Editing Tips – Page 4 – Wingrove-Services

Online Referral Form

From time to time I am asked about whether it is possible to add an online referral form. While anything is possible they can get very complicated and if you wish to add conditional elements into the form as well, the complexity rises further. If one also considers making some fields mandatory, then the complexity rises further and you run the risk that the form cannot be submitted because some element is missing.

Just for the record

I have looked at a number of solutions, but so far have not found one that universally works for all. But if there is significant interest I can look again.

Form Using Standard Form Plugin

I currently favour Contact Form 7 as a contact form plugin. It is one of the most popular ones out there. I also use several add on plugins as well. I know there are some additional plugins which can be used to control the formatting and make conditional entries into the form. But for a newbie (i.e. you), it is going to be a bit difficult to get your head around all of the things the form can do.

But it is possible, however the form would likely be submitted in several parts for very complicated forms.

Adobe Form Solution

I am aware that if you subscribe to one of the Adobe products relating to PDF management that it is possible to embed a PDF form in your website which a user can fill in online. However this solution is very expensive (for charities), so I have not looked at this in any further detail.

Google Forms

Here there are several choices, but from my earlier experience there were limitations which might affect your users. Google offers a suite of programs available to people with gmail accounts. If you are a chrome book user (very simple low cost computer), you will know that while you cannot run MicroSoft Applications on your chrome book, you can run equivalent applications which are compatible with the popular Office Apps. All of this is free. But you need to be using Chrome as a browser. Not all computers will have Chrome installed. So this may block this path.

G-Suite

There is a business version as well of G Suite, which is not particularly expensive. There is the basic version of G Suite at 6$ per month, Business at $12 and Enterprise at $25. It includes secure communications, office type apps run online, calendering and various other things. Find out more here: https://gsuite.google.com/

The detail about Google Forms can be found here: https://gsuite.google.com/products/forms/

What I am not sure about is from a privacy standpoint where is the data collected and stored (you need to know this from a GDPR perspective,) whether it is encrypted, and whether copies are held somewhere. But most fundamentally, will it work in FireFox, Safari, Edge, MS Explorer etc, in other words anything apart from Chrome. If it does not, then it is a non starter.

Add a special Form Manager

There are websites that can be built exclusively for collecting data. I know there are some free ones available within the hosting, I have played with one in the past called Lime Survey, but if you are not editing things on a daily basis, then the learning curve might be a bit steep, if you need to edit something.

Use an iFrame

Some of you are now using a 3rd party system in the office to replace MESH (Home-Start users). Some of you will have your own systems. When you view a video on your website, you are looking at an iFrame or a window, through which you can see another website. In the video case it is YouTube. It is potentially possible to show the form you use to enter data into a system from a form submitted to you, but display the form directly to the user through the website. It largely depends on your form, and whether there is a way of displaying it and limiting what the end user can see of the rest of the system.

But this might be worth exploring if you are interested.

Where to from here?

The fundamentall problem is research in this area, and subsequent development is very time consuming, I am sure there are solutions out there, but so far I have not found one that fits all of the requirements. If you are interested in solving this problem let me know. If I can find enough interested parties I may look into it more detail later this year. Let mew know if you are interested.

One last point which is also potentially possible

Part of the problem for the back office is processing the incoming form data copying it across from one system to another. There are generally scripts that can be created for the receiving system which will populate a form from a document that is submitted to it. Contact Form 7 allows very precise formatting of the incoming data. It is conceivable that someone could write a script that takes the incoming form via email, identifies the fields and copies the data across automatically at the touch of a button. I cannot do all of this, but if there was an agreed standard for the submission from your website to your organisation, then someone associated with your organisation could write the backoffice processing script which would overcome the manual re-entry and save a lot of time.

Smart Slider 3

Is Your Slider Too Fast?

On the most recent websites I have been using the Smart Slider 3 plugin to display sliders on the home page. This is particularly applicable to the most recent Home-Start websites, but it also applies to others.

While most people are happy with the default speed of the slider which is currently set at 8000mS or 8 Seconds, one or two people have commented that it is too fast. This is probably because there are text boxes on each slider.

The following notes and images show you where it is located and how to control the speed of it, so you can tweak your site to get it right for you.

