The reason I am writing this is to request you if you could please connect us with any site or company/organization that provides FREE premium plugins or resources for a WordPress website.
Unfortunately, I do not know of any sources of free premium plugins for nonprofits right now. Many plugin companies will offer some type of discount if you ask nicely, but most formal programs I was aware of no longer exist. 😢
I would also just caution you to be very wary of any free plugins you find through searches like “free WordPress plugins” or “free premium WordPress plugins”. Without few exceptions, those free premium plugins have been intentionally infected with malware to hack your site.
I’m sorry I can’t offer more guidance. All I can really say is that it never hurts to ask for a discount or free license from a company after explaining what you do. Most will say no, but some may say yes! The WordPress community is generally made up of lots of really nice people who do like to give back.
We are looking for an plugin or service like engaging networks but without the huge price tag as we simply cant afford it. We basically need a call to action function template service so we can created campaign pages people can share (with a good social media layout) and ability to have subscription to our mailchimp and donorbox included.
It sounds like you’re looking for an all-in-one type solution for fundraising and actions. That’s a common need, but one I don’t find is very well suited for WordPress. One partial exception is the GiveWP plugin which provides a donation platform with some basic CRM capabilities. There are also lots of other 3rd-party solutions out there like EveryAction, NationBuilder, and Salsa that you could look at. I find that people aren’t in love with any of them, but they enable you to do things that would be extremely hard to put together on your own.
Just about anything is possible to do with WordPress, it’s just a matter of time, skill, and resources. That said, the more complex your needs, the most it makes sense to consider a 3rd-party tool. Custom website functions require a large initial development budget with likely ongoing maintenance costs. It definitely makes sense for certain organization to build a solution perfectly tailored to their needs, but it’s not a decision to make without considering all the potential trade-offs first.
Especially if you’re a smaller organization, though, a prebuilt solution with all the features you need included will probably be more cost-effective and stable than building the same thing in WordPress.
If you do choose to go with WordPress-based solution, I would recommend you:
Identify a full list of all the features you need first
Here at Nonprofit WP, the needs of nonprofits are paramount! Among those needs: Keeping costs low!
If you’ve considered moving to a new website host or buying a plugin to improve your site, do it NOW! To help you save some money, you’ll find sales and discounts for things recommended year-round on this site below:
SiteGround Website Hosting
WordPress.com Hosting
WP Engine Hosting
Jetpack
WooCommerce
The Events Calendar
Remember: Don’t buy something because it looks cool! Focus on spending money on tools you know will improve the experience of or better serve your website visitors.
Nonprofit WP only lists tools and services I have personally used or have been vouched for by a very limited number of people I trust. When you make a purchase with certain links, I receive a small commission at no cost to you. Think of it as a small way to say “thank you” for all the free content, and know that I take the responsibility of recommending tech to help you seriously.
Website Hosting Deals
You should consider changing your hosting if you have a simple website that runs slowly. Upgrading from hosts like Bluehost, GoDaddy, Network Solutions, HostGator, or InMotion will probably make your site faster. And as a benefit, if you move your site, you can often get and lock-in a sweet introductory price.
Why switch hosts? SiteGround offers some great custom “caching” tools to make your site fast, provides better than average support, and will transfer your site to your new account for free!
The Deal: 75% off SiteGround plans for up to 3 years. When: Now – Monday, November 26 How: No coupon needed!
WordPress.com offers a great way to try out WordPress or run your small website until you need the control offered by self-hosted WordPress. If you’re unclear on what exactly WordPress.com is, this article on the difference between self-hosted WordPress & WordPress.com will set you straight.
The Deal: 30% off When: Now – Monday, November 26 How: Use the code BLACKCYBER2018
If your site has outgrown smaller hosts, the next place to turn is WP Engine. They offer WordPress-only hosting that can handle much more complicated and high-traffic sites. Their support is excellent given their WordPress-only focus.
The Deal: 35% off When: Now – Monday, November 26 How: Use the code cyberwpe2018
Jetpack gets mentioned all over the place on the recommended plugins page. That’s because it’s packed with awesome free features that “just work” like cool image galleries, the powerful widget visibility customizer, and related posts functionality.
Paid Jetpack plans, starting at $40/year include even more useful features, none more so than daily automated backups and spam filtering. Don’t miss this chance to protect your site for $28 this year.
