FORUM PAGEI took out the forum page as there was no engagement, but thought I would add it back in so that people can see the functionality that Weebly sites offer. It's a simple forum, but a functional one. Not many other website builders allows you to add a forum. Squarespace allows a thirdparty embed called Mutt which Weebly also allows but the review of Mutt on Weebly have not been great. You can see the forum page here: http://debbiediscovers.weebly.com/forum Tockify CalendarThere is also the option to add a pinboard style calendar. This is a paid option (with a 2 week free trial). I am unlikely to continue with the trial but it's here if you want to check out it's functionality. You can change the view to a monthly view or an agenda view. Weebly also provides a free option to add a simple Campaign Survey with a number of pre-determined options (e.g. age, income, education, satisfaction, etc). FEEL FREE TO SUBMIT YOUR RESPONSES TO MY CAMPAIGN SURVEY!!
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I decided to build this website for two reasons:
1. To test out the new Weebly website editor. As some of you may know, I have been on a mission to code and make websites, starting with code-free WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) website builders and now with real code. 2. To document my fundraising efforts and to keep everyone else updated with the latest news. This is an exciting project not only because it's something I've always wanted to do, but because it gives me the opportunity to try out many social media marketing tactics that I've been dying to try. Building a school has been something I've always wanted to do. I've never done it before because I had not found the right partner to do it with and it's also a scary commitment. What if I don't raise enough funds. What if no one contributes to my campaign. When I heard about Pencils of Promise from the Bain alumni newsletter, I went to it website and I fell in love with PoP. Pencils of Promise is data-driven, results-driven, for purpose for profit rather than non-profit, and focused on creating sustainable, long-term results. These are all core Bain principles so it's not surprising that the founder Adam Braun was an ex-Bainee. I have no doubt that this is the right organisation for me to support. But it's not just me. PoP has many amazing partners who have built schools with it. This includes Motley Fool (UK) who's Foolanthrophy Holiday Drive campaign raised enough money to build 5 schools, Chegg, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Google, Warby Parker (Bain alum), Microsoft, Birchbox (Bain alum), Elizabeth Arden, Estee Lauder, Scotch, General Assembly, Delta Airlines, British Airways, Hewlett Packard, and many more. See the full list here In fact, Pencils of Promise breaks ground on a new school every 90 hours. I was further enthralled when I read about PoP's experiments with Sugata Mitra and Laos is one of my favourite countries in South East Asia. This blog documents: 1. Website modifications: The next post has a full review of the new Weebly editor. Any modifications or add-on apps are also documented in subsequent posts. 2. My social media marketing campaign - This includes:
3. Updates to my fundraising campaign To subscribe to my newsletter: please go to http://deb.bi/PoPNewsletter. Thank you to those who have supported, and for all the new visitors, please feel free to look around, leave a message (and hopefully a donation). Debbie I recently bought the domain deb.bi to use as a branded link shortener like bit.ly. Many companies use branded short links:
How to configure a link shortener: YOURLS software Installing the link shortener was not easy. Most of the sources I googled recommended the free and open source YOURLS (Your Own URL Shortener) software. But installing it was difficult for a non-technie (you have to create a SQL database, configure the installation, create a .htcaccess file, and other set up details). The .htcaccess file (a very powerful file) can lead to unwanted side effects if not careful. I learnt this the hard way - it wiped out all my websites at least 3 times because I did not configure it properly. How to configure a link shortener: Using bit.ly Fortunately, I recently discovered that bit.ly allows you to configure your own branded domain for free. Bit.ly is my favourite link shortener because it allows you to track link click statistics and it's API can be used with most other applications. Users of bit.ly should note that unless you configure your setting to private, anyone can see your link click statistics by appending + after your URL (a trick I learnt from Google Analytics Evangalist Avinash Kaushik's blog Ozcam Razor, used to spy on competitor links). Using your branded URL with bit.ly The first thing you have to note when using bit.ly is that it works as a redirect (i.e. deb.bi redirects to bit.ly), so if the extension is already taken up, it is not available. However, link extensions are case sensitive, so you can play around with it to find one that is available. That also means that if you get one character wrong, it leads to a 401 page (page for broken links that says the page does not exist). So I've made a couple of boo boos so far (e.g. my site is deb.bi/WantstoBuildaSchool and I've mistyped it as deb.bi/WantsToBuildaSchool as well as deb.bi/WantstoBuildASchool. Luckily Tobi Boonstoppel and Sasagu Kondo have kindly pointed them out to me. Where to find a short domain The best places to find short domains are: Domainr and 101 Domain. Some of the international TLD are very cheap (e.g. .ru costs $12.95, .de costs $6.95 while others are extremely expensive (e.g. most of the African ones are $300-600, and the Namibia domain .na costs a whopping US$5,749.99!). It's practically impossible to find a 4 character one like oe.cd except for those in the UK - Namecheap offer XX.UK domains (I tried to register DK.UK but you can't register the .UK if the .com.UK is already taken up and dk.com.uk belongs to Dorling Kindersley, the book publisher). I highly recommend getting a branded short link. It's great for brand building if you're a business and with all the new TLDs, there are many options to choose from! |
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DEBORAH KAYThis is a simple blog to track my fundraising activities and to keep family, friends and supporters updated on my progress. Archives |