One of our weaknesses...

...has been documentation!
I'm sure I've said this before, but we have been so slack at taking photos etc. Most of the time we've been so focused on the task at hand that we didn't even think about it.

Now we come to the time when we have to make a slideshow for the Awards night, and find all of about 5 photos have been taken. What we do have, however, are many images of the things we've done such as pamphlets, business cards, and letterheads. So our plan for today is to go over to Glenfield to visit the centre, and grab a few examples of pamphlets etc with the old logo and pink design. Then we'll scan them in so we can do a sort of comparison.
We'll also get an opportunity to finally get a group photo! After all of the time spent together and a million emails, we have not one photo of Digital Fix with NSWC staff.

As for the most important aspect of the challenge: the website. It has been up and running properly for some time now, which is obviously a great thing. However, Digital Fix have absent-mindedly forgotten to take a screen shot of the old website for comparison. Sadly, it is never to be seen again...

Uni has been quite busy lately. It's the last week before mid-semester break so I'm sure everyone has a lot to do. Unfortunately this means team Digital Fix have been slacking off, and therefore I shall quickly type up a list of things to do over the holidays:

• Write up a document on how to admin the forum. Slightly more complicated than how to update website, but only needs to be used for moderating content.
• Start getting people to link to the site using the badge. This is a simple thing of emailing friends etc.
• Paypal - donations button ASAP. A possible long term goal is to set up a way for people to pay for courses online.
  

One thing we have done is the banner, which will hopefully look fabulous once printed.

supposedly finished, but not technically

So the challenge has supposedly been finished for some time now. But it's still in the back of our minds.
Miles, for one, is still in contact with Cathy to perfect the banner. Most importantly, however, we are just so close to having a PROPER website. It's very exciting. When we finally get the site onto the temporary host, we can send out links and actually begin the process of promoting the website. At the moment people can use the website at www.womyn-ctr.co.nz but we can't give them links to particular pages (e.g. our services).
I'm actually quite keen to just see how the badge idea will work (it may not), and whether the idea can be applied to other organisations.

Finally, it will be just great when we can get a list of links on here to various things we've done so other teams can see. I had a great time snooping through everyone else's stuff.

I can't wait for the awards dinner, EXCITEMENT!

Afterthought

Hey!

Something we discussed at the beginning of the challenge but completely forgot to add to our brief: Google Analytics. So we are just adding it now, 2 days after the end of the challenge. If we'd set it up at the start of the challenge it would have been interesting to collect a bit of data from the old site to compare with the new one but that's ok.

Actually, we've been quite slack overall on the comparing front. We focused so much on getting the site done and cool-looking and functional that we let down the documenting side. This means that you don't get to see the old site which, when put next to the new one, really illustrates how much we have achieved in terms of creating a fresh new look for the centre, and making the website more welcoming. Also, I've noticed that we haven't put the manual that Kat created up online. I'll text her to remedy that as soon as possible. And does anyone want to see a screen shot of the Silverstripe CMS? I have to say that we are so glad to have found Silverstripe. It was the perfect CMS for our needs and with Kat's manual+ the online video tutorials, I have no doubt the North Shore Women's Centre will be able to update their own website confidently.

We are quite happy with how the forum is going so far. The forum was quite an integral part of our brief and though not many people have been contributing yet (the forum is only about 3 days old), we have quite a few members just reading.

Unfortunately the hosting situation is still not resolved so the badge doesn't work yet (because it would be linking to www.screengraffit.com/digitalfix/ instead of www-womyn-ctr.co.nz). This is quite disappointing as we thought it was such a good idea and could have been quite successful. We really wanted to try to tap into some sort of viral campaign and this seemed like the perfect solution. I am going to push this as soon as the hosting situation is sorted out. I can't wait to see the badge on people's blogs and websites.

WHOA

Ok everyone, see the magic, click here.

After two and a half hours of negotiation, we finally have a proper website... well kind of. The data is still coming from www.screengraffiti.com/digitalfix/ but going to the domain name www.womyn-ctr.co.nz.

The hosting problem is one that will have to be sorted out properly later on. But that will do as a short term solution. On Monday we shall resume the investigations into who could possible know the password, everyone has finished work now, and there's nothing we can do over the weekend.

We shall begin by thanking Mike Cochrane from gardyneHOLT design partners. I cannot even start describing how much of a big help he has been over the past 3 hours! Together we discovered 4 different web hosting companies were involved in the womyn-ctr domain: Domainz, Maxnet, DMD, Swizzle... Not to mention Hostican who still haven't gotten back to us.
With his insane technical knowledge, Mike narrowed it down to DMD and found out that 2 key people in their tech staff do not work there anymore which might explain the fact that no-one knows the password. However, they have agreed to look into it and hopefully will be able to tell us what it is on Monday.

Secondly, we would like to thank Robbie Boyd for all the web-savvy wisdom he passed on to us, and for adopting the site onto www.screengraffiti.com. Without him we would only have achieved half what we actually did! He pointed us towards Silvertripe and he told us how to design a website with usability in mind. Really, he has been the person Digital Fix has turned to the most, and without him the site would probably still be in concept stages! Thank you so much.