The Deal: 30% off When: Now – Monday, November 26 How: Use the code BLACKCYBER2018
If you want to run a store on your website, it’s hard to go wrong with selecting WooCommerce. It’s one of the recommended plugins for ecommerce on this site. While the basic plugin is free, there are tons of add-ons that let you customize and improve the way shipping, tax, orders, and more are managed. You can even use WooCommerce to accept donations. If you need to improve your store, now’s the moment to grab the plugin to do it! Heck, maybe one of the free ones will do what you need!
The Deal: 30% off When: Now – Monday, November 26 How: Use the code BLACKCYBER2018
The Events Calendar is arguably the best way to feature events in WordPress and it’s free! What’s not free are their add-ons that support complex features like recurring events, paid ticketing (via WooCommerce!), community-submitted events, and more.
The Deal: Up to 30% off depending on what you buy When: Now – Monday, November 26 How: See site for multiple codes
Do you ever pull up a website and wonder if it’s WordPress? Even if it is WordPress, it can be hard to know exactly how a site’s assembled. So let’s take a look at how Nonprofit WP itself was written and built!
It includes a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate to enable HTTPS for security and HTTP/2 for speed. Finally, with PHP7 enabled and the SG Optimizer plugin for enabling custom caching, the site loads really fast.
For additional security and speed, the site runs on Sucuri’s security firewall which actively protects against and monitors for hacking attempts.
Content
Everything about this site derives from the content. When I was first planning Nonprofit WP, I thought about the audience I wanted to target: nonprofit’s using WordPress. More specifically, I wrote for people trying to make a DIY WordPress site.
I then thought about my experiences with that audience and the type of information they needed to know. That list turned into an outline for the site. Over an intense month or so, I devoted lots of time to writing the first pages of the site and revising each one multiple times. When I felt like I had enough information composed to help my target audience—even though there are pages I’ve added since—I launched the site.
Importantly, as I wrote, I sought a consistent style and focused on writing each page for someone that is at a specific step in the website-building process. Following best practices for writing for the web, pages are long but well-organized and use highly-readable formatting. That linear style helped determine the design…
I chose Twenty Fifteen primarily for it’s navigation menu that runs down the left side of the page on large screens. While “old fashioned” in a way, the linear organization and available space reads like a table of contents, perfect for such a content-heavy site!
To give the theme a bit of interest, the site theme was customized using a “child theme.” A few custom colors plus some fancy CSS to allow for an icon with each menu item is just about all that gives this site it’s approachable and user-friendly design.
Plugins
This site uses quite a few plugins for features big and small. They’re divided below based on a few broad categories of need with short descriptions for each.
Content Administration
There are quite a few plugins I use to make it easier to write, display, and manage my content.
Admin Columns helps me adjust the display of the All Pages and All Posts pages with some useful additional information.
Advanced Custom Fields PRO gives me a handy development tool that let’s me handle custom content administration forms.
Jetpack‘s free version has lots of great small features like a nice commenting form, like and share buttons, a spell checker, and the blog’s email subscriptions (and more!).
Of the three recent additions to this site, the WordPress 101 for Nonprofits page is probably the most exciting.
Why? It’s a great overview of the entire site for new users, but it also has the first Nonprofit WP infographic to help readers really grasp the component parts of WordPress.
Let’s quickly go through each piece of the WordPress tower from bottom-to-top to really understand it.
Know that like most things on this site, this graphic focuses on “self-hosted” WordPress and not WordPress.com. For those unfamiliar with the difference, here’s our explainer.
WordPress Core
The “core” files of WordPress are what make everything else work. You can download them for free on WordPress.org and install on your website host.
WordPress is often described as a solid foundation for a website, and this graphic takes that description literally! It’s a foundation because nothing works without it and also because it allows you build a million variations of different designs and website features based on your needs.
Database
The second part of a standard WordPress site installation is the database. While everyone who installs WordPress has the same “core” files, the information stored in the database is what makes the site yours. The database contains all the settings and information on your site. That means things like:
Your website’s timezone
Your username, email, password (securely encrypted!), and preferred administrative color scheme
The title, body field, excerpt, and publication date of your very first blog post
The title, caption, and alternative text for your images (Speaking of which…)
Media
Just like each person’s database contains information that’s unique to their site, WordPress supports uploading many common types of image, video, audio, and document files for use on your website. Every file you upload, ends up in the “Media Library where it’s stored for future use.
