Archive for the 'Applications' Category
September 14, 2005
5 Ways to Improve the Online Dues Payment Process
Associations often make their online dues payment processes hard to navigate for their members. Given that dues still form a significant chunk of any association’s revenue, it’s shocking how hard some of them make it for their members to give them money. These five tips focus on how to make your online dues payment system ridiculously easy in order to gather as much dues online as possible.
- Remove all extraneous form fields from the payment process. Do not ask them to complete a survey or provide demo
ngraphic data before providing payment. You will lose people for each additional unnecessary element you make them complete which requires you to then gather dues payment through the much more expensive snail mail methods. - When possible, pre-populate any fields you do require them to complete. You know their mailing address. Don’t make them enter it again!
- Instead of posting dire warnings about not clicking submit twice (which can cause double payment depending upon your system), disable the submit button via javascript after the first click. Why threaten the user when you can easily disable the behavior that causes the problem? Threats like that make paying online scary. You will lose people who don’t want to risk it.
- Send an e-mail notification for paying dues online well in advance of mailing your paper invoices. Remove those who have already paid online from your later mailings to save money on printing and postage.
- Include an encrypted link in your e-mail notification that bypasses your login system to your online dues payment system. When the member clicks the link generated just for them it should automatically authenticate them and allow them to immediately pay for their dues without having to remember their login. This link should expire after a few days and it should only be applicable to paying dues, not to logging them in to the rest of the site.
The point of all these tips is to make it as easy as possible for your members to do the one action your renewal notice should spur: paying dues.
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August 5, 2005
tRuTag: Aggregate Your Tags
Here is a nifty web app: tRuTag
I’ve created tRuTag with Ruby because I wanted to explore tagging. What it does is create an html page of your tags on various sites and then allows you to explore them on other sites.
I use it as my homepage and have just implemented some of it’s functionlity on my Ruby on Rails site. Below is a sample page. Please view the readme or download tRuTag and enjoy!
It requires Ruby on Rails to run. I’ll probably try to get this set up on my laptop this weekend.
(Via O’Reilly Radar.)
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July 12, 2005
Scaling Applications with Ruby on Rails
One of my more geekly habits is to track up and coming technologies for the web. Ruby on Rails is a relatively new development framework that focuses on allowing rapid prototyping of database-driven web applications. Here is a nice post on how RoR can scale up under heavy load.
Bonus link: a 15 minute video on how to create a weblog system in RoR in considerably less than 15 minutes. Assuming you know RoR inside and out, of course.
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May 25, 2005
Now this is a nifty app: Synergy
Synergy is an open source tool that allows you to use one monitor and keyboard for multiple computers. You switch between the computers by simply moving your mouse off the side of you current screen. It even works across several operating systems, so you can quickly switch from your Linux desktop to a Windows box for example. Wow!
With synergy, all the computers on your desktop form a single virtual screen. You use the mouse and keyboard of only one of the computers while you use all of the monitors on all of the computers. You tell synergy how many screens you have and their positions relative to one another. Synergy then detects when the mouse moves off the edge of a screen and jumps it instantly to the neighboring screen. The keyboard works normally on each screen; input goes to whichever screen has the cursor.”
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May 25, 2005
The Technology Powering High Context
Ben asks for more tech content (while comparing me to Darth Vader) and I deliver! :)
I made a few changes to the technology and hosting for my site as I re-did the design and content for my consulting biz. Here is an overview of the changes.
Content Management
I am using the latest version of WordPress to power the entire site. Not only can it blog, it can also host static content pages starting with the 1.5 version. I used the static front page plugin to have static introductory text as the home page. I also made a page template that included much of the markup from the main index template in order to move the blog to a /weblog/ subdirectory.
I was a bit torn about moving the blog off the home page but I ultimately decided that it was best to make a clean introduction on the home page for new visitors and regulars could go to the new blog page. This turned out to be a bit tricky to get to work. Drop me a line if you want my code, happy to share it.
Finally, sticking with WP had the added bonus of keeping all my existing RSS feeds in place without a lot of tweaking.
Design
The design for the site is a modified version of the Kubrick template that D. Keith Robinson just slammed today as way too common. I’m crushed but I don’t think I’ll redesign just yet. :) I think it is a very flexible template that can be pretty extensively modified if you want.