About SS3

The plugin is very comprehensive, the most important aspects allow you to add items on top of the background image, including patterned boxes, text, logos and even buttons. The combination of these elements are also responsive, which means the layout adapts for different screen sizes. Since April I have been using more of the features built into the slider which is one of the best ones out there.

Where is it located?

Log into your website and look down the left hand side of the dashboard, if your site uses it you will see the following in the side bar.

If you click on the menu item it will expand to reveal the interface. Within this you will see a couple of demo sliders and the one I have added. In this case below it is the slider for the Home-Start rebranding exercise I am currently working on.

Look at the thumbnails and identify the slider I have created for you and click on it. It will expand to show you the slides in use in the slider and other parameters which control the display and operation.

The image above shows one slider opened in edit mode. Below the sliders are a series of menu items. One of them says AUTOPLAY. Click on this one to edit some parameters.

The highlighted parameter in the image above controls how long a slide is visible on the screen before it is replaced by the next one. This parameter affects all slides. It is recorded in mS or milliseconds. There are 1000mS to 1 second. So it you want your slider to be set at say 10 seconds change the value to 10,000.

When you have made your changes, scroll to the top right of your screen where you will find a green button with SAVE written on it. Click on this to commit your changes.

Close the plugin settings and return to your website and review the home page. Check that the slider is still working, and also check the speed is appropriate.

That’s it. All you need to know is there.

Stuck? Drop me a line.

Home-Start Rebranding

Around 50% of the Home-Start sites I host, or have built are either in a rebranding queue, or have been upgraded and released. If you don’t know anything about this, then you have missed some of my messages reaching out to you. I have only responded to those that replied and currently not chased anyone else up.

As of 6th July, the following sites have been through the rebranding exercise. Most of these sites were in the Divi framework anyway, a few are more substantial upgrades from previous versions moving them to the latest version of the website.

If you don’t know about any of this, and need to be added to the list please get in touch with me ASAP. My queue of upgrades currently goes out to the end of July 2019.

This is a list of example sites that have been through the process.

Home-Start Lisburn Colin
Home-Start North Down
Home-Start Spelthorne
Home-Start Bracknell Forest
Home-Start Stroud District
Home-Start Chichester
Home-Start Surrey Heath
Home-Start Guildford
Home-Start Southwark

All of these sites have retained the local messaging and content from the respective original website. I have concentrated on changing the colours, logo, images and incorporating other latest thinking on the development of these sites which also covers taking out old plugins and replacing them with new more up to date plugins. In many cases it has been a bit more than just changing the wallpaper. I have cleaned things up as well.

Need to know more? Contact me.

Controlling your news

I have spent much of the past three months reworking old websites. Some have been quite old in web terms perhaps 4 years old. Because I provide you with the website, and training and anticipate you will run with this after release adding new content to the website, I am no longer involved in your day to day operations, apart from in the background.

This has revealed some interesting trends on some of the older websites. I will go over some of these below. You may find it useful to consider with your website. If you are currently in the Home-Start Rebranding Upgrade queue I will be looking for and resolving some of these things if I find them.
Continue reading Controlling your news

Accessibility and Websites

There are some accessibility standards for websites that can be quite stringent. The majority of websites do not get anywhere near 100% compliance to the most complex variants, and there are generally very large price tags around developing websites like this.

While I have not seen any yet, I am sure there are lots of people out there that can help you given a suitably large wedge of cash.

Look up WCAG 2.0 or WCAG 2.1

Guidelines from central government are tending to require that local government websites need to conform to these standards. It is likely to roll out further than that over time.

Some years back I worked as a volunteer for three months on a project for a visually impaired group. I tried really hard to meet all of their needs with customised CSS. It was the project from hell for me, especially as it was all free. We got there in the end, however it was a big learning point for me to keep away from specialist groups. Right at the end, the punch line was each member of this group had special (non standard web browsers) that did most of the functions anyway.

Accessibility standards can mean = ££££

Because you are likely to end up with a highly customised website with a lot of special code in it. This will ultimately become a support problem for the client, and a business opportunity to the supplier!

I work on the basis that the amount of customised code is at a minimum, so 99.9% of the website is standard. I also try to use some standard (popular and at least 4* rated) plugins to provide additional functions.

