CharityBlog

We’ve put off updating the web program running CharityBlog for about as long as we can. The next version has some significant changes in how categories are managed, which could be fun, and means that the design templates need updating too.

Apologies for any weirdness you encounter in the next few pages - well any weirdness here due to technical stuff anyway.

Two thousand spam comments caught by the Akismet spam filter since we started using it on CharityBlog 3 months ago. That’s an average of around 20 a day. If any real comments got trapped by mistake, apologies, but we do review the whole *** lot.

James Davis, who runs the FreeCharity hosting service, mainly around WordPress (which is also the software usd here), has produced a petitions plug-in. A demo should appear below.

This will enable collecting ’signatures’ by verifying the email address given (which can only be used once). Quite simple to set up. I’m just wondering how long it will be before spammers start hitting it - they seem to like filling in any online form they find.

More on the WordPress plug-in.

Update: Sample Petition trial now deactivated (took 3 weeks before spam began).

Some changes on CharityBlog.

While upgrading to the most recent version of WordPress, we took advantage of its new easy export/import feature to amalgamate OpenCharityBlog with this one. We’ve copied over the log-ins for those registered there, as well as the posts and comments. (The import mis-matched authors to posts, but we hope that’s now sorted.)

Looks like the OCB links didn’t make it across - next thing to do then.

Note: We may not have updated all references to OCB yet!

Due to the increasing level of comment spam, I’m afraid comments have been switched off on some items.

The New Media Awards, run by New Statesman magazine, this year has an accompanying blog covering “all things related to the convergence of politics and new media” and also looking at relevant projects.

A recent item looks at whether we are catching up with the US in using internet for political campaigning. http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/nma/nma2006/blog/.

The Telegraph reports on the potential impact on donors of major charities as deficits and new rules on staff pension schemes hit.

Telegraph | Money | Charities say donors fear gifts are propping up funds
Charities are concerned that their pension deficits are deterring donors because they are soaking up a growing proportion of the funds raised for good causes.

Blogs, social enterprise and the health service - an interesting combination. Not quite the same as most blogs, and maybe not quite the same as most social enterprises, but an imaginative use of the concepts anyway.

Kable.net reports:

Patient Opinion has been set up to provide an independent outlet for patients to share views, experiences, complaints and messages of thanks to NHS staff. It is being run on a not-for-profit basis and is free at the point of use.

Users enter opinions into a weblog while a built-in social tagging system operates in the background interpreting simple language, such as the word “bones”, into medical terminology.

More: Kable - Blogging patient opinions - 20 January 2006

The current Volunteer Management Review psoting from the American Charity Channel covers blogging, and guess what we are one of the few sector blogs mentioned (although the link is to our archived pages).

Mentioned in their suggested Volunteering Blog directory is one other UK blog: ‘Multiple Sclerosis - MS Research Seeks Help’, so that’s been added to our wiki page Web In Practice along with other blogs, podcasts and news feeds.

Nominations for the Sheila McKechnie campaigning awards close on Friday (20th January). They “want to help emerging campaigners who are fighting for social justice but need the Foundation’s help to be more effective. ”

If this sounds like you or someone you know, visit www.sheilamckechnie.org.uk

The VolResource newsletter (and news pages) did cover this ages ago, but we reckon their reminder is worth a quick post.