Karibu!
Join this group to share best practices and hands-on techniques for developing and hosting a website for your organization. You can contribute to the blog to offer your help or to ask questions, as well as contribute to the wiki pages. Please contact Tobias Eigen if you are interested in helping steward this group.
Note: do not share private site information or passwords in this public space.
Getting started with your website:
The photo depicts a brainstorming session at a Time To Get Online workshop Kim Lowery and Tobias Eigen facilitated for the African Democracy Forum in Nairobi in 2004. Each of the yellow cards represents a web page.
There are many approaches to setting up a website, but usually it starts with a brainstorming session like this with all stakeholders and you will want to block out plenty of time to decide what you really need and make your plans. Chapter 4 of Kabissa's Time To Get Online manual is devoted to planning your website - I suggest you download it and print it out.
Link: http://wiki.kabissa.org/ttgo/4/start
Useful Tools and Resources for Website Hosting
Check out the Useful Tools and Resources for Website Hosting Wiki Book which you can browse online or download the whole book for offline reading. The book contains a list of commonly sought after tools and resources for web hosting gathered from the Kabissa community, tailored specifically for the needs of African organisations. Emphasis is on free and open source software, though commercial and low-cost services and software also welcome if it is useful and appropriate.
Book Review:
Drupal 6 Performance Tips for any serious Drupal developer by Trevor James and TJ Holowaychuk
Published by Packt publishing
Some months ago after the publication of my second Drupal book Drupal 6 Site Blueprints a Drupal disciple called me up and asked :
"Rabbi, my ass is grass; what can I do to take my megacool site to internet heaven? It is damn too slow".
"What have you got running on it ?", I asked him.
Drupal 6 Performance Tips for any serious Drupal developer by Trevor James and TJ Holowaychuk
Published by Packt publishing
Some months ago after the publication of my second Drupal book Drupal 6 Site Blueprints a Drupal disciple called me up and asked :
"Rabbi, my ass is grass; what can I do to take my megacool site to internet heaven? It is damn too slow".
"What have you got running on it ?", I asked him.
Terms:
Why your organization needs an online learning management system (LMS)
BY: Timi Ogunjobi DATE: 23 June, 2010 - 12:19A Learning Management System - LMS, is software that teachers can use to publish their coursework online effectively and efficiently. An example is the Open Source Moodle framework. The LMS is being successfully integrated in the following manners at most educational institutions:
How to create a Googlemap mashup site in hours using Drupal or Joomla!
BY: Timi Ogunjobi DATE: 23 June, 2010 - 12:05A Google map mashup site will typically permit content , profiles etc to be linked to a specific geographical location and displayed as a marker on a Google map . Such a website can be extremely useful for real estate marketing and also for social networks of moderate size. When clicked each marker will display the content that generated it. A page teaser can also be displayed on hover.This type of site is the basis of Pimp My Pizza a personal project which I am working on and which will enable users list and rate restaurants all over the UK.
How to build a powerful community blog in a couple of hours using Drupal or Joomla!
BY: Timi Ogunjobi DATE: 23 June, 2010 - 11:35Why would you be interested in building a blog site ? Well if you are reading this, you already are !! A blog is a contraction of the term weblog which means a type of website, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.
Drupal 6 Site Blueprints was a book that was published in August 2009 and written by Timi Ogunjobi.The objective of the book was to make it possible for complete novices to put together an impressive web site in a few hours by using the powerful Drupal framework from which most websites, including kabissa are now built.
Book link: Drupal 6 Site Blueprints
Kabissa site improvements to encourage community engagement and help search engines help us
BY: Tobias Eigen DATE: 9 June, 2010 - 12:49Dear Kabissa members! I have made a handful of improvements to the Kabissa website, all minor but which I expect will make it easier for people to find Kabissa via search engines and get engaged more quickly once they arrive on our site.
We want everyone working in Africa to be able to join Kabissa to showcase their organizations and share their news, insights and opportunities, and everyone - even those just interested in Africa - to be able to find and connect with each other and with African organizations to engage on issues crucial to Africa's development.
I welcome your feedback and suggestions on how to improve the site further.
Terms:
Today Google announced a major upgrade to its Google Docs service - see below for video and blog post. This is big news! I am already a big advocate of Google Docs, which is free (even on your own domain using Google Apps) and provides online organizing and sharing of documents, spreadsheets, and other typical work outputs. The new Google Docs now works in a way that is closer to what we expect while also having vastly improved collaboration features.
