tool or a Content Management System (CMS) follow the tool’s backup instructions;
5. Maybe other stuff: poke around thoroughly in your current account to see what’s there

2. Upload your site to your new host

Remember everything you did in step 1? Now do it backwards.

Upload the files to your new web host, probably using FTP, and set up and restore databases as needed.

If your upload will overwrite existing files on the new host, download copies of those files and save them somewhere safe just in case. You’re probably not overwriting anything critical, but if so you’ll want to be able to revert.

If you’re using a CMS or another database-based application, you’ll need to either create login accounts for the database, or update your configuration files to use the new logins created by your new host.

3. Test

Problem: nobody knows about your HopeSpringsEternal.net account but you. Not only does that mean the world is still visiting your current (awful) evil-R-us.com web host, but you can’t test your new site simply by visiting http://peace-n-hope.org: doing that will just take you to the website files stored on evil-R-us.com. In other words, your world looks like this:

You have an account with your new web host, but nobody knows it has anything to do with peace-n-hope.org.

Since you can’t preview your site using your usual domain name, HopeSpringsEternal.net should have given you an ugly-but-functional URL you can visit to test your website on the dormant host. For example, this might look something like www.HopeSpringsEternal.net/~peace-1/www. You can visit this URL to confirm your website looks good before you make the big leap and tell everyone else about it.

Test your entire site, and spend special time testing anything tricky: for example, a part of your site that reads from or writes to a database, or that collects information through a web form, or that sends email. You could run a program that checks whether every link is broken, but you’ll be safer (and probably feel better) if you manually click every link in the site, assuming that’s practical.

You might have trouble testing some simple parts of the site (like hyperlinks) or more complicated parts (like entry forms) if they redirect you to your current domain name: right now anything that takes you to peace-n-hope.org will take you to your current/old host, since the Internet doesn’t know yet that peace-n-hope.org has anything to do with your new host HopeSpringsEternal.net. Take this catch into account when you’re testing.

4. Leave a Trace

Make some small change to your website and upload it to your new host, but not to your old host. That way you’ll be able to tell when your new host becomes the active host: as soon as you browse to your website and see the small unique change, you’ll know you’re looking at the files on your new host.

Email Springs Eternal: Prepping the New Host

Besides uploading your website files to your new host, you need to prepare it to receive peace-n-hope.org’s email.

Just as with web traffic, right now anyone sending an email to anyt…@peace-n-hope.org is sending it to your old web host, evil-R-us.com. Again, that’s because all of the world’s Domain Name Servers only know about evil-R-us.com, and don’t know yet that you’re about to switch to a new host.

1. Create mailboxes

Before telling all the DNSs about your new host you need to create mailboxes there for all of your peace-n-hope.org email accounts. All good web hosts will give you a nice administrative web page where you can add, edit, and delete mailboxes. The details vary greatly from host to host, but your new host should have sent you information about this when you signed up.

2. Test mailboxes

Once your mailboxes are set up you won’t be able to test them fully: any email you send to your domain name will still go back to the mailboxes on your old host. But your new host probably provides a web-based way for you to check email, so if nothing else you can at least log into your mailbox via the web to confirm it’s set up.

3. Gather connection information

If you plan to download your email from the web host to a mail program like Outlook or Apple Mail you’ll need some information about accessing your new mailbox. This is most commonly done via the Post Office Protocol, which is almost always referred to as “POP” or “POP3”. This information is normally:

• Incoming (POP) mail server name
• The port number for email (110 unless specified otherwise)
• User name
• Password
• Maybe: whether the server requires encryption
• Maybe: the type of encryption it uses

Your web host should be able to give you this information. In fact, if they have an FAQ page you’re almost certain to find help there since these questions are, you know… frequently asked.

Once you have the information it would be an excellent idea to test your email program using the new host, just to be sure everything works as you would expect. You should do this by adding a new account in your email program rather than by replacing your current email account information, since you aren’t yet ready to switch over to the new host for your email.

After setting up the new accounts in your email program, send yourself an email using the new account/host. The email will be routed to your old host, but that’s ok. If you were able to do this it means (1) your email program is able to send mail via your new host, and (2) your email program was able to log in to your new host and check for email, even though none was there yet.