The logo was designed by my wife Jennifer. Being married to a graphic designer has its perks.
Hosting
The site is now hosted with Text Drive, a new hosting company that caters to cutting edge open source technology. In fact, when you sign up for an account a significant part of the proceeds go to the open source project of your choice. I dedicated mine to WordPress. As they are a start-up, there are pros and cons. On the pro side they are incredibly responsive and very willing to change and experiment. The con that comes with that is a bit more downtime than usual as they shake out their systems.
So, nothing too extraordinary, except that I was able to rapidly build a new site using open source technology and even an open source design template. If you have comments on the design, content or anything else, please post them to this entry. I’d love to hear the feedback.
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May 19, 2005
Server-side Blogginess from MS
Looks like Microsoft is getting around to formally addressing blogging with server-side tools.
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March 25, 2005
Managing Logins for a Members-only Web Site
How to manage member access to member-only areas of an association’s web site is a common question posted to the ASAE Technology listserv. Since I’ve answered it a few times I thought I would go ahead and post my stock reply here to save some typing in the future. :)
Many associations, when they first create a member-only area of their web site, have used a member’s ID number and last name to control access. However, that same information is usually listed on mailing labels and membership cards. This method is very easy to set up, administer and communicate to members. However, having that info on mailing labels is definitely a security risk. The size of the risk really depends upon what they can do with the account once they login. If it’s just to view content (usually the case for early efforts), the risk is relatively low. If it can include e-commerce transactions or editing the members’ data in your association management system (what most associations want to add or expand upon now), then the risk is pretty high. Either way, I think it is smart to move to something more secure.
When I came to ASHA in 2000 we were using the same account number/last name scheme for access and that info was and is on every mailing label and membership card. We then implemented a username/password system that allowed the user to create their own login name and password. Over time, we found many members had problems remembering the login name they had created for themselves. A few years later we migrated to using their e-mail address as their login name which has dramatically reduced support calls for lost user names (many of our members call us instead of using the account help tools on the site). Based on our own experience, I would recommend going with e-mail as the login name. That seems to be the emerging standard around the web for many major sites out there (Amazon being the most notable).
Some gotchas to look out for when using e-mail as the username:
- Each member must provide a unique e-mail address. Sometimes this is an issue when a spouse shares the same account and is also a member.
- You should provide instructions on free services that members without an e-mail address can use to get one (there are still some people without e-mail addresses!). This is also useful in the spouse shared address situation.
- Clearly state how the address will be used by the association when the members supplies it to ease privacy/spam concerns on the part of the member
- Consider your response to members who refuse to supply you with an e-mail address but want access to the member-only content and services (I have encountered this a few times).
- Members should be able to change their e-mail address at any time without having to re-register with the site. In technical terms, test for e-mail uniqueness but don’t use it as the primary key for the record.
Finally, you will need to associate the login with their account number in some way. You might ask for their member ID number at the time they register or associate the login with their account later through some other process. I strongly suggest automating the process as much as possible while still preventing the same ID number from being associated with more than one login.
Hopefully the above info will help you get a jump start on the design (or redesign) of your web site login system.
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March 6, 2005
Wikipedia List of CMSs
Here is a Wikipedia page that lists both open/free and proprietary content management systems.
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February 22, 2005
AJAX
Wondering how Google creates such great interfaces for web applications such as Gmail and Google Maps?
AJAX:
Google Suggest and Google Maps are two examples of a new approach to web applications that we at Adaptive Path have been calling Ajax. The name is shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML, and it represents a fundamental shift in what’s possible on the Web.
Defining Ajax
Ajax isn’t a technology. It’s really several technologies, each flourishing in its own right, coming together in powerful new ways. Ajax incorporates:
* standards-based presentation using XHTML and CSS;
* dynamic display and interaction using the Document Object Model;
* data interchange and manipulation using XML and XSLT;
* asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest;
* and JavaScript binding everything together.
It’s basically the creative use of several mature web technologies in combination. Follow the link above to read more in the very informative article by Jesse James Garrett.
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February 2, 2005
Thunderstone: Search Appliance SBE
Via CMS Watch: Thunderstone Search Appliance SBE. Thunderstone’s answer to the Google Mini. I’ve always liked Thuderstone’s search engine and agree with CMS Watch that it is a viable alternative to the Google boxes.
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