That’s why this redesign of the earlier website was about streamlining the site and helping to making the website leaner, with more emphasis on the fund-raising aspects.

On the website we use Canada Helps, a free donation tool for Canadian not-for-profits that accepts online donations for 83,000 charities in Canada. It also handles tax receipts for charitable giving and transfers funds to the organization’s bank account, which elevates work at the nfp level.

This is what I do for community groups such as the Stan Cassidy Centre and Fredericton’s Legal Community, and it’s what I can do to help your organization.

stancassidyfoundation.ca

The AdBlocker Blocker plugin works by redirecting users to another page if they’re running the software, I run it on thisismyurl.com for instance with great success.

You’re welcome to download the plugin for free at Regent Software.

The Fredericton Legal Advice Clinic website was designed to be a simple, information rich resource for prospective clients in the Fredericton region and to help distribute core legal knowledge in pamphlet form, to answer common questions from the public.

To carry out this goal, I created the website using the WordPress platform which automatically takes care of keywords and search engine optimization for their organization, as well as giving their volunteers the ability to easily update or add content, upload PDF’s and images or simply add news and change clinic dates without having to rely on external web developers.

The design is purposely minimalist to accommodate the limited technical resources of their primary clients, who are generally less prosperous and reliant on public computers or older home systems. To accommodate potential  limitations, the site is designed to meet the standards of government computers and offers easy navigation for visually or mobility impaired people.

This is what I do for community groups here in Fredericton, and it’s what I can do for you.

frederictonlegaladviceclinic.ca

One of the core reasons for building great websites is to market yourself using organic marketing, a term we use to describe having your website listed on search engine result pages and other free traffic sources. That’s why I’m so proud of a WordPress plugin that I wrote called Google Bot Bling and how it helps companies know their marketing is working.

Last week, when I posted an article on Online Registration Solutions which talked about the work I recently completed for CABiNET in Ottawa, my website automatically triggered a series of events which helped me to market myself to companies around the world.

My automatically updated my sitemap.xml document to show the addition of my new post which helps search engines such as Google and Yahoo discover new content on my website but it also automatically updated my RSS news feed which in turn notified both feedburner.com and pingomatic.com that my site had been updated. The site then sent notifications to my Twitter and Facebook accounts as well as several external RSS feeds, which in turn updated my LinkedIn profile.

When my sitemap.xml was updated, the website also sent a notification to Google’s Web Master Tools which in turn submitted the latest story to Google’s spider. It’s important to note that the original story was posted on my website at  12:39 pm which makes the attached email from Google Bot Bling (1 minute later) remarkable.

In the time it took for me to slip my coffee, the website:

1. posted the story
2. notified feedburner.com
3. notified pingomatic.com
4. notified twitter.com
5. notified facebook.com
6. notified linkedin.com
7. notified google.com
8. was crawled by Google’s spiders and indexed.

Here’s a screenshot  of the listing from Google, taken within seconds of the post being made:

This is the type of online marketing integration and social media solutions I give to for business, it’s what I do for charities and small companies and it’s what I can do for you.

• they wanted the form to be easy to use for customers;
• they wanted it to be easy to update and make changes;
• they wanted it to be printable, so users could mail cheques;
• they wanted it to accept online payments;

Online Registration Forms, Made Easy

The solution was to create an easy to use, easy to maintain online form which would be compatible with mobile devices and desktop computers. The form was created to be independent of the website design, so that it could fit into any design changes and allowed for easy updates to text or options.

After users input their details, the CABiNET form provides a printable version of an invoice as well as instructions for printing and mailing the invoice (along with payment of course) or an easy online payment system using PayPal to access VISA, MasterCard and American Express.

A second form was also created for general meetings such as those most business organizations (ie Chamber of Commerce or downtown associations) may operate and this form featured an editor tool capable of adding events and allowed the CABiNET team to update details such as description, event names, dates and costs while still easily offering online payment options or traditional print and pay solutions.

This is the type of web development work I do for non-profit organizations and it’s what I can do for you.

Technical support teams such as the one I managed with Yorkville University are complex, organic teams made up of contractors, support staff and technical professionals who are constantly working on a variety of projects well outside the scope of managements expertise. How then, do you give reliable and measurable metrics to management professionals?

The Goals

• Provide management with measurable data, designed to allow unbiased administration of technical services;
• Create a system which provides real-time indicators for comparative analysis
• Supply management with online graphs for easy analysis as well as raw data for complex reporting

The Solution

As with my work to carry out a streamlined student support tool for Yorkville University, the solution was found with osTicket, an easy to administrate tool designed to make tracking technical support issues easier.

Customizing osTicket

In this case, the solution I developed was a custom piece of software which allowed university management to receive daily report summaries directly from the osTicket solution, these summaries provided a daily analysis of the efficiency of the technical support team by measuring key indicators such as:

• New tickets created in the past 24 hours vs. a running daily average of tickets for other daily averages;
• Trouble tickets acted upon during the past 24 hours and a snapshot of average ticket activity per day;
• Tickets closed per day;
• Number of technical support staff logged into osTicket, and closures per staff member

Along with the Excel formatted, downloadable reports for each day’s activities and summary emails distributed to management teams each morning, the change to osCommerce allowed for real-time graphing of the technical support team as a snapshot of productivity.

