Nice trip to Atlanta.

After dropping off Bill of Cooperative Coffees I then headed out to the Monastery. I retreaved some DVD's I had left there and got a chance to catch up with folks there. They are still working at settling in with the Mail Order Manager system I helped to install. Overall the pattern that I experienced while I was there continued. Dydacomp, the makers of Mail Order Manager (see above link) went far beyond expectations with their sale of the product. Once they painted it to be the answer to all our needs we installed the system and then began to see the shortcomings. The monastery pays a service contract and after waiting on hold for exorbitant amounts of time hear "MOM won't do that" and MOM Helpers might be able to help." We managed so many workarounds that when a "MOM Helper" came to see if they could help (at a great expense) they would say "MOM won't do that" and then see that we actually have (sort of) made it do it with our own workaround. So in reality the "MOM Helper" probably learned more than she taught. Though MOM is an impressive software program I would NEVER recommend it again as their service is seriously lacking.

It was nice to see everyone at the monastery, and though they are not 100% pleased with the system, they appreciate what I did while I was there.

I then went to North GA, spent the night at John's, and the next day we had a great hike into the mountains, climbed on the rocks by a river and went swimming in a swimming hole albeit very cold water, it felt great to take the first swim of the summer! It was good to see John, the next time I see him will likely be at his wedding! I am excited for him and know he will make a great husband to a very special woman, Nicole.

Picked up Bill at the airport and returned to Americus.

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This has been a very intense few days for learning the art of web promotion.

Yesterday I figured out how to do a rss feed for Koinonia's newsletter. Though I didn't have to create the xml file myself (Dada mail did this for me) but I added the feed to Koinonia's site on the news page I then downloaded foxit reader for firefox and now I have entered the world of news feeds.

There are some great Fair Trade feeds like: Coffee and Conservation from coffeehabitat.com.

Today I set up a blog for Koinonia and posted the first article. Now I am trying to encourage the folks at Cafe Campesino to start posting to a blog.

On a frustrating note, I wanted to get a handle on sending html formatted email and found that it is a world of confusion. Email readers all deal with the formatting differently and AOL and Hotmail are two of the worst. You cannot easily use css, you have to pull some special tricks to do so, or you can go back to using old formatting options pre-css, which I am not ready to do.

The best articles I found and the ones that I utilized the most in creating a new mail template for Koinonia was from A List Apart and Sitepoint. I am still feeling like there is a lot more to learn about this, and I only have until next month's newsletter.

Until next time...

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KoinoniaFarm

I will begin to keep the world up to date with what is happening at a simple little web design business.

We are a web design team that helps non-profit groups and businesses that are socially and environmentally responsible.

Stay tuned for the joys and challenges of this endevor.

Peace,
geoffrey/pax

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