Need a logo on your website? Upload it to the Media Library.
Putting your Annual Report PDF on the website? It goes to the Media Library!
Love the awesome infographic in the post? It’s in the Media Library of NonprofitWP.org!
WordPress makes it easy to upload files, but make sure you keep them organized to get the most from them.
Plugins
The plugins “block” actually represents a layer of lots of little blocks. Plugins are what add features to your site any time you need it to do anything that WordPress “core” can’t do on its own.
What to add a donation form to your website? You might use the Give plugin.
Are your website’s search results not good enough? SearchWP is great for that.
Want to add custom documentation right in the WordPress admin? WP Help works great.
The theme of your website is the very top block since it determines how the website looks. The words you enter into the database are just little bits of data, but the theme tells them where to go (along with images), the font and font size, and how they change when viewed on a phone as compared to a desktop computer.
Unlike plugins, a site only has one theme since a website only has one design. In many ways, the theme you choose is one of the most important decisions you make, so don’t miss the guide on how to choose a theme and the list of recommended themes.
When it comes to building a website with WordPress, you need to build the most solid tower for your nonprofit so it supports your mission and activities as you try to improve the world! WordPress is a great choice for many organizations because how you put the pieces together is up to you.
The new year is a great time to evaluate the state of your website and figure out how to make it better. But we all know that plenty of resolutions don’t get the followup they need. So instead of a New Year’s website resolution, pick one or two of these tasks and get started right now!
Since the goal is to get you moving forward on a concrete task, you don’t even need to read this whole post! Just pick the task that sounds the most interesting or useful and get to work!
Do a Content Audit
A content audit is the process of reviewing your entire site and assessing each piece of content individually to make sure it still serves your site visitors. It’s common to combine a content audit with a website redesign, but I think they work better separately. More-frequent content audits mean future website redesigns go more smoothly and your website will be consistently higher-quality for your visitors!
Whether it’s in a custom spreadsheet you set up or with a plugin like Content Audit, this is one of the best tasks you can do on your site.
Here’s how to do it:
Go through your site’s Pages one by one.
For each page, mark or list it as a meaningful status you can act on. I like to use the statuses Good, Minor Revisions, Major Revisions, Archive, and Merge with…. Then I’ll make a short note for each page about what should change.
If more than one person writes content for the site, also assign the Page to the person who will work on any revisions.
Once you’ve gone through the entire site, you will have learned a lot about the state of your site. Schedule the time to work on these pages throughout January and finish before February.
Quick Audit
If this sounds like too much, use your Jetpack Statistics or Google Analytics to identify your top 5, 10, or 20 pages. Then follow the steps above for that more limited set of pages.
Similarly, if you’ve managed to audit your whole site but aren’t sure where to start, let the site visitor stats determine which small part of the revision process to start on. Improving one high-traffic page is much more valuable that improving multiple low-traffic ones.
Clean Up Your Plugins & Themes
This one’s a little bit faster than the content audit.
Plugin Cleanup
While there’s no such thing as too many plugins, you never want to have plugins or themes that you’re not using installed on your site. These can slow down your site, clutter the admin, leave open a security hole, or force you to make unnecessary updates.
First, go to the Plugins page of the admin, and review each one. Do you know what it’s used for? Do you still need it? You may need to do a bit of research and contact your web developer or other staff, but figure out which plugins you don’t need and remove them from the site.
Once done, you’ll get a good reminder of how your site works and you’ll probably get some ideas for future projects (see below!).
[Fun fact: I just did this for NonprofitWP.org. With a bit of work to tweak a few things with my theme, I removed three plugins!]
Theme Cleanup
For themes, you really only need the theme your site is using. Delete all other themes from the Appearance > Themes screen in the admin. That’s it! 🙂
EXCEPTION: Child Themes
If your site is built using a “child theme”, then you’ll need two themes on your site, the active child theme and it’s parent theme. You can tell if you have a child theme by opening up your active theme details in Appearance > Themes and then looking for this:
The notice in the Theme Details panel saying whether it is a child theme of a parent.