The Bottom Line

In the case of technical support teams, the truth is that knowledge is power and as our business communities continue to grow in dependence on IT teams, managements ability to measure both the effectiveness and productivity of a support team become increasingly important.

That’s what I did with Yorkville University, and it’s what I can do for your company too.

That’s why when the BC Girl Guides posted an advertisement, looking for somebody to help update their website in Dreamweaver, I replied and donated my time to them something better, a complete WordPress powered website solution which enabled everyday guide leaders across the province to add content and update information without needing to depend on IT super soldiers.

The website uses WordPress to help optimize the content for Google which helps the volunteer organization not only easily add content but also allows them to have content featured and highlighted, since Google easily understands the structure of their website.

Additionally, the site optimization allows the Girl Guides of BC to appear high in the rankings for a variety of searches such as BC Sparks and Pathfinders BC. This organic marketing is vital to helping parents throughout British Columbia find local Girl Guide units and take part in a wonderful organization.

That’s what I did for the Girl Guides in BC Canada and it’s what I can do for you.

bc-girlguides.org

Getaway Graphics is a website I’ve owned for years but after almost two years of generating next to no traffic and languishing I was faced with the challenge of what to do with my one of my oldest domains.

Since it still has a strong Google PageRank of 4, I was reluctant to lose it entirely but I needed to find some way to make money from the website.

First, I reviewed my Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools reports to decide who was coming to the website and what I discovered was that most of my visitors came for my free WordPress templates. As a result, I’ve redesigned Getaway Graphics with the sole purpose of letting people download free WordPress themes.

How to make money giving away free themes

Next came a more interesting challenge. How would I make money with Getaway Graphics, if its entire purpose was to give away templates for free? Using WordPress to make sure I was able to quickly update the website, I set to work creating a series of custom WordPress functions (they’re like plugins but only good on one site) for the project and quickly  developed a solution.

PayPal Custom Shopping Cart

My solution was to integrate PayPal into my custom WordPress theme and offer users the ability to buy services related to my free themes, without having to leave the site. Using PayPal allowed me to quickly integrate support services into each theme download and create a revenue stream for my consulting business.

Finding these easy solutions for WordPress is how I help myself make  money on the web and it’s how I could help you too.

getawaygraphics.com

It goes without saying that when I was faced with the challenge of building my website I would choose to do it in WordPress but my site isn’t just a normal WordPress website, it’s a WordPress website designed to succeed by pushing what WordPress 3.0 was designed to do.

First, I’ve implemented a gorgeous custom WordPress theme that makes use of WordPress 3.0′s advanced feature set including multiple sidebars and Widget areas, Custom Menus and Featured Images but I’ve also added a series of my own Shortcodes throughout the website that let me customize WordPress for my unique needs.

WordPress Shortcode Plugins

For example, throughout my website you’ll notice that I’m able to tell you exactly how many times my software has been downloaded. This is done in real-time using API calls to the WordPress.org server to return the exact number of downloads. For example, Google Bot Bling has been download 10,383 times, while all my plugins have been downloaded 172,201 times to date.

You’ll note the Google Bot Bling screenshot pictured above has only 5,809 downloads when it was taken (July 23rd).

In addition to Shortcodes written to help me count plugins, I’ve also include shortcodes to link directly to common sections and optimize my text for SEO purposes.

Social Media Links

Another key feature of the new website is my integration into social media tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and industry specific links such as WordPress forums. These links are easily seen on the right hand bar of each page, quickly accessible by visitors.

More than just linking to popular social media channels, I’ve tied the site into site like Twitter and LinkedIn so each time I post a new article here on the site, it automatically updates my accounts across the web.

Contact Details

While every website needs a great contact page, the sidebar of christopherross.ca does even more with an ever-present reminder of how to get in touch with me, after all the purpose of my website is to help generate leads and speaking of leads, the Online Quote tool found on the website helps users generate a quick quote request by asking some simple questions and sending an email directly to both my laptop and mobile device.

Google Analytics, Statistics & Integration

As with every website I develop, my website uses both Google Analytics and WordPress Stats. These two plugins allow me to track and understand a variety of data including what pages users visit on the site, and how they found me.

Beyond simply adding statistics, I’ve also added deep integration with Google by creating links between my website and the spiders which index content for Google. I’ve accomplished this by adding a dynamically generated sitemap.xml file to my website and setting up a series of notification tools between my site and Google, in effect my website tells not only Google but thousands of sites around the world (including Twitter and LinkedIn) each time I update a post.

This is what I did to build my website, and just some of the steps I take to help each of my clients succeed on the web.

We all know it’s important for web masters to know what pages Google has indexed on our websites but how would you go about getting updated when Google indexed your page?

The Goal

• Design a tool which lets website owner know when Google has visited their website
• Create a notification tool which tells website owners when Google has indexed their site

The Solution

Google Bot Bling for WordPress is a plugin from Regent Software that tells you every time Google indexes a page on your website. The software sends a notification via email or records the visit to a file of your website.

The plugin has been downloaded 10,383 times.