This is based off a question I got from a friend–how can non techies easily set up a website to take donations and publicize a cause?
It’s not hard.
- Register a domain name, if you haven’t already– yourfriendsfundraiser.com; godaddy is fine for this ($10/year)
- Create a google site: http://sites.google.com (free!)
- Point yourfriendsfundraiser.com to the google site: http://www.steegle.com/websites/google-sites-howtos/googlesites-frequentlyaskedquestionsfaq#TOC-How-do-I-change-my-site-s-address-U (free!)
- Put a paypal donation button on the site: http://siteshelp.kccloudsolutions.com/step-by-step-guides/usingpaypalwithgooglesites (Paypal takes like 3.5% of each transaction? Not sure of the exact amount, but it is free to put the button on your site.)
Of course, Google Sites isn’t the most flexible publishing platform (see, for instance, this discussion on how to link to an uploaded PDF), but it will get the job done for most simple sites.
Long live the non expert publisher!
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