Website Hosting and
WordPress Development
Review for
Background
For some time now, it’s been clear that our website needs to be updated more frequently and to be more responsive to our customers and to us.
The meeting on June 12 was an opportunity to assess and revisit all aspects of our website including hosting platforms, Wordpress, and our domain name and to discuss possible opportunities to work together so that no one person bears the burden of the website.
Fortunately, Jason Correia, Janet’s son, joined us for the meeting. He specializes in Wordpress and is quite
knowledgeable. He even took the liberty of creating our website in Wordpress as a demonstration for our meeting.
Please read the following information below carefully. We are tasked with voting on the following:
● To move from Dreamhost to Inmotionhosting.com or another hosting platform as our hosting site ● To move from weebly.com to Wordpress for website content and design
● To change our domain name from fophl.org to phlibraryfriends.org
● To move from Mad Mimi to Mailchimp for e-newsletters and for receiving email comments/questions from the public
Web Hosting Comparison
Company Cost Support Storage BBB Rating
Cpanel Backup?
DreamHost Free Chat / Email SSD F Proprietary Not included
A Small Orange
Free Chat / Email SSD A
(not accredited) Standard Included Bluehost (Endurance International brand)
Free 24 hour phone / chat / email Standard HDD A+ Standard Included InMotion $3.49/ month 24 hour phone / chat / email SSD A+ Standard Included
Control Panels (Cpanel) Compared
Domain Names
Current domain name is fophl.org
Perhaps a more recognizable domain name would be better. People have a habit of deleting unrecognizable email senders without reading them.
Who would you delete first? fophl.org
phlibraryfriends.org (Unfortunately, the original name Friendsphl.org is taken.)
It is always better to include a keyword or 2 in the domain name and to use something that is easy to remember.
A separate name registrar from the domain hosting service is highly recommended.
- This adds an extra layer of security protection.
- This allows a much easier transition if a change of web host is needed.
- Recommend namecheap.com or enom.com for name registrar service.
- “Free” domains included with hosting don’t necessarily guarantee your full ownership of the
Broadcast Email Marketing Services
Company Cost Automation Testing Pay-as-you-go? Support?
Mailchimp Free / 2000 subs
$20/month/1500 subs
Not Free Not Free Available Knowledge base
for free.
Chat/Email for Paid
Mad Mimi Free / 100 subs
$42/month/ 10K subs
Yes Included Not Available Chat / Email
Constant Contact
0-500 $45/mth 501-2500 $60/mth 2501-5000 $80/mth
Yes (only with email plus at $45/month)
Included (maybe?)
Not available Phone/Chat/
Mad Mimi is cheaper on a per subscriber basis but you will often pay for more than you need. Mad
Mimi’s free version is limited to 100 subscribers.
Mailchimp has more flexible options for their paid plans so you would spend less per month as long
as your subscriber count is fairly low. Mailchimp requires the paid plan to enable the automation
features and remove branding. It also has more third party connection support and more sophisticated automation options. They offer a 15% discount to nonprofits.
Constant Contact has great graphics capability and list management adequate to what we currently
do. Their services are divided into 2 product lines. To enable the services we require, we would need the more expensive product starting at $45/month. They offer a 30% discount for nonprofits but only for prepaid 12 months in advance or 20% for 6 months.
WordPress
Strengths
- Free, most popular Content Management System (CMS) in the world. - Enormous community of products, people, and support
- Easy to use, free training resources available - Clean well maintained code and fairly secure Weaknesses
- Frequently the target of hacking.
- Development, Management and administration should be handled by someone experienced. WordPress has been growing for over 10 years now. While it may not be built on the latest “sexy” coding standards, it’s enormous community and vast array of plugins allow for a kind of “iPhone of the internet” experience. It can handle general websites with low to high traffic.
One of the most important things to do when starting out is to organize documents of requirements, plans and procedures to create an organizational “guide book” for business continuity and reference.
The other most important thing to do is to implement a backup plan for the website and even better to have 2 backup procedures / plans. Some backup plans cost a little money ($50/year). The ones that are free can be good too but may require some time invested by someone to monitor and test the process.
Forms for WordPress
Company Cost PayPal Integration ? Mad Mimi Integration ? Mailchimp Integration?
Easy form creation tools for someone experienced? Gravity Forms $199 / year updates and support
Yes Yes Yes Yes
Formidable Pro $47 / forever updates + 1 yr support Yes Through Zapier (extra $) Yes Yes
One of the most useful and in demand features of any website are forms. Being able to collect data, organize it, route it, and display it is wonderful but creating forms from scratch for a web designer is a chore. Fortunately there are tools that make this task fairly easy. If there was at least one plugin besides backup worth paying for, it would be a comprehensive form creation and management tool.
Potential costs
● Namecheap (to register domain name): $11.48/year
● Hosting platform - Inmotionhosting.com: $3.49/month w/ 2 year signup for $83.76 (Discount link
here: http://webhostingcat.com/best-web-hosting-for-nonprofits/)
● Mailchimp (for organization of members emails and for receiving email comments/questions from
the public). Free. Because we have fewer than 2,000 subscribers, we can send up to 12,000 emails per month absolutely free. No expiring trial, contract, or credit card required. Advanced features and ability to remove the Mailchimp branding require the paid version of Mailchimp. Mailchimp gives a 15% discount to nonprofits. Recommend paid version at $8.50 / month.
● Form tools and other integration tools might be required to connect mailchimp and/or paypal into
a more integrated solution. $47.00
● Web design: Genesis and Dynamik child theme: free through Jason.
● Paypal: is free. They only charge on a per transaction basis. 2.2% + .30 cents per transaction.
Summary
Upfront Costs:
Domain name: $11.48
Hosting: $83.76 for 2 years upfront ($47.88 for 1 year upfront) Formidable Pro Forms Plugin: $47.00
Total: $142.24 with 2 year option. Total: $106.36 with 1 year option.
New Ongoing Costs:
Mailchimp: $8.50 / month for 500 subscriber limit. $12.75 for 1000 subscriber limit.
Or
Package Choices for WordPress Transition
Package A Package B Package C
Cost $0 (plus a lot of sweat) About $60 + $10-20/month About $212-310 + $Email
/monthly + $199/year
Description No Domain change
Free web host (Bluehost, Small Orange, DreamHost)
Keep current Email Service (MadMimi)
Add PayPal Donate Button to WordPress (WP) Add MM Signup form to
No special forms Integration
New Domain
Better Web Host (Free)
New Email Service (MailChimp)
Formidable tool to Integrate PayPal & MailChimp
New Domain Better Web Host
Any popular Email Service
GravityForms to integrate email signup and PayPal
Ease of Transition.
A new WP install will require a DB update for a smooth transition. Not fun to do, takes extra time. Or, current host will require either a teardown or an HTAccess rewrite script to mask subfolder.
A new domain routed to a new host will allow for an easy clean, unencumbered development. Simply forward old domain when ready.
Same transition benefits as package B.
Confidence everything will work properly.
Everything should work ok, but no special bells or whistles will be added.
Good confidence everything will integrate with form tool.
Good confidence everything will integrate well with form tools. Would still advocate for Mailchimp but this form tool adds flexibility of choices.
