After months of writing, editing, and site-building, I’m pleased to introduce you all to NonprofitWP.org!
For years, I’ve wanted to find a way to help nonprofits trying to do it themselves with WordPress because of limited budgets and my limited availability. Nonprofit WP is my attempt to help those organizations and others.
Nonprofit WP is an ebook-like website that walks nonprofits through the basics of starting a WordPress site. Many of the nonprofits that I’ve seen take the DIY or volunteer-built route end up with sites using poorly-built unsupported plugins, bloated themes, and other “worst-practices.” I’m hoping this new site can give nonprofits the same knowledge that I deliver to my own paying clients when selecting or building themes and plugins.
A lot of the information is generic to WordPress, but I’ve tried to infuse the site with a nonprofit focus. For example, there’s a section about the best donation plugins. Most popular may be the list of free WordPress stuff for nonprofits! Importantly, the site also includes the crucial and overlooked nontechnical knowledge that goes into planning a nonprofit website or working with a volunteer to build one. Over time I will continue adding more information as I learn what people still want to know after using the site.
I truly hope that Nonprofit WP will help nonprofits make good decisions with WordPress when they might make a mistake otherwise. I’ve written before that I see myself as a capacity builder for the nonprofit sector, and so the work I invest in this new site is toward that same end, so that more nonprofits get great technology that doesn’t require too much of their time, energy, and budget.
If you know of a nonprofit that might benefit from NonprofitWP.org, please consider sharing the site with them. If you think it looks useful and just generally want to share it, a Tweet or Facebook post would be appreciated.
This is a really fabulous guide, Mark! And not just for non-profits. I’ve already shared it on my Facebook page. One thing you could add under hosts is Dreamhost. I always recommend them to non-profits because they offer FREE hosting for non-profits (http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Non-profit_Discount).
Thanks for your kind words and suggestion, Amanda. I do know about the Dreamhost program and I’ve recommended quite a few organizations to it in the past; however, I’ve had some performance issues there the last year or so, so I’ve been avoiding it for a while. You’re right that it’s important to at least know about, though, so I had included it on my list of free tech for nonprofits (http://nonprofitwp.org/resources/free-stuff-for-nonprofit-wordpress-websites/). If you know of any other programs that might go well on that page, I’d love to add them. Thanks for sharing on Facebook too!
I appreciate you giving trusted themes to choose from. I would also warn people against simply googling “free wordpress themes” and choosing one, as many of these have malware embedded.
That’s a really great tip, Claire! I’ve told people the same but completely forgot to include it on the site. I’ll remedy that shortly. Thanks!