4. Download email

If you’ve been using webmail directly through your old web host, or if you’ve been using an email program like Outlook/Apple Mail but leaving the email on the web host rather than downloading it to your local computer, you’ll want to download some or all of the information from your current webmail account so you can access it later. Consider not only email but contacts, calendar entries, and other notes that your current host lets you save in your email account.

Taking the Leap: Changing Your DNS Entry

You’ve created your account with HopeSpringsEternal.net, uploaded and tested your web files, and created and tested your new mailboxes, so now it’s time to tell the rest of the world that your website lives at HopeSpringsEternal.net instead of evil-R-us.com.

1. Schedule a time

The DNS update process shouldn’t cause significant problems with people reaching your site, but to minimize the risk you should pick a time when your website traffic is low. Maybe you know when this is already, but if not you could review your website’s log files if you have the tools to do that.

You should also take into account when your email traffic is highest. During the domain transition it’s possible you could lose email unless you protect yourself. See the sidebar (“Email Through the Cracks”) for steps you can take to prevent that.

You might want to inform people who visit your site or who email you, though if all goes well they shouldn’t see a disruption. You’d mainly be warning them so they’re braced in case all doesn’t go well.

2. Update Your DNS Entry

How do you update the DNS entry for your domain? In the old days you had to call, email, or sometimes even ground mail instructions to the organization that manages your domain—the domain registrar. Today most DNS changes can be made by the person who owns the domain (hopefully you) by completing a simple web form.

In most cases you can make these changes whether or not you’re formally listed as the domain’s Administrative Contact: if you have the login information for the site, you can make the changes. This can be a significant issue for nonprofits, where turnover in certain roles is sometimes high. But even if the person who registered the domain is no longer with your nonprofit, anyone else working there who has the login information can make the change—even a (trusted!) volunteer or consultant.

Maybe you’re an organizational guru, and just after you originally registered the domain name, you filed away the location of your registrar’s web page and your login information. If so, you’re golden. Make the change at the time you’ve scheduled.

1. Log into your registrar’s web site.
2. Find a page that lets you edit your DNS entry for the domain.
3. Find the place on the page that lists the current DNSs for your domain. You’ll most likely find two DNSs, one primary and one secondary.
4. Replace these old DNS names with the DNS names that your new web host provided.

3. Can’t figure out how to update your DNS entry?

If you don’t have login information for the site that lets you manage your domain name, you’ll need to contact your domain registrar for help.

This will almost certainly throw a delay into your domain transfer process, so allow extra time: certainly days, but to be safe a week or two in case you need to resort to old-school methods like ground mail confirmation. If you’re not sure who your registrar is, see the sidebar “WHOIS My Registrar?”

4. Wait

As I mentioned earlier, there are gajillions of DNSs sprinkled around the internet. You’ve specified which two servers are the coolest (most authoritative) for your particular domain, but all of the other DNSs in the world need to gradually get word of the change. So the change you made above really just kicked off a process of information propagating through the Internet to all the other DNSs. Propagation takes a while to complete.

It’s reasonably likely that you and people near you will see the new host within 3–4 hours, but 12 hours isn’t unheard of, and it might take 72 hours before all the DNSs in the Internet are up to date. In the mean time your world will look like this:

Part-way through the update process, not all DNSs will know about your site’s new location.

That means for a while some people will be seeing your old host and some will be seeing your new host.

It also means some people’s email will go to your old host, and some to your new host. Which is potentially ugly: once the DNS update is complete for you, you might not be able to get to your email on your old host any more: visiting mail.peace-n-hope.org (for example) will now take you to your new host. See the sidebar for a tip on dealing with that ugliness.

While you wait for the changes to take effect, don’t make any changes to the site. If you absolutely have to, make the changes to both the old and the new site since both sites will be in use by some people for the next few hours or days.

All Done… Mostly

You’ll know you’re looking at the new web host as soon as you can browse to your domain and see the unique new change you made above (“Leave a Trace”). So now your world looks like this:

All DNSs are pointing at your new host. Goodbye old host!

