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WEB PRIMER FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION Hype about the Internet
is everywhere. It seems that every newspaper and magazine (not to mention
the odd newsletter) has an article pushing some aspect of this new and
ever expanding resource. There is no question that the Internet is
reshaping the way we communicate with each other and the way we provide
services. The hype is compelling but the question still remains, is the
Internet a useful resource for the day-to-day operations of not-for-profit
organizations or is it a technology still looking for a purpose in this
sector? In this article we will take a brief look at the following:
The first three
sections of this article are meant to cover the basics and are intended
for those with less than a complete understanding of the way the Internet
works. We hope to strip away some of the mystery of the technology. Making Use Of The
Internet What is the
Internet? The Internet is
essentially a world-wide network of thousands of computers. The blanket
term "the Internet" encompasses the world wide web, email,
newsgroups, gopherspace, etc. Useful Internet
Features For Your Organization There are four main
areas where the Internet could be of future, if not immediate, use to your
organization. 1. Bringing Resources
To Your Door The Internet is akin to
an international, searchable library database. There is much useful and,
regretfully, much useless information available online. Not-for-profit
organizations can use the Internet to find information on many issues
including boards of directors, volunteer development, fundraising, tax and
statutory obligations to name just a few. Childcare centres will find that
programming information is available through websites and listservs (see
the glossary of Internet terms). 2. Providing
Educational Material To Your Public There are many
educational and other sites providing online instructional programs and
games, often without charge. There are sites designed for instructing
adults as well as sites for children. In an appropriately supervised
childcare setting, children could learn to use the computer while at the
same time learning other skills and gaining knowledge. 3. Using The Internet
For Communications Email addresses are
becoming as common as phone and fax numbers. Communicating electronically,
by email or through listservs and/or newsgroups, is a fast way to keep in
touch with colleagues. E-mail can also provide an affordable means to
communicate with people who have similar interests in a particular field,
whether they are part of a local or a global community of specialists. 4. Marketing your
organization’s services The media and
technology companies have been spinning the web into a sure-thing fortune
maker. The truth is many companies and organizations are losing their
shirts online. The need to stay current and to look good online can lead
organizations to put more resources into their websites than they would
normally dedicate to marketing and more than they can afford. That said, the Internet
can provide a great venue for displaying your services and/or wares and
information about your organization’s philosophy, location, staff, board
of directors, etc. As with any marketing plan, the key to success online
is focussing on the needs of your audience and the goals and abilities of
your organization. How to Connect to
and Use the Internet Overcoming Barriers The Internet is still a
relatively new technology and starting to use it can be daunting. While
you must acquire some new skills at first, you can use email, surf the web
and participate in listservs/newsgroups with only a basic understanding of
a few simple concepts. A trip to a cybercafe
or anywhere else that you can test the Internet should be enough to dispel
technophobia. Surfing is easy. Surfing efficiently is what takes practice.
The incredible volume of information available online is intimidating and
sifting through the clutter to what you need can be difficult. The glossary of terms
included with this issue will help you understand the terminology. You
don't need most of the definitions to be able to get online. Knowledge
will just increase your efficiency and perhaps your enjoyment. Cost is often a
significant factor, especially if you do not have access to a computer to
start with. If your organization does have a computer then getting online
need not be expensive. The cost of access has come down substantially in
the past few years. Organizations can shop around for an Internet Service
Provider ("ISP") with an account that fits their budget and
provides adequate time online. If you do not have access to a computer,
consider teaming up with another organization that does to keep costs
down. Connecting To The
Internet Following is a brief
guide on how to get started. If you are already online, skip to the next
section. In order to access the
Internet you need to connect to it. You have to buy Internet time from an
ISP. Think of it like buying basic phone service where the charge is based
on time connected. Most ISPs sell Internet access with a charge calculated
on an hours-per-month basis. If you exceed that time you are charged by
the minute. Your ISP will also provide you with basic software to get
started on the Internet. The package usually includes:
Using a dialer, either
one provided by your ISP or one that is part of your computer's operating
system, your modem dials the phone number of your ISP and connects to
their server. Once connected you can write and retrieve email, browse the
web and download files at will. Cruising on the Web Cruising on the web is
similar to taking a car trip. For your web trip you use the browser
(steering wheel) to drive your computer (car) using your modem (gas). The
web is the road on which you travel. Search engines are the maps that
guide you past many URLs (towns and attractions) to the website of your
choice (destination). Searching The ability to search
for information makes the web a useful resource. There are a number of
search engines to guide your travels. Search engines have large indexes of
websites that are constantly updated. Many of them have also become
"portals" or "hubs" so that they can organize search
results by topic. Some of the more popular are: AltaVista; Excite;
Infoseek; Lycos; Yahoo! Most browsers have a "Search" button
that will lead you to one or more search engines. The good news is that
use of search engines is free. Their services are paid for by advertisers. In the early days of
the web searches were relatively simple because there wasn't much out
there. Now it takes a bit more sophistication and creativity to find
useful information. Search results often include sites that are completely
irrelevant to your search, especially if your subject is a popular one or
the search word has a broad meaning. As a result, it is worth your while
to search using a string of words rather than just a single word. If you
have trouble getting what you want, read the help or search tips that come
with the search engine that you are using. Any document on the web
may change without warning. Location, design, and worthiness of web pages
are all dependent on the abilities, motivations and availability of the
people preparing and maintaining the sites. Beware of old dates that can
signal out-dated information. Authors of web pages
will usually give you some notice of a migrating page's change of address.