Can you crack the WCAG standard with plugins?

Continue reading Accessibility and Websites

Counter with a £ Sign

For those of you using the Divi template there are lots of animated gizmo’s in there. Provided they are used sparingly you can go that extra mile when your site is compared to another one.

When I am putting sites together I tend to use animation sparingly on some images, and some featured blocks, to ensure they attract attention when they load. But having loaded and completed the animation they remain static, otherwise they would be very annoying.

One thing I have been wanting to do (and you may wish to do this as well) is publish articles after a fundraising event and tell the world how much you raised. Many of you do not do this, the website is used to announce a fundraising event, but not report on it’s success afterwards.

Continue reading Counter with a £ Sign

Adding in a table

Sometimes you need to add a table into a webpage. There are several ways of doing this. You can create a table in MS Word and copy it, then paste it into a page. You can do the same with Excel. However neither of these is particularly elegant. In both cases you can end up with a largely responsive table provided you do not have too many elements in there.

There is a plugin for that..

One particularly neat solution which has a huge number of users, and very high approval ratings is TablePress. This is a downloadable plugin.

Go to the Plugins option in your wordpress site, and add a new plugin and enter Tablepress into the search box and it will find it. Add it to your website and activate it.

Post activation you will find it as an option in the dashboard menu. TO add a table simply go into the plugin settings and choose Add Table, define how many columns and rows it needs and then build your content in WordPress.

There are also options on importing tables from other sources. It is a very flexible plugin that is not too difficult to use.

Need help, or interested in using it? Drop me a line.

Don’t forget to look back……

I have noticed a trend with many websites where they will promote new events and advertise them. Doing all of the right things; getting them on social media and helping people to propagate the message.

But…..

After the event there is no report, they are often removed from the website. However it might be a good idea to go to your original post and add that the event was a huge success, that you wish to thank those that participated, and also state how much money you raised, even add some photos in. This will send a very positive message to anyone visiting your site after an event. May even convey that you are a really cool group to stay in touch with, and might encourage people to attend the next event.

Bounce it up the website

One neat trick is if you wish to do this, update the published date and time to the date and time you are re-editing the item. Then update it. It will appear at the top of the news feed and become the current item.

Don’t forget to celebrate your successes. it is important to get across that you are a vibrant and active group.

Using Divi Visual Builder

For those of you with Divi based websites as well as the conventional method for editing your website there is another method. You need to log into the website as an administrator, which takes you to the dashboard, then visit the website (top left hand corner). You will see a black line across the top of your browser window to indicate you are logged in. Below this you will see your website.

If you have a Divi site you will also see ENABLE VISUAL BUILDER

Click on it, and then wait for around 15 seconds. What is happening is an editor is loading in your browser. You may see some things replicated, and some things that you cannot normally see. It really depends what is on your screen. Do not be distracted by anything you were not expecting to see there. Focus instead on what you can see, and in particular the text in your pages.

You will see as you move your cursor over your page layout various dark grey, turquoise or blue lines and or icons appear. Ignore them. what they are for is beyond the scope of this quick guide.

QR Codes

Marketing Tip

If you have an event coming up and there is an application form, or greater detail available online, you can use a QR Code which is a graphical symbol which a smart phone or tablet can scan, the scan function seems to be built into most smart phones. Just point your camera at one and it will automatically ask if you want to go to the website. You have probably seen them around, may even have scanned them in the past, but are not sure where to get them from.

I will quote this case, as it is a live example, of where having a QR code can be beneficial for you.

Home-Start Hampshire Charity Golf Day

Home-Start Hampshire are running a Charity Golf Day and asked me to add it to their website. Included in the package of information was a poster and two application forms, one in PDF format and one in MS Word format. (You need both because not everyone has MS Word).

I went to this website which you can create them for free: https://www.qrcode-monkey.com/ There are several QR code sites around, however as I found out some are after your money, so do take care, you can read what happened to me by skipping down this post to QR-CODE-GENERATOR.COM. I do however thoroughly recommend qrcode-monkey.com which is free to use, the codes do not expire, and there is no intermediate translation, and they can be used as many times as you wish.

I placed a wrapper around the QR code and produced the graphic below