As soon as possible, do a good re-testing of the site, again paying special attention to the most tricky or complicated parts of the site. If your site produces any RSS feeds, check those too. If something’s wrong, well… fix it.

If you have a local email program like Outlook or Apple Mail, you should update it to start using your new web host. As discussed above, your host should have provided the necessary setup information. If you don’t have it, contact your new web host for help, and in the mean time use your new host’s webmail option. Test your email program by sending a message to yourself at your domain name.

If you’re using Google Webmaster Tools or another web analytics package, you might need to re-verify that the package recognizes your site in its new location. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, ignore this paragraph.)

Once your new host is live you should leave your account active with the old host for at least a week, and ideally a month. This is mainly in case you realize you’ve left something behind. Once you cancel your old host, your files will become inaccessible.

And once you’ve cancelled your old host account, congratulations!

You’re done!

Other Resources

You might find some of these pages helpful in providing other tips and details.

• How to Handle a Website Migration from One Web Host to Another
• Move Your Web Site to Another Hosting Service
• Maintaining Your Search Engine Ranking Despite Host Migration
• Smooth Web Move
• How To Move Your Website When You Change Hosting Companies
• Back Up Your Website, Just In Case
• On The Move: Moving Your Site
• How to Transfer Your Web Site to Another Host Without Losing It

Ask yourself this question: “Why am I doing this?”

(This is a pretty good question to ask before doing most things.)

If you can’t answer that question clearly and specifically, you should do more thinking before you make a Page. Answers like “Because everybody’s doing it” and “Because somebody asked me why we’re not on Facebook” don’t count.

There’s been much discussion of why and whether nonprofits should create Pages, and I won’t duplicate that here. If you’re still thinking this through you might find some of these resources helpful:

• Besty’s Blog: Facebook and Nonprofits
• Determining Your Social Network Needs
• IdealWare: Should Your Organization Use Social Networking Sites?
• Why Should Your Nonprofit Embrace Social Media (Or Not)?

However, less has been written about how (in detail) to create a Page.

Is that because it’s easy? Maybe. If you’re already comfortable with Facebook. And you’re mildly geeky. And you know about all the settings a tweaks you should put in place when setting up your Page.

Since a good number of people aren’t all of those things, here’s a little help.

Step 2: Avoid a Serious Mistake

Before messing with Facebook for your nonprofit you really, truly need to understand the differences between Profiles, Pages, and Groups. Why? Because if you use the wrong tool Facebook reserves the right to take action up to and including disabling your personal Facebook account.

Is Facebook mean enough to do this?

I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out.

Do you?

There are good discussions of the distinctions at Mashable and Wild Apricot. Here’s a summary of the summary.

Important: the distinctions have been in flux over the last year, and unfortunately Facebook’s official help on the topic is fleeting (they recently deleted and didn’t replace what little advice they offered on the topic). So understand that the rules might change over time.

“Profile”

• Type: Personal.
• What it is: A space in Facebook representing an individual person.
• Who may create it: You, for yourself, period.
• Warnings: You may not create a profile for a nonprofit (or any other) organization.

“Page”

• Type: Professional.
• What it is: A space in Facebook representing a real public figure, artist, brand or organization. People with Facebook profiles can become fans of Pages.
• Who may create it: Official representatives of the figure, artist, brand, or organization.
• Warnings: You may not create a profile for a fake organization. You may not create a profile for yourself unless you’re some sort of hot-diggity fancy-pants famous-type person. (Which, by the way, you are almost certainly not.)

“Group”

• Type: Informal.
• What it is: A space in Facebook representing pretty much anything that you think people might want to participate in. It’s a place for people to share opinions, pictures, etc. on the topic in question. For example, groups are great for clubs, informal events, and the like.
• Who may create it: Anyone, for pretty much anything.

Step 3: All the Other Steps

Ok, so I’m cheating a little on the counting thing.

3.1 Create Your Personal Profile

If you don’t already have a personal profile, you’ll need one so that you can be your nonprofit Page’s administrator. In this case go to the login page and create an account for yourself.

3.2 Create Your Nonprofit’s Page

Get to the login page. (If your Facebook account logs you in automatically, you’ll need to log out to see the login page.) Click “Create a Page” at the bottom of the sign-up area.