If you miss that notice, a search engine can usually help you to find the
new address. The On-line
Community The Internet is, in
part, a big information bulletin board "in the sky". The number
of contributing computers and the large and varied offering of anonymous
contacts on the Internet has spawned the growth of so-called virtual
communities. Many of these communities have rules of conduct, either
implicit or inferred, for their so-called "netizens". Unlike
most other aspects of society the web is ruled by anarchy; it has no
centralized control. This anarchy is seen by many as the most precious
trait of the online community. Instead of centralized control, users and
programmers agree on rules to allow for an orderly exchange of
information. In a system where there
is no real watch-dog security is a concern and this is getting a lot of
media attention these days. How confidential are email addresses? Very,
until someone decides to look yours up. There are programs, called
cookies, that copy information to your hard disk so that a particular
website can identify you the next time you visit. Sites can also be
programmed to generate junk email (called "SPAM") to addresses
of recent visitors. You can, however, block access so that cookies cannot
run and so that you will not receive unwanted mail. In short, security
concerns on the web are similar to security concerns in your off-line life
in areas such as your phone, mail and banking systems. Putting Information
on the Web To add information to
the Web, you need space on a server. Most ISPs include as part of your
monthly/annual contract a modest amount of space on their server for
hosting your website. The ISPs generally limit the amount of server space
your site can take up and how much traffic it can see (measured in number
of "hits"). If you use this
"free" space to host your site, rather than registering your own
domain name and paying for website hosting services, your site's address
(its "URL") will be the URL of the host server followed by an
extension referring to your organization. For instance, if we had not
registered the domain name www.187gerrard.com we would have an URL that
looks something like www.web.net\~cm\index.html - where www.web.net is the
URL of our host server, Web Networks. The tilde ("~") is the web
standard for adding a secondary site to a primary address. The
"cm" would represent our firm name of Cowperthwaite Mehta and
"index.html" is the file name of our home page. Marketing Online Before deciding to
market your organization's services and publish information on the web
your Board should carefully consider the following questions:
What Makes a Good
Site? In our view good sites
are simple sites. Surfers have too much information at their disposal to
bother with a cluttered site. Think of the ideal website as a well
organized home. In a home you enter the front door and are in a hallway
that leads to other rooms. Your website should be organized to have a home
page that acts as both the front door (friendly) and the hallway (useful).
If your homepage is too long (i.e. a visitor has to scroll down through
screen after screen) you will loose many of your readers. Pages following
the home page can be longer (i.e. have more screens) to accommodate more
information. A visitor should never feel like they are lost in the
labyrinth of your site. To avoid this, each page should have a clear route
back to the homepage and to all the other main pages of your site. Good graphics can play
an important role in making websites look appealing and feel friendly.
