Blog

How the ‘magic of tidying’ will make you a better writer.

I’m now fifty-three pages into the worldwide bestseller ‘The Life-changing Magic of Tidying’ by Marie Kondo. And I’m hooked (not least by her instructions on how to fold socks). How a subject so mundane can be so captivating is a bit of a mystery, especially given that what I’ve read so far boils down to […]

10 things I’ve learned from 10 years of writing fundraising communications

You’re busy, lazy, or maybe reading this whilst watching The X Factor so let’s cut straight to the chase… 1People relate to people Your cause, your mission, your innovative approach, your shocking statistics, your lovely bar chart, your ROI and low admin costs are all great – but we humans reserve our most emotional responses […]

Gravity Forms donations Part 2 – tracking in Google Analytics

If you were following part one when we built a donations form using Gravity Forms and Paypal, then you’re hopefully up and running and have tested it out on your site. The next step is to hook it up to your Google Analytics account so you can start tracking where all these donors are coming from. […]

How to build a WordPress charity/nonprofit donation form with Gravity Forms – Part 1

In a previous blog post I talked about what makes a good donation form for a small charity. Here’s a tutorial on how to build your own. This recipe combines technologies that are commonly used on charity websites – WordPress, Gravity Forms, Paypal and Mailchimp. Because of their popularity and ubiquity, it’s relatively easy to set […]

How to prevent your charity website from being hacked – WordPress tips and tutorial

Hacked charity websites seem to have been in the news a lot recently. Having your site hacked can be a pretty traumatising experience, and if it’s not quickly fixed it can incur big reputational risks, loss of income and the need to send some really awkward emails to your supporters telling them that their data […]

WordPress tutorial: Animated slide effect for navigation

I’ve had a few people ask how to replicate the animated navigation bar effect used on one of my example sites. I’m not sure how best to describe it – the tabs kind of slide up as you hover over them. It’s easier to just see it in action: This example uses a Genesis framework […]

How to brief a copywriter – Six simple steps and a free template

When it comes to getting some compelling copy written for your website or marketing materials, you’ll often find that writing the brief takes longer than it would for you to just write the copy yourself. But if you don’t take a little bit of time to brief your copywriter properly, they’ll send you back a […]

Why I swapped Bootstrap for WordPress Genesis

I’ve wrangled many a website theme over the years and built a few websites from scratch. I was thrilled one day when I came across the Twitter Bootstrap system because it saved huge amounts of time and laid a much better and quicker foundation for building sites and themes on top of. I’d experimented with […]

How to create a Drupal 7 mobile site on a subdomain with Boost caching

Drupal is a great Content Management System and it has some powerful caching options… but getting them to work well with a mobile site subdomain can be tricky. The Boost module is a very popular static caching one that can produce huge performance benefits for sites with a lot of anonymous visitors. It works by […]

Buzzword bingo: 18 words you shouldn’t be using on your charity website

In the last blog we talked about storytelling and how your charity website might not be doing as great a job at that as it could be. Here’s the ‘bonfire of the buzzwords’ that I mentioned. It won’t help you figure out what your story is, but it will help you tell it better once […]