Free add-on capabilities

I have used a variety of free add-ons to extend the capabilities of my websites.  These include:

Primary email address

I started by creating a Gmail address (such as rotarywoodend@gmail.com) by signing up with Google Accounts (www.google.com/accounts).  Going into "My Account" / "Gmail - Settings" / "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" I was able to redirect any emails sent to this address to my normal email address.  This meant 1) I did not have to reveal my normal email address which could then attract SPAM (I could readily cancel/change the Gmail address should this become a problem); and 2) I would not need to separately check for emails coming to the Gmail address.

Domain name

Yola offers domain names such as .com or .org, but not .org.au.  I wanted the latter, and the best deal I could find was from VentraIP (www.ventraip.com.au) - AU$13.95 for two years (Note: there are restrictions on who can apply for a .org.au address - my not-for-profit enterprises qualified).  Following instructions from VentraIP and Yola I was able to name my sites accordingly (www.nepalaid.org.au and www.rotarywoodend.org.au).

Site-based email addresses

Next I signed up with Google Apps (http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/nonprofit/index.html).  There I could create new users as required (admin@rotarywoodend.org.au, info@rotarywoodend.org.au, etc.)  This entailed setting MX records in VentraIP.  For Rotary I created email accounts for all office bearers, then set email forwarding for each of the to the email address of the current office holder.  It will be a simple matter to change these forwarding instructions when office-bearers change.

Blog page

While it is easy enough to insert a link to an email address to allow people to provide feedback, but I decided to go beyond that on my Nepal site by incorporating a blog page to allow people to share their comments publicly.  For this I used Disqus (http://www.disqus.com/) - you can see the result at http://nepalaid.org.au/feedback.php.   (Once again it was necessary to copy HTML code from the service website and drop it into an HTML widget on my Yola page.)

Page visitor statistics

A Google search for Web Analytics reveals many free analytics services.  They provide code which you need to install in your web pages using the HTML widget.  I have installed three on my sites, as they each give somewhat different information.  I obtained the code from the various web sites, combined it into a single block in NotePad, then pasted into an HTML widget at the bottom of each web page.  I used StatCounter to provide a public counter of visitors to the site.  The three I chose were:

www.google.com/analytics         www.statcounter.com           www.getclicky.com

Site search

Once again there are numerous options available, including Google.   I chose PicoSearch, available from

www.picosearch.com

Page last modified date

I found some HTML code for this at www.chami.com/tips/Internet/041198I.html.  I had to teach myself just a little bit of HTML in order to modify the font format and colour, but it wasn't hard.  Again just a case of pasting the code into an HTML widget.

Photos

There are various ways you can incorporate photos into a Yola website.  One is to do so directly, by dragging in a Picture widget.  For my Nepal site I wanted to included groups of pictures on various topics, with annotations.  I did this by building PowerPoint presentations which I then imported into Zoho Show (https://show.zoho.com/login.do?serviceurl=%2FHome.do) where I needed to tweak them a bit before making them public and thus accessible from my website.  I then needed to insert some HTML code provided by Zoho into an HTML widget in my website.  You can see the results at http://nepalaid.org.au/photos.php. 

For the Rotary website I chose one of the "Photo Galleries and Video" widgets offered by Yola, namely Yahoo's Flickr Lightbox.  I'm still experimenting with this, but you can see the results at http://rotarywoodend.org.au/photos.php.

When inserting photos you may need to adjust the image size and resolution.  Failing to do this can lead to long downloading times, frustrating those wanting to see them.  For these adjustments I use Gimp, a very sophisticated photo editor available free from http://www.gimp.org/.   It can take a while getting the hang of this editor, but it is worth persevering.  It's capabilities are comparable with Photoshop, allowing you to adjust exposure, colour balance and sharpness as well as cropping, rotating, etc.  You can readily build up photo collages by inserting multiple images as separate layers, to which you can also add layers of text.

Tables

There's a marvellous tool available at html101.yolasite.com that lets you create tables which it then converts to HTML.  You can copy this HTML and paste it into an HTML widget on your website, and there's your table.

One problem with this facility is that you nominate the size of the table (rows and columns) when you create it, and there's no facility for changing this except by dipping into the HTML, which can be tedious.  I have found a much better option is to create your table in a spreadsheet or word document where you can manipulate its size at will, then copy it (or just part of a bigger spreadsheet/table) and paste it into html101.yolasite.com as straight text (i.e. without using the insert/edit table option).  The Paste option removes any formatting and leaves you with a simple table that you can then format in html101.yolasite.com (though this is rather tedious, as it only does it one cell at a time).  You then switch to the HTML view, Select All, Copy and then paste into your website HTML widget.

Other Free Website Tools