Having said that, many sites are so heavy with graphics that they take a
long time to load and lose the interest of the visitor. You generally want
visitors to come for your information, not for web wizardry. Possible Content For
Your Site Consider presenting the
following information on your site:
We suggest that you
discuss the idea of a website for your organization at a board meeting
sometime this year. If your organization decides that there is
insufficient value to be gained from hosting a site now, or if you have
insufficient resources to produce one, then you can always postpone it to
a later date. Your organization will
naturally be concerned with the cost of getting online. While it can cost
a small fortune, it doesn’t have to. There are relatively inexpensive
ways to make a web presence. You may, in fact, discover that someone on
your board or a member of the staff has the knowledge and resources to get
a site up and running. If not, we would be pleased to speak with you about
other inexpensive ways for your organization to get online. GLOSSARY OF TERMS Archie is software that allows you to search through files much like you would have used a card catalogue in a library. Given a keyword, filename, part of a filename, or a regular expression, it searches an index of registered Internet archives. It then provides pathway information to the computers that have the file(s) for which you have asked. Bookmarks are used for jumping to a specific location that you have previously visited and have marked for easy return visits. Browser is the program (e.g. Netscape or Internet Explorer) on your computer that allows you to view web pages. Browsers are included with Windows 95/98/NT and with all packages from Internet Service Providers. Dialer is a program (such as Trumpet Winsock) that uses your modem to dial another computer. Dial-Up Networking is a dialer that is built into Windows 95/98/NT. DNS Domain Name System is the Internet's naming system consisting of a sequence of names from the most specific to the most general, separated by dots (for example: 187gerrard.com - where "187gerrard" is the specific address and "com" stands for commercial). Downloading The electronic transfer of information from one computer to another, generally from a larger computer system to a smaller one (e.g. from the Internet to a business or home computer). Electronically distributed mail. FTP File Transfer Protocol is the standard Internet code used for copying files between computers. Much information is available to the general public from public FTP sites (called anonymous FTP). Gopher is a similar system to the Web but it is not as powerful principally because it does not use hypertext (see below). Gopherspace is a term used to describe the aggregate of all the information on the thousands of Gopher servers in the world. Helper Applications and Plug-ins are programs the browser calls upon to display content that it cannot handle internally. Some of these programs come with your browser while others can be downloaded from websites for free. Plug-ins are applications that run within the browser whereas helper applications run outside the browser. The server tells the browser what media type the content is (e.g. audio, video) and then the browser determines if this is a type that it can understand. If it can then the object is displayed. If not then the browser requests that you specify what it should do with the object (e.g. save it). HTML HyperText Mark-up Language is the language used to program websites. Hypertext is text that has been linked to another location on the Internet. By selecting this "sensitive" text (often underlined as in www.187gerrard.com) you are requesting to open the document to which the text refers. When you click on or select hypertext you are transported directly to the page of the linked site.
IP Internet Protocol is the standard format for electronic information exchange agreed to by users and programmers. IP provides common rules that allow various networks to share information efficiently. IP Address is the numeric address of a computer connected to the Internet. It is also called Internet address. ISP Internet Service Providers are businesses providing access to the Internet and space on their server to host websites, etc. Jughead Jonzy's Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation and Display (we aren't kidding!) is software that performs keyword searches of all items with a match on selected Gopher sites. Veronica is a similar but more powerful search tool for gopherspace. Listserv Lists Listservers are electronic discussion groups conducted by email. Participants subscribe via a central service that is controlled by a moderator who manages the information flow and content. Portal
(or hub) is a site that used as a gateway to the web. They usually include a directory of websites, a search engine, news, weather and other information. Search engines are increasingly becoming portals as well as indexes of sites. Some leading portals include Yahoo, Excite, Netscape, Lycos, and Microsoft Network. Many larger ISPs also offer portals to the Web for their users. Search engines provide indexed lists of site addresses in response to queries by subject or keyword. Search engines have addresses and are reached through browsers as you would any other website. Search engines are to the web as yellow pages are to the phone system. TCP/IP Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol is a combined set of protocols that transfers data between computers. TCP monitors and ensures correct transfer of data. IP receives the data from TCP, breaks it down into smaller parts and transfers it within the Internet. URL Uniform Resource Locators are like directions to a website. An URL looks like http://www.187gerrard.com/about us.htm and consists of three parts: the method of retrieving the document (http), a machine or server name (www.187gerrard.com) and a pathname (/about us.html). The URL format is an Internet standard. Veronica The full-text search engine software for searching in Gopherspace. WS-FTP is the most common file transfer protocol software used for transferring files from a remote machine to your own or vice versa. |
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