With The 2020 edition of #GivingTuesday just wrapped up and the all important year-end fundraising push around the corner, I wanted to take a couple of seconds to talk about one of my favourite tools for WordPress – GiveWP.

Over the past couple of years, I have been using GiveWP to power the donation processing side of some of our most successful WordPress installs. Essentially, it’s an all-in-one third party WordPress plug-in that allows any organization to accept donations seamlessly and through an enhanced user interface. In particular, GiveWP has been invaluable when working with political campaigns, community organizations (that are not registered charities) and businesses looking to leverage a donation model for their revenue generation.

But what makes GiveWP different from the dozens of third party external donation tools and WooCommerce enabled set-ups? Here are the just some of the key features that I believe give GiveWP the edge:

1. The core GiveWP install is free and relatively easy to install. Development time takes about an hour or two to set-up and the core plug-in comes with a slew of core features that are hard to find in most donation solutions. Additional add-ons are relatively inexpensive to add to a single domain (in comparison to the full cost of other WordPress Donation tools).
2. GiveWP is incredibly versatile and isn’t only for registered charities, it works for non-registered charities, organizations looking to leverage a donation model (cough bloggers cough) and most importantly any sized political campaigns.
3. Two key design features that are incredibly advantageous for online donation campaigns – fundraising goal trackers and donation amount buttons – come prepackaged and ready to go with the base install of GiveWP. (Click here to checkout the tool in action)
4. It connects with Paypal and Stripe, right out of the box. The plug-in recently improved it’s core install to include both Stripe and Paypal payments gateways.
5. Using GiveWP allows you to keep users on your site, without having to take them to a third party donation site.
6. It comes with a full suite of reporting features within the WordPress backend to monitor donations and the email template set-up is easy to set-up to track donations received.

So if you’re a non-profit or an organization that is reevaluating your donation process after #GivingTuesday or looking to beef up your WordPress web site by accepting donations through your site before year-end or even frustrated by the existing tools out there, check out GiveWP.com. When it comes to the available tools out there, you won’t be disappointed at how powerful and easy-to-use the tool is.

A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of presenting at WordCamp YYC on my experiences using WordPress for political campaigns. Earlier this week I stumbled upon the posting of the full talk on WordPress.TV, so I figured it was time to share for those who weren’t at WordCamp Calgary 2017.

With the another round of municipal elections set in Alberta for October 2017, we are about to be bombarded by candidates vying for our votes and attention. But what makes a good Political Campaign Web Site? What makes people take notice of a candidate? And are there lessons about design, branding and functionality that we can learn from campaign web sites to enhance our own business and non-profit web sites. This honest and frank talk will dive into the world of political web design to provide you with ideas on how better tell the story of your organization and get people to buy in to your message.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of giving a talk at WordCamp Calgary 2017 called Campaigning With WordPress: Design and Story Telling Lessons From The World of Political Web Design. At the request of many attendees I’ve attached my slides for download and viewing via Slide Share below.

Oh, Hello! Welcome to the revamped Armadillo Studios Inc.

Some of you may have noticed the soft launch of the site in late November, but now that 2014 has crept upon us I felt it was time to make the new redesign official.

Yes, this new redesign is a massive change for the company and only the third switch up since I started this outfit way back in 2007. The new look is designed to showcase the evolution of Armadillo Studios from a broad and idealistic multi-contractor shop to a focused and specialized WordPress, Social Media and E-mail marketing outfit. The added benefit of this new redesign, is not only does Armadillo have a brand spanking new look, but also a more specialized business direction.

Armadillo Studios’ new mantra is to help Businesses. Non-profits and Political Organizations achieve their online goals through customized WordPress and NationBuilder web sites, grass roots based Social Media campaigns and personalized E-mail Marketing Campaigns. IF you haven’t noticed, it’s plastered all over the new site and branding. While I won’t pretend that these three areas of services are ground breaking by any stretch of the imagination, I do hope that by focusing on these three avenues, I can further improve upon the great service Armadillo Studios’ has been providing over the past few years.

And while you’re browsing around the site, you may also note that the new site better reflects Armadillo’s true structure. The site now acts as more of a professional portfolio site for myself and my two and a half compadres. You can read the new bios on the about page to find out more about Armadillo Studios or check out the long standing corporate blog for the most recent projects and articles.

Oh, and in addition to a brand new web site and redesign, I have also launched Armadillo’s first new email newsletter. This new monthly newsletter will focus on the latest web sites launches and blog posts. It’s a simple way to keep our clients, friends and unsuspecting family members up to date with the latest adventures.

I hope you enjoy the new vibe and I welcome any feedback you may have. Feel free to sign up for the newsletter below or follow armadillo on Facebook and Twitter. Over the next few weeks there will be even more changes to the site as the second phase of the redesign takes place. The first order of business is to add some mobile responsive magic and to also provide a new level of detail for Armadillo’s Services.

Thanks for taking the time to catch up with Armadiilo.

Cheers,

Connor Turner

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending “The Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta’s 2013 AGM”:http://www.albertapc.ab.ca/admin/contentx/default.cfm?h=10951&PageId=10951 in Red Deer as a special services vendor. Throughout the weekend I had the chance to meet many great people and discuss with them the latest trends within the industry of political focused web design, social media strategies and also targeted e-mail marketing.

In addition, I was able to reveal Armadillo’s newly minted corporate branding and some customized print material for the event.

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