Thirdly, we'd like to thank yMedia for giving us this opportunity. It was a really eye-opening experience and all three of us have learnt a lot from it. Especially to expect the unexpected! It's amazing how you can have fun and be stressed-out at the same time! But seriously, time management is the key.

And last but not least, our buddies at the North Shore Women's Centre! These ladies have been truly amazing. So accomodating and nice, and really good at imagining our ideas! Of course, they have particular tastes and we have to adapt our design to fit with their vision, but that's what working with a client is all about, and we are so glad that they're happy about the final result. Really, we couldn't have expected more from them, and we look forward to continuing to work with them. Miles is already drawing up concepts for the banner which should be ready by Monday, and I will keep in touch with Mike to sort out the hosting problems. Katherine is still emailing back and forth with Cathy on the details surrounding administrating the website. In 10 minutes the yMedia challenge ends, but that doesn't mean we'll cease to help these women out. In the couple of weeks we've worked with them they have imparted to us so much wisdom on gender issues and feminism, it's really quite hard not to get caught up in it all.

We are so happy. Everything came together in the end. The very end haha.

Last minute addition to the brief!

Kaira (NSWC manager) has just told us of an exciting last minute addition to the brief!
She found out about injoygraphics offering to print free banners for non-profit organisations if artwork is provided. Apparently they only had 2 left on offer. Today she received email confirmation (NSWC managed to get the last one) and has sent us the content and dimension details.

Digital Fix shall quickly whip-up an amazing banner design for the centre. This will be a great way to physically advertise the centre to those women who do not use digital media, and a chance for the centre to reach out to more people. What an awesome opportunity!

The Waiting Game

After hurriedly signing up for a hostican contract and waiting for it to go through yesterday, I got up today to find a forwarded email from Cathy at the North Shore Women's Centre containing these words:
"Thank you for contacting HostICan Verifications.
It seems your order didn't quite process correctly. Please can you provide me with your domain name for your account, so I may get it setup? Sorry for the inconvenience."

Cathy has since replied but it looks unlikely that we will be able to change their website by 6pm tonight. Luckily the new website does have a temporary home at www.screengraffiti.com/digitalfix/ thanks to Robbie adopting it onto his website. This means that we can start getting people using the forum before the challenge is even over. However, the badge won't be able to be disseminated as it would link to the wrong website. -sigh-

Also, as we have spent all our time and efforts sorting out this hosting business and the sign-up process for hostican, we have had to sideline signing up to paypal. However, it is a simple process once approval is gotten from the trustees and I think that though the centre did not get a donations button from us in the Challenge, they have learnt enough about it to achieve that themselves in the coming weeks.
In the future, we will endeavour to help them go even further, by trying to set up a system where not only can people sign up for courses through the website, but they may also pay the fees through paypal, making everything available online. This would save the North Shore Women's Centre a lot of time sorting out enrolments.

-Aurelie

The end, I suppose...

Well, it's been a rather long, sometimes frustrating but mostly cool two weeks. I personally haven't been too busy this last week, most of my work was the week before, getting a logo and colours sorted. I also did a whole lot of website concepts, a pamphlet, a business card and a letterhead (some of which are on the previous post).

This week the primary frustration was not having information about the centre's current web host who, as we learnt on wednesday, does not support php. So the end of this week has been all about trying to get them signed up on a new host in time for the end tonight. Yesterday at about 4pm, we signed them up to 'hostican' who are cheaper than their current host and also support php. Unfortunately, they take 24hrs to confirm a contract so not sure whether we'll get all the stuff migrated over from the current temporary host.

But, on the brighter side, we've made a badge for the women's centre to distribute to other women's centres and blogs to link to their site, constructed a forum, set up silverstripe and taught the women's centre how to use it, re-organised the navigation structure of the site, given the page a whole new look, organised a library of fonts, images and other files for use in future designs and created an online form so that people can contact the centre directly from the website. Silverstripe really is the most important thing from the centre's point of view, because it is such a huge step up from the system they had previously, it will allow them to make the website very dynamic, hopefully new content will appear at least weekly!

So it's been fairly busy.

This experience has been awesome, it feels great doing something that benefits people who spend their lives helping others, learning a thing or two about web design and having heaps of fun times along the way. It's been cool to do some design again, it makes a really nice change from the usual rigours of studying Electrical Engineering :)
So I guess this is over and out from me, I can't wait to have a good look at what everyone else has done, I'll see you all at the awards dinner!

-Miles

Host problems + lack of time

It took a week and a half to get the FTP info for the centre's current host and last night we discovered that the host (dmd) is likely to not support php (a code language essential for Silverstripe to function). So we went into problem-solving mode and at 1am started looking for a suitable new host for the centre's website. We were quite concerned because we didn't want to have to make the NSWC fork out a couple of hundred dollars for a new host, and we began feeling quite guilty that maybe we'd blown it for our challenge.