If you see that notice, delete all themes except the active [child] theme and its parent theme.
Streamline Your Forms
Do you want more people to fill in forms on your site? Do you want to get better information from them? Streamlining your forms will probably lead to both outcomes over time!
If you’re using one of our recommended WordPress forms plugins, you’ll be able to easily improve the forms used to collect information from visitors.
Here’s what to do for each form:
Review your 5 most recent submissions and ask yourself these questions:
What questions don’t receive enough or accurate information?
Do certain optional fields get consistently skipped?
Most important: Can I tell someone how I use every piece of information I collect?
Once you’re more familiar with the reality of your form submissions, do the following for the form:
Make as few fields required as possible. These are the fields you couldn’t do without. An easy example: The email field for an email newsletter form. It won’t work without it!
Remove as many optional fields as possible. For example: Do you really need that person’s ZIP code?
Remove as many options from checkboxes, radio buttons, and select menus as possible.
Clarify each field name and, if needed, description. If you’re not getting good data, you’re probably mis-labeling your field or not being specific enough. Consider providing an example answer or sentence starter for free-form questions.
Rearrange form fields to increase commitment to finishing. For example: If working on a donation form, have people select their donation amount first. This builds momentum and gets questions that require active thinking out of the way earlier, letting users finish a form more or less on autopilot.
A streamlined form will be less-confusing for visitors and faster to fill out. That will increase the likelihood of people filling out your form and of you getting good data when they do!
Even if you didn’t use a consultant to build your site, it’s good to know who you’ll turn to when—not if—you face a website emergency or project outside your own technical abilities. A few phone calls, a visit to a meetup, or a strategic referral from a colleague is usually all it takes.
Once you’ve found someone willing to work with you, find a way to bring them on board with a small project. Maybe that’s signing up for their annual maintenance plan, doing a small project together (see below!), or having them performing a site audit with strategic recommendations for future improvements.
When your donation form or email newsletter signup form isn’t working, you don’t want to panic and working with the first person you can find. (“Well our Development Director’s nephew is great with an iPad!”)
Even if you have a consultant already, you need to make sure they’ll make time to help you when you need it most. Take a moment to get back in touch and thank them for their support.
Put in a bit of time and money now, and you will feel immense relief at the moment you need it most!
Do a Small Project
Too often, website work is an all-or-nothing endeavor for organizations. You get your budget together, you sink a huge amount of effort into planning, and then you make one big push to get the new site live.
But if your site is a year old or more, I bet there’s a pain point you’ve identified or a “Phase II” project that’s yet to happen. If we’re being honest, there was probably something not quite right immediately after launch too.
Take some time to think about one incremental improvement to your site that will make it better. A smart project here and there can extend the life of your site and make it more useful to your visitors.
With the year starting, plan now for a great new addition to your site and figure out what it will take—time-, budget-, and planning-wise—to get it up and running.
Make a Blogging Content Calendar for the Year
Content calendars are a great may to make sure your blog stays updated all year. They’re usually built around major events, donation drives, programmatic campaigns, and unscheduled important news as it arises. (If you don’t have many obvious events, maybe you work in some blogging seasons too!)
There are lots of great templates out there, or you can get fancy and use a plugin like Edit Flow to manage it right in your WordPress dashboard. Find a good format for you—I think it’s hard to beat a good spreadsheet!—and get to planning!
Start by making a list of key events and dates you’ll need to post on and leading up to.
Then make a list of less time-sensitive topics you can blog about to fill in the gaps. One easy idea: Do a fun social media roundup with the best posts about your cause from you and your supporters!
Finally, get these all down into a spreadsheet with due dates, staff writing assignments, and any other notes you’ll need to start writing immediately when a blog post deadline looms.
Now you’re ready to blog up a storm in 2017! 📝🌩☺
Content calendars help you think ahead leading to better-written posts and an easier time getting usable web content from your colleagues!
Remember Why You Picked WordPress. Incremental Changes to Your Website Are Good!
The whole point of using WordPress is to allow you and fellow staff members or volunteers to easily update your website. If you’ve already done the work to get a site up, take full advantage of that flexibility and control! This month, focus on a single task like the ones suggested here and just get it done. You should feel good about giving your visitors a better experience and simultaneously supporting your organization’s work more.
