This newsletter contains information on:
- Net Inclusion webinar series in September and October
- New category on our web site — Equity
- Experience with website migration. (We moved from Go Daddy to Bluehost)
- Do you need a website tester?
“Net Inclusion” Webinar Series
Since the Net Inclusion conference for 2020 was canceled for safety reasons, NDIA is developing a series of webinars. They will take place once per week, and will be recorded for subsequent replay. The topic details and schedule are still under development, and the dates are under revision.
Once details are announced, this page will be updated, as will our conferences page.
Topics may include:
- Digital Inclusion 101
- Racial Equity & Digital Inclusion
- Local government digital equity strategies
- Coalitions
- Digital Inclusion Models
- and more
New category on our web site
After creating a quick-page on covid-19 and then wanting a place to put information about racial inequity, we have introduced a new top level category of Equity. There are subpages:
- COVID for digital inclusion resources to address covid-19 environment
- Racial Equity that addresses the intersection between digital inclusion and racial issues.
- And we moved Public policy initiatives here since it flowed more logically. This is where we have research studies and initiatives for public policy about digital inclusion.
- Research, a new page containing links to recent research reports relating to digital inclusion
If you have anything to add to any of these pages, or another subcategory that you think would be useful, please let us know.
Website Migration
Complete details on our migration is available at: Barry’s blog. The following just highlights why we migrated and lessons learned.
Why migrate our WordPress site to a new hosting platform:
- Site was slow. When we asked about it, they suggested buying a premium package.
- Site required us to pay $75 a year for a SSL certificate. They should be standard these days.
- Improved customer support.
Lessons learned:
- Work in a test area, establish that your website is functioning, then move your domain over.
- Changing the background color on the test area website is a great idea to avoid mixing up which website you’re working on.
- Make back ups before you start. Make back ups when you come to a stable point. And then make a back up when you’re done. And then make sure you have a back up strategy on your new hosting search site even if you didn’t have one on your last but especially if you used the old site’s default and the new one is different
- Don’t forget to establish HTTPS redirect since people might be accessing your site from a URL that begins with http: which browsers do NOT like.
- Use a free plugin to bring over the base of your website including navigation quickly and easily.
- Migrate at least a month before your service contract is up so you can keep your files with your old provider just in case you missed something.
Website Tester
For the past several months, we have had an awesome volunteer going through our web pages, checking links, letting us know when something is confusing, trying out forms. He also has been reading through the NDIA mailing list and highlighting articles that we might be particularly interested in. He keeps our mission and goals handy so he can check to see if something applies. He doesn’t need any special access since he isn’t changing any pages, just testing them. He’s great, but we’re running out of pages for him to go through, so if your site could use a fresh pair of eyes to check links and clarity, let us know.
Miscellaneous
Since G-Suite for nonprofits offers a free batch of advertising, and PBDD doesn’t have a need to advertise to consumers, we are looking at launching a series of “public service messages” to help raise awareness. If you have G-Suite for non-profits and Google Ads, but have not been using them, you might want to consider doing something similar.
Katherine & Barry