Terms:
This is a wiki - don't be shy! Click the "edit" tab to add resources or make improvements.
File Management, Transfer and Storage
Dropsend.com - quickly send files to others (and store backups)
Link: http://dropsend.com
From the website:
DropSend is an application to send large files to other people without being restricted by email attachment sizes.
With DropSend you upload a file online and the receiver gets an email with a download link.
CiviMail
Link: http://civicrm.org/civimail
Kabissa uses CiviMail, a module of CiviCRM, to send out our newsletters and special mailings. From the website: "CiviMail is a robust mass-mailing component which allows you to engage your constituents with personalized email blasts and newsletters.
CiviCRM
Link: http://www.civicrm.org
CiviCRM is the contact management module we at Kabissa use for managing our relationships with members of the Kabissa community. It integrates quite nicely with our Drupal-powered site, and also is available as a standalone application or Joomla component. Requires a traditional hosting account and some technical expertise to set up, but quite user-friendly and lowcost to operate once it's running.
SalesForce
Link: http://salesforce.com
Web Apps are installed usually on "traditional" hosting accounts and require some tech skills to set up initially - but then make every day maintenance of your web presence easy. See http://www.cmsmatrix.org to compare popular content management systems side by side. Below is a list of systems used with success in Africa.
We use "Online Services" to describe services that let you host your domain without requiring technical skills like FTP, HTML coding or programming. There are many such services available, mostly free or advertising driven. Of these we recommend Google Apps for email and team collaboration and Weebly for free website hosting.
We use "traditional" to describe website hosts that enable you to upload your own website files via FTP or set up and configure your own web applications (like content management systems - see below) - all hosted on your own dedicated domain account. Usually traditional hosts also provide email and a control panel for adding features and, increasingly, turnkey web applications that you can install instantly through a control panel.
Whoa - Media Temple is changing all mysql database passwords on its Grid-Service accounts
BY: Tobias Eigen DATE: 14 March, 2010 - 18:38UPDATE: DEADLINE FOR CHANGING DATABASE PASSWORDS IS APRIL 16TH - if you use MediaTemple Grid Service for website hosting do not ignore the notifications you are getting from them! have not yet done so, and you are not using one of the web apps listed below, you need to take action to ensure the continued operation of your website.
Who's going to DrupalCon San Francisco April 19-21 2010?
BY: Tobias Eigen DATE: 10 March, 2010 - 08:47I just received notice of the next Drupal Convention coming up next month, and am curious to see if African developers are planning to attend or contribute. Drupal is the open source platform that powers the Kabissa community website, and DrupalCon is always a much heralded and powerful event. Follow on twitter at @drupalcon and @drupal. Details below.
Terms:
I am excited to announce that the Maasai Girls Education Fund has a new Web site. Please visit the site and read about what we are doing in Kenya to improve the lives of Maasai girls, women, and their communities through education. The site is easy to navigate, informative, and contains many photos of our students and activities.
I hope you will visit the new site soon.
With best regards on behalf of all Maasai women,
*Please forward Widely*
This week Africa Action relaunched our website, www.africaaction.org. I hope you will agree that the new website is far more accessible, and has much deeper content.
Here are some of the new advantages:
Kabissa drupal recipe: staying on top of spam users and spam content
BY: Tobias Eigen DATE: 10 February, 2010 - 08:15If you run a community website you are no doubt familiar with spam spam spam - people fill up your site with fake users and content pointing to their payday loans and other useless spam sites. They do this to increase their rankings in google, not because they want to contribute to your site.
It's time to upgrade or switch to Firefox. Google is phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6.0 and other old browsers
BY: Tobias Eigen DATE: 2 February, 2010 - 10:37Keeping your web browser up to date is always a good idea to make sure websites function properly for you, but now you will soon start having problems with Gmail and Google Apps if you don't, according to an email I got from Google today (see below). This is an aggressive move on the part of Google that advances the field and will ultimately benefit everybody. I actively use Google's Chrome browser and Mozilla Firefox, both of which I strongly recommend over Internet Explorer.
Drupal is a freely available open source content management system that powers kabissa.org.
If you are new to Drupal and you are interested ln learning more, see http://www.kabissa.org or the info we have gathered specifically for the Kabissa community at http://kabissa.org/group/hosting/resources#Drupal
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