In part one, we discussed the steps you can take to turn those online social media followers into real life volunteers for your organization. Well, we’re back and this time we have a few ideas on how you can utilize your organization’s website to make it easier for volunteers to sign up.
With everyone focused on creating the next big website, complete with social media integration and a design never seen by mankind, the competition dwarfs the most important part of a website: content.
Content is, after all, the reason people are visiting your site. So why, in all of the fuss about how to be ahead of the curve, is creating online content hiding in the strategy shadows? We’re not sure, but we’re determined to bring it into the light through a short blog series devoted to the art of content creation, because we believe you should think about content from day one.
Many of you may not know that for the last two years we have been busy working on a new service. Over those two years we’ve spent countless hours brainstorming, poring over analytics, and ultimately designing and developing this new service. We gave ourselves the self-imposed deadlines of DrupalCon 2012 and AAPC 2012 Pollie Awards to complete this project, and now that they’re here, we’re incredibly excited to unveil and talk to people about Albatross Reach.
Most web designers use wireframing as an important first step in their creative process. A wireframe is the web industry’s term for a schematic or blueprint of how the website will be organized and how it will function. Wireframes are generally devoid of any stylistic expression (color, typography, etc.), and are instead simply intended to show how different components of the page are prioritized and located. In this sense, they are also the first step in developing the site’s overall user experience.
When I was in college, I spent a summer developing an events calendar and new publishing system. It had lots of nifty, sophisticated features, like an in-browser image cropper, event reminders and downloadable iCal files. And it was a lot of work. The next summer, while working on an indie film studio's webiste, I came to the realization that I could have built the entire calendar app in a couple weeks using Drupal. I have been developing almost entirely in Drupal ever since.
Single page layouts are a really clean approach for brochure style websites, and all it takes is jQuery scrollTo() and a position:fixed navigational element to have a sleek looking face-page. Oh wait, whats that mobile webkit? You don’t do position fixed. Awesome.
