This is a very long and rough list of some possible requirements that we have for an upcoming revision to Bworks online presence.

Website should be quick to load (5-8 seconds per page)

• less text more pictures of bworks benefiting society
  • I wouldn't say less text, but possibly better organized or more concise text. People who become familiar with (or donate to) a non-profit via its website want detailed information about its operation. Most of the more volunteer related stuff can be more or less “hidden” on deeper pages or edited to be much more concise.

• A search box should be present where anyone can type something and just search for it.

• newsletter sign up (implies newsletter)
• upcoming events loud and clear
• place for news/press
  • formal news releases are good for sending to traditional media outlets, but not a lot else nowadays. Many organizations handle this with multiple feeds - one for formal stuff and one for a more blog-like manager's summary. Doing both also increases search engine friendlyness by reinforcing the content with extended related content. (but is labor intensive)

• blogs from volunteers / board members
• Photos/avatars of volunteers & former / current students
• blogs or web pages from current and former students (why not offer to let previous students to use bworks.org for their blogs/web pages?)
  • yeah! something easily supported by our current hosting provider - one click blog installs.

• education program descriptions and links to content
• course schedules, and perhaps a count of people enrolled

• online enrollment forms
  • Since most people who enroll do not have computers/access to computers, this requirement is not as high of a priority as others.

Again, these are low priority items.

• get a text message reminder so you don't forget to take your kid to class
• get a text message reminder to remind you to get out of bed and volunteer

• request information forms directed towards the correct committee or contact

• become a volunteer form (get background check)
• Contact Us
• Class schedule, when can I stop by?
• volunteer log-in for shop, staff, and whatnot lists
• opportunities for volunteers/types of volunteers needed
• tell a friend
• become our friend on myspace and facebook

This is important, and would be good to sharpen up for potential donors and volunteers

• the bworks story
• photo gallery
• testimonials

• accept online donations
• sell inventory online
  • that's a labor and organization-intensive one. would like to talk more about it.

• list donors and sponsors

• sell bworks stuff in your facebook (candy fundraisers anyone???)
• about the board
• about volunteers
• learning links
• link to us
• phone number
• address
• map link
• hours of operation
• link to wiki
• universal username/password (implies nuking yahoo and google)
  • not necessarily - openid
• personal bworks homepages /~nneff and shell accounts for volunteers
  • current hosting makes this pretty easy as nneff.bworks.org - lives in its own shell account.
• discount code on shop items for volunteers who have done __ hours
• Tell us about your/your company's grant opportunities
• recycle your (pentium 4) computer
• buy tickets to donated entertainment events
• make a suggestion
• phpbb
• photo gallery

A disadvantage to using subdomains (e.g. something.bworks.org, wiki.bworks.org) for organizing web content is how it appears to search engines as completely separate websites. This significantly dilutes the value of your inbound links from other sites and diminishes the aggregate SEO value of having lots of content on one specific domain. AND with some search engines such as Yahoo, sites that have lots of cross linking (multiple domains linking back and forth to each other) but are hosted on the same netblock are actually penalized in the rankings. Do a keyword search on excessive crosslinking and read the stories of woe.

This is because excessive cross linking is a dirty black hat SEO trick that's been frowned on pretty bad since about 2005. This might help to explain why bworks is ranking so low in the search engine returns for keyword searches like, “recycled computer st louis” and stlbikeworks.com isn't. Its especially pronounced since stlbikeworks.com is on the first page of Google returns for that particular search.

• this is why you alias stuff like nnef.bworks.org as bworks.org/nneff and then put an appropriate line in the robots.txt for the first domain. This is also essentially no longer true for google - they look for more specific malicious stuff. (think about all of the important stuff that lives in university subdomains like http://www-ui.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~takeo/ ) Also, I'd imagine bworks.org doesn't make the first google result because it gets very few views (and inbound links) compared to those other results. Also, the word 'recycled' essentially does not appear on bworks.org *anywhere* (ok, on 3 pages… all of them in the blog and all relatively new)