The Concerned Citizens Coalition and Slurve are looking for someone to help configure Wordpress, Drupal or a similar content management system for our non-profit organization.  We have the front end, but we need help hooking it up so we can upload content and automatically index articles in the most user-friendly way possible. 

We are so excited to be a part of the NetSquared community. It’s refreshing to have a online venue that supports and encourages socially conscious ideas. We are one of the 15 groups that will be presenting at the N2Y4 conference next week, and we wanted to take a moment to introduce our initiative on the blog along with outlining how you can help support our cause! 

I've updated the Social Media Toolkit to v0.11 with a number of features taken from the NewsCloud platform:

I am happy to share an early testing release of the NewsCloud Social Media Toolkit with you.

Location

Last night, Matt showed me the build for our autocomplete search. When a user wants to find a charity, the form will suggest what they're looking for. Now, for any veteran programmer, this would qualify as Ajax 101. Still, it was nice to see some of the tools we enjoy on other sites making a cameo on our own.

It made me think though- how much do these Web 2.0 Bells and Whistles help non-profits and for-profit businesses get heard? Now, I know that programming tricks definitely help usability- anything that makes a webpage more like a desktop is a great functionality to have. But do the aesthetic details (the bells and whistles) drive people to your cause?

Take, for example, a site called Dogster. Found at Dogster.com, it's got "Web 2.0" functionality, but the look of the site is more 1.0. There's no tag clouds, typical fonts, or tiny flourishes. Yet the site is a huge success.

I'd love to find out what you think- do the little things help a site reach its audience (profit or non-profit)? Does it matter if a site uses an autocomplete form instead of a simple list?