Facebook Login Page

Then under “Brand, Product, or Organization” pick “Non-Profit”.

Create New Page

Finally, promise that you’re authorized to represent the organization then click “Create”.

Actually Create the Page

3.3 Enter Basic Information

Now you’ll see something like this blank page:

Blank Facebook Page

Click “Edit Information” at the upper right, fill in whatever information you’d like to, then click “Done Editing” in the upper right.

Fill In Basic Information

3.4 Upload a Picture

You should now see your home Page along with the basic information you added. Move your cursor over that huge question mark image in the upper left and you’ll see “Change Picture” appear. Click it.

Upload a Picture

Your organization’s Photo Album will open with a message that there are no pictures. Click “Change Profile Picture”.

Change Profile Picture

Under “Upload Picture” click the Browse button and find the picture or logo that will represent your organization. Once you’ve found it, certify that you have the right to use it and click Upload Picture.

Facebook will automatically pick part of the picture to be your thumbnail. If you don’t like what it’s picked you can click the thumbnail window and drag the image until it’s the way you’d like it.

Dragging to Create Thumbnail Image

Finally, click “Back to Editing” in the upper right.

Back to Editing

3.5 Publish It

You should see a message at the top saying your Page hasn’t been published. Click “publish this Page”.

Home Page Not Yet Published

3.6 Make Your Settings

You can get to a few of your settings by clicking “Settings” near the top of your page—it has a little gear next to it.

But to see all the settings click “Edit Page” in the upper left:

Edit Page

Poke around in all of the settings to understand your options.

If nothing else you’ll want to think about your wall settings. Do you want fans to be able to post to your wall (i.e., more opportunity for interaction and a sense of community)? Or do you want editorial control of the site (i.e., less opportunity for people to post things on your wall that you wish they hadn’t posted, and that you have to clean up after)?

Here you can also define which tab from your Page people will arrive at by default.

Edit Wall Settings

3.7 Add Another Administrator

Q: What happens if you get hit by a proverbial bus? Or, worse, a tangible one? Who will be able to administer your organization’s Page?

A: Nobody.

The best way to avoid that kind of unwanted job security is to add one or more additional administrators. While still in “Edit Page” mode, look at the right-hand column of options. You’ll see a little box called “Admins” and your Facebook profile picture. Click “Add” to give more people the right to administer your Page.

Edit Right Sidebar

Some Other Things to Try

(Optional) Create a Discussion

If you’d like you can create a new Discussion area where people can… well… discuss things and stuff. Just click the “Discussions” tab at the top of your organization’s Page and then click “+ Start New Topic”.

(Optional) Create an Event

In the tabs at the top of your Page, click the big plus sign and choose Events, then click the “+ Create Event” button and fill in the details.

The ‘Create Event’ Form Filled Out

Click the “Save” button then provide any other details you’d like to, including inviting your Facebook friends to the event, then click “Finish and View” in the upper right.

Finish and View

Click your organization’s name in the upper left and you should see your organization’s Page including the newly created event.

(Optional) Blog on Facebook

The Notes feature is like a little blog that posts only to your Facebook Page. To add a Note (i.e., to post to your Facebook blog), click the Plus tab at the top of your Page and choose “Notes”.

Add Notes Hover

After adding the information for your post, click the “Publish” button and your note will appear on your Page.

Note Created

John Haydon’s blog has a great post on using Facebook Notes.

(Optional) Check out Facebook Insights

The Insights feature is great for understanding your fan base. Look for “Insights” in the right column of your Page and click “See All”. Note the the information will be pretty dull until you’ve got a few fans and they’ve interacted with your Page.

(Optional) Promote Your Facebook Page on Your Website

Facebook gives you two easy ways to promote your new Facebook Page on your website: Fan Boxes and Badges. These let you put little snippets of HTML code on your organization’s web page to create a link to your Facebook Page.

Click “Edit Page” in the upper right to go to your global settings. Now look down the right-hand column, near where you found your picture in the Admins box. You’ll find a link to “Add Fan Box to your site” and another link to “Get Your Badge”.