Then, taddaa! After looking at many costly hosts we found www.hostican.com. At the moment they have a deal where they will pay off your old contract, so that the centre wouldn't have to pay 2 hosts at the same time. Also, they have waived the set-up fee and their monthly rate (about $6-$7 depending on the contract) is very reasonable.
One hiccup however, the site says that after payment it takes around 24 hours for the contract to come into effect. So at the moment we are encouraging the centre to act as soon as possible, in the hopes that hostican is the centre's host by Friday so that we can migrate the site before the 6pm deadline. Whatever happens we will be working right to the very end, as this will delay us quite a bit while we wait.

This also means that we aren't able to disseminate our badge. This is quite heartbreaking as we were looking forward to seeing whether it would succeed and people would like the idea.

One positive aspect: all 3 of us are driving over to the centre tomorrow to teach Cathy how to use Silverstripe. We are very excited about this as the moment the centre staff are able to update their own website will be very triumphant! We've asked her to prepare a topic for the 'important issues' page or a news bulletin for the home page so that once we are all confident she can use it, Cathy can attempt to update the site herself while we are there to give any assistance needed. We are hoping all goes smoothly and she requires no help, so we can sit back and relax knowing the staff will have no problems after we're gone.

Can't believe the end is only 2 days away. Whoa. I keep telling myself the other teams are just as busy as we are, which kinda helps calm me down, but if the hosting problem isn't sorted out then we really cannot fulfill our brief... and that's all out of our hands.

A rebranding exercise

Miles has been hard at work designing a fresh new image for the NSWC. Below are examples of possible new designs for a pamphlet and a business card. Once I get my hands on the current ones I will scan them in to compare the old with the new.

We are getting to the stage in the Challenge where stress is kicking in. 2 team members have a uni forum on Wednesday night and an essay due on Friday (which neither has started) and the 3rd has a girlfriend coming back from London on Friday whom he hasn't seen in a month. So we all have a few distractions trying to cloud our vision, but we are determined to see the Challenge through and if that means failing an essay, well so be it! The North Shore Women's Centre have put all their hopes in our hands and we must not let them down. We have such high ambition for the website and we hope to really achieve the best we can. Unfortunately time is running against us and we keep realising all the things we could do "if only we had more time".

At the very least we know that even if we don't achieve everything we have set out to do, we will have made a big difference in the way the centre uses their own website, simply because it can be updated daily as opposed to fortnightly.

We are all so excited to get to the end, and to see all the other teams' work come together. It will be very interesting to compare all the projects and the difference everyone has made in their NPO's daily use of digital media.

-Aurélie

Mid-Challenge Review - The week ahead

We did an awesome video for you guys... then when I went to edit it I realised I couldn't get any sound out of it. Because the deadline for the review is today we won't have time to redo it so I'll just do a written overview of what I can remember everyone saying.

Aurelie:

• One thing we have definitely taken off our to-do list is the changing of domain name. Basically, we've realised that it's not needed and would bring unnecessary costs to the centre. Being a non-profit organisation means that funds need to be spent on more important things, and because the current website ranks very high on google, it means that people can find the centre's site easily despite the strange domain name.

• Our initial brief did not mention Silverstripe as our CMS. We've found this to be relatively easy-to-use and quite customisable. It also has a built-in newsletter function.

• Finally, we have decided that if we complete the planned website before the deadline, we will add an online donations button. This is only if approval can be gotten on time, as anything to do with money will probably go through an even more lengthy process than the designs had to go through.

Miles:

• After getting approval for the use of the logo I designed, I have now created concepts for pamphlets and business cards. I am aiming to create a fresh image for the centre to attract new members as well as invite current members to get more involved.

• The website design is already on its way to getting approval and I've made the badge. The next step is finally getting the FTP information for the centre's website host. Without this we can't migrate the site to the centre's domain name, which is quite an important step! Unfortunately the centre is having problems getting hold of the person that used to take care of the old website.

• I have been discussing forum options with a professional web developer who will suggest some options. I am hoping for a definite solution to be found by tomorrow so that I can start helping to implement it – we are leaning towards phpBB.

Katherine:

• I'll be going through current content and condensing it down. I shall fix current spelling/grammar mistakes, and basically make the whole site more readable. At the moment the home page has paragraphs which are way too long and distract from the main message. I shall also separate the latest news from the centre introduction.

• The most important part of the whole project however is making sure the North Shore Women's Centre staff are able to update the website themselves. There is no use in us changing the CMS to something more accessible if it makes no difference. My main task will be to liaise with the staff to teach them the ins and outs of the system. I have also begun to put together a step-by-step guide to using Silverstripe and have planned a meeting with them for next Thursday, in which we have dedicated a whole hour to going through such processes as sending a newsletter, adding a new page, adding to an existing page, using links and anchors, etc.

• We hope to make a huge difference to the way the centre currently uses digital tools and allow them to update their own website with anything at anytime.

-Aurelie