Greetings From Pittsburgh, PA

[GuruGreg]

Hi!

My name is Greg and I'm the Webmaster and Worship Leader at South Pittsburgh Assembly of God (SPAG). I'm a programmer by trade and work with ColdFusion at a study on Childhood Depression. I also have years of experience with various web design tools and applications.

I currently maintain the web site for SPAG, as well as IfJesusHadAWebsite.net where I write various articles about different church website design considerations in the hopes of improving the online presence of Christian churches and helping them use their websites as outreach tools.

On the side, I also help maintain a Red Sox fan site at RedSox2000.com (http://www.redsox2000.com).

[David Gillaspey]

Hi Greg,

Welcome to the forum and thanks for posting. I see from the http://IfJesusHadAWebsite.net site that we share a common passion for helping churches to improve their websites. May God bless your ministry!

I'll add a link to your site from my site over the weekend.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites
(and forum host and administrator)

[GuruGreg]

That's correct David!

And I'm glad to see that we seem to have slightly different approaches. I fully believe that the more information we can put out there to help church websites increase their applied functionality, the better we can reach out to the world.

[flutem3]

Greg wrote:

"I currently maintain the web site for SPAG, as well as IfJesusHadAWebsite.net where I write various articles about different church website design considerations in the hopes of improving the online presence of Christian churches and helping them use their websites as outreach tools.
"

Hi, Greg,

I just tried to register on the If Jesus Had a Website website and cannot get in. I get some really strange errors which I have never seen before. I don't know much about some of this stuff, but I do know how to register. I tried to go back to the index page, and I still couldn't get in. HELP! :confused:

I am looking forward to seeing what you have on that website. I am going to be redesigning our website with the information I have learned over the last year. I am in the search and research phase of the planning. The website will continue to be one which is basically for those who are looking for a church and for the members with resources which hopefully lots of people who end up on our site will find useful. I have not discovered yet out to include a good basic outreach aspect to it...except by accident. But I am working on that too.

I like the name of your website. It puts a different slant on the entire idea for a website. I am putting the concept into my brain so that it will take root...I hope.

Help me get back in...please!!

Carol

PS WELCOME!!!

[David Gillaspey]

Hi Carol,

It doesn't appear necessary to actually register to view the articles on Greg's site. I am able to browse the site without registering. Which begs the question, Greg: what are the benefits of registering?

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

[flutem3]

David,

I cannot get in at all. I get a page that has all kinds of stuff about errors on it. This is what I get no matter how I try:

"The system has attempted to use an undefined value, which usually indicates a programming error, either in your code or some system code.
Null Pointers are another name for undefined values."


And then there is a whole bunch of other stuff. Maybe he is working on it.

Carol

PS What happened to the Spell Checker? Is it on sabbatical?

[David Gillaspey]

What happened to the Spell Checker? Is it on sabbatical?Sorry for the delay in fixing it. I work full time now (temporary, full-time contract job). With commute time added, I have little time to attend to the website right now. However, this weekend and for the next week, I'll be making some changes to my site and forum.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Website

[flutem3]

Sorry for the delay in fixing it. I work full time now (temporary, full-time contract job). With commute time added, I have little time to attend to the website right now. However, this weekend and for the next week, I'll be making some changes to my site and forum.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Website

Sorry, David,

I knew that. I should have my hands slapped and my brain examined. And I even spell relatively well. I just noticed that it wasn't working. What kinds of changes are you making to the website...just in general?

Carol

[David Gillaspey]

What kinds of changes are you making to the website...just in general?Display the latest forum posts on my home page.

Revise the introductory text on the home page.

Move the database search form to its own page, though it would only be visible to GCW members who are logged in. (It's now at the bottom of the home page but again, only visible to GCW members who are logged in.)

Tweak the design. The forum and the database ? the two primary resources I offer ? need to be emphasized or promoted more.

For the forum, I still want to add the ability to save drafts.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

[flutem3]

WOW!! Sounds like a lot of work to me. Good luck with it. Carol

[GuruGreg]

Hi guys! Sorry I hadn't see all the posts, as I've been busy the last few days. I think Carol and I straightened out the problem she was having on Saturday, which was a database problem on my part.

It doesn't appear necessary to actually register to view the articles on Greg's site. I am able to browse the site without registering. Which begs the question, Greg: what are the benefits of registering?

Carol asked me the same question the other day as well, and I did respond to her in e-mail. Basically, the point of registering is two-fold. One, it lets me allow user comments in response to my articles without having to worry about "anonymous" or spamming posts. I figure if people have names to refer to each other with, it's more likely to develop a community atmosphere. Two, it allows me to use some sort of security with banning members who do login and then spam or post inappropriate material. So some of it is precautionary.

Eventually, I hope to include more features that involve user feedback and interaction, and the registration system will extend to that as well! :)

[doctorknobs]

Welcome to the forum Greg!

Just wanted to say I like the SPAG site. It's clean and easy to navigate, just the way I like things. Hopefully I'll get our church website to that point in the very near future.

[GuruGreg]

Thanks for the positive feedback Doc! I know as a designer I'm never quite happy and would always like to do more (curse of perfectionism), so it's nice to know when others find my work appealing.

[JackWolfgang]

<Jack action="pops" direction="in">
<greeting recipient="Greg">Hello</greeting>
</Jack>

OK, Jack shouldn't work on XML, XML Schemas, and XSLT until 3 AM.