Both of these are similar in that they give you a snippet of code that you, or someone geekier than you, can add to your organization’s home page. The difference is that a Fan Box is larger and includes the most recent additions to your Page, where a Badge is smaller and just gives basic information.

Here’s a Fan Box:

Fan Box

And here’s a Badge:

Badge

You might want to wait until you have some fans, though. Both the Fan Box and the Badge will show how many fans your Page has. (As in, “My Loser Organization Has 0 Fans”.)

Happy Networking!

So here’s the thing: how do you pick? Counts vary, but even the most conservative estimates suggest there are over 10,000 groups offering web hosting services.

And there are dozens of sites offering reviews of web hosts.

Which review site do you trust?

The Wisdom Crankiness of Crowds

Answer: none of them.

In general you can’t tell who’s behind the reviews. Some review sites are editorial in style, with sites’ owners judging web hosts, and while I have no specific reason to doubt the editors’ good intentions, I have no specific reason to assume their good intentions either. And many editorial sites compare the quality of the plans’ offerings rather than the quality of their service, which—while not a bad thing to know—doesn’t tell me whether I’ll love or hate my new host a month from now.

Seeing opinions from actual users would be awfully useful, and many review sites do offer ratings from “actual” users. By those air-quotes I mean that you don’t know whether the people doing the ratings are actual users, or web hosts trying to ratchet up their own numbers, or web hosts trying to ratchet down their competitors’ numbers.

But we can rest our hope in the wisdom of crowds, or at least in the wisdom of crowds of review sites.

By aggregating ratings from multiple review sites we can hope to mitigate the effect of people cynically manipulating the system. We still have problems: for example, someone could game all of the review sites, some actual users have unrealistic expectations of their web hosts, and the reviews aren’t all recent.

But the results should be better than, as they say, squat.

An Analysis as of 2009-07-03

I recently analyzed 24 web hosts across five user-review based sites:

• Web Hosting Geeks
• Web Hosting Jury
• Web Hosting Reviews
• HostSearch
• WebHostingStuff

I also included one editorial-style site that seemed to me at least somewhat careful in its assessments:

• Upper Host

And for good measure I threw in the Better Business Bureau which, though it doesn’t know web hosting from a hole in the firewall, might at least flag some companies that are getting broadly slammed for bad business practices:

• Better Business Bureau

Probably-Necessary Caveats and Disclaimers

I surely haven’t gotten any kickbacks or other goodies from any of these web hosts or review sites.

Also, as I already mentioned, this technique isn’t perfect so the results deserve to be taken with a grain of salt. (Though hopefully a smaller grain of salt than if you visited any individual hosting review site.)

And finally, I haven’t read all the comments or personally investigated all these hosts, so my subjective evaluation isn’t really involved in this. It’s all about the numbers.

So you’re welcome to use this as guideline if you’d like, and while there are no guarantees here (or elsewhere in life) I hope you find it valuable.

Higher-Rated Hosts

These ratings represent a snapshot of reviewers’ overall happiness with their web hosts. The numbers don’t take into account cost, features, etc., all of which deserve investigation.

If you’re a nonprofit looking for a web host, idealware has a nice article on the topic.

Other Hosts

Hosts Omitted for Limited Data

I analyzed the following hosts but omitted them from the final listing because each had fewer than 100 total ratings across all review sites.

• ANHosting
• Aplus.net
• BlurStorm
• Dynamic Hosting
• Fat Cow
• Media Temple
• Mosso
• Network Solutions
• Pronet Hosting
• WebzPro

I eventually found a work-around and have posted a tutorial explaining the problem and its solution.

My target audience is… well, I guess it’s me a few months ago: someone who’s comfortable with technology and not scared by a terminal/command prompt, but who isn’t yet an expert on either Linux or Koha.

The guide begins with a clean Ubuntu installation, treads lightly through LAMP configuration, explains how to install Koha and work through likely installation issues, and ends with a reflection on what you need to think about before hosting your own live Koha implementation.

P.S. I was supposed to develop an 8–10 minute overview. Oops.

“Thin Clients in Libraries: A Brief Reflection” by Andy Giesler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.