I always tell my clients that websites are never done. They’re more like a garden that needs tending. So put your digital green thumb to use, and make your site even better to support your organization and achieve your mission!
Just like you spring clean your house, every nonprofit website needs some attention every now and then to keep your site healthy. Given that it’s almost May, it’s time to get to it!
Plugins & Themes
If you’re a website administrator, head on over to Plugins > Installed Plugins and Appearance > Themes in your WordPress admin.
Read through the description of each plugin and make sure you still need it. Delete plugins that you don’t use and are deactivated, and see if you can deactivate any plugins you don’t need anymore.
For themes, delete all themes except the one you’re using. I used to leave one backup theme, but I don’t even do that anymore.
Why prune your plugins and themes? There are a few reasons:
Some security issues in plugins and themes can still be used even if the plugin or theme is not active!
While hosting space is cheap (usually “unlimited”), there’s no need to store extra files you won’t need and can easily download again. Worse yet, that extra code can bloat your backup files (see below!)
Fewer themes & plugins means fewer updates to manage!
You should know what powers your site and always aim to keep your site lean and efficient. Using fewer plugins might speed up your site, reduce clutter in your admin, and provide one less source for a potential problem in the future.
Check Your Backups
Assuming you have automated backups—you do have automated backups, right?—go to where they are stored and make sure that they are current and working as expected. If you have the technical ability, try to actually restore one on a test site to ensure these backups actually work! You get bonus points for saving a copy to your local hard drive as a backup-backup-backup.
Test Your Forms
Where I live in Seattle, GiveBig is coming up soon. No matter what, imagine your donation form hasn’t been working for who knows how long and you don’t know how many donations you’ve lost. That would be terrible! Try making a quick test donation on your site to ensure it works. (Feeling panicky? This post isn’t going anywhere.)
This is also always a good reminder to you of what your site visitors go through when trying to make a donation. Could it be better? Make sure you get automated receipts and thank you messages!
Besides your donation form, test your contact form, newsletter signup form and any other forms to make sure they work and create any notification emails you expect. If those forms are connected to other services or databases like MailChimp or Salesforce, make sure your test submissions accurately import into those as well.
Audit Your Content
A website is never “done.” If you haven’t reviewed your site in a while, it’s likely that something is out of date. Is your Staff page showing all current members with accurate emails? Has one of your programs shifted focus? Have you accomplished something major and not shared it with your website visitors yet?
Click through your site, edit what’s out of date, and make a list of what you need to add or significantly revise. Remember though that just because something isn’t current doesn’t mean you should delete it.
No Excuses!
I guarantee that an hour of reviewing your site will make it better! That’s something to take pride in! So close this window, log in to your website, and get clicking!
Update! It’s May 9, 2016 and I just posted a followup to this with some great recommendations from members of the Nonprofit Technology Network about even more spring cleaning tasks for your website. (And they really think you should do a content audit too!)
Idealware has established itself as one of the go-to sources for recommendations on nonprofit technology. That’s why I was excited to hear when they began researching for their guide to WordPress plugins for nonprofits.
As a member of the NTEN community, I submitted my own thoughts and recommendations for plugins to the researchers along with other consultants and nonprofit staff who use WordPress. (I was excited then to see that they chose to recommend one of my plugins Feature a Page Widget for use by nonprofits.)
Not Just Plugins
The resulting report includes good information on WordPress plugins, but also similar information to the pages for working with a consultant and before you get started. They also include a great checklist for nonprofits to complete as they prepare to make a DIY WordPress website.
I appreciate their honest take for nonprofits considering making their own WordPress sites:
But success often depends on tolerance for trial-and error, and the ability to devote the time to learning the system—which means, many nonprofits that do try to set up a WordPress site on their own will run into problems.
Hundreds of nonprofits have successfully built their own sites, but those that succeed must work broken features, weird designs, and devote considerable staff (or volunteer) time to the project.
More Nonprofit Plugin Options
On this site’s Recommended WordPress Plugins for Nonprofits page, I wanted to recommend the best one or two plugins so you don’t have to sort through the dozens of other options. If you find the recommendations on this site lacking, however, the slightly broader list of plugins for backups, events, CRM integration, security, and more in the new Idealware report will serve you well.
The notice in the Theme Details panel saying whether it is a child theme of a parent.
