Upstate South Carolina

[rgeyer]

The site - www.erbc-sc.org (http://www.erbc-sc.org) - (yeah, I know the address is awful) I work with is that of a conservative evangelical church in Greenville, SC. We started online about 4-5 years ago. First efforts were essentially electronic brochures with static content; last two years we've tried to be worth visiting more than once. We're trying to have it both ways - engaging explorers and connecting members - so we struggle a bit to find the right feel and voice and try to err on the side of meeting newcomers well.

I'm a lay volunteer, usually taking on what I call Special Ops: anything that doesn't fit into an established category. I pretend it's because I'm Special but I suspect it's because I need Ops. I know just enough code to be dangerous and have learned by borrowing and modifying scripts from public sources. I have a lot of ideas but need a lot of help implementing them. I'm sure there are lots of things we should be doing but aren't yet tuned in enough to know about.

We're experimenting with group blogs (in hopes of lightening the load for a single contributor) but have all sorts of reservations about the links that the most popular hosts offer to unlovely places.
As multiple small groups develop their own forums we're beginning to look for the most effective umbrella.
I'm trying to figure out how best to connect a lay participant like myself with the formative thinking process that goes on among church leaders, so that the site becomes integrated with ministry development rather than another means of announcing it.I doubt that any of these are new, so I look forward to sitting at the feet of the master(s).

[Faithhb_lutheran]

Ron

Welcome to the forum. I don't really understand your first point. What problems are you having exactly? In regard to your second point we have had a few discussions on that topics which you can search for but I will ask you this question what type of umbrella are you looking at, just a forum system or a full blown CMS to power communication? Your last point is IMHO one of the hardest part of being a church webmaster. My advice would be direct and recognize that you are most likely thinking a lot more progressively then the rest of the church leaders are. Ask to be present at the ministry planning meetings as merely an observer and when they are comfortable with you interject some thoughts about the website. Start with possible items like how to use the site for facilities scheduling, or volunteer coordination, or committee communication then as they see the benefits they will start asking you about how the web fits into the ministry plan.

[rgeyer]

Thanks for the time.
We started using blogger.com for group blog (after investigating/trying on a number of other services), which we either frame into our site or customize so that it matches the appearance of our site. At the top of each blogger.com page is a button called "Next Blog" that links randomly to another blog, some of which are, frankly, pornographic. We defeated this by hosting the blog on some private webspace, but the button remains at the bottom that links you back to the blogger.com home page. We know to moderate comments but forgot to watch backlinks. As parents of the students at whom this is targeted become more aware of the failings of MySpace, etc, sensitivities are heightened. The host we use may offer blogging support in the future, but does not yet do so. I'm now looking at eponym's (www.eponym.com (http://www.eponym.com)) paid service to eliminate ads, avoid private hosting and gain better control. How have others dealt with these concerns? Are we being too careful? It's the "in the world, but not of the world" challenge.
I'm an architect by trade, and I tend to look for a unifying theme or structure, physical, logical or aesthetic, which is what I mean by "umbrella". (Sorry, another reality is that I sometimes talk in pictures.) It's a design challenge that is much more superficial than other issues dealt with here.
Thanks for the encouragement; we're on that track. I just want it yesterday.Again, thanks for the time.

[Faithhb_lutheran]

Ron,

In my opinion you guys are over thinking your first point. Google lets the porn industry index, so should we ban google searches? Everybody knows what's out there on the web and if they go looking for it then there isn't much we can do to stop them. I personally have never had a visitor to a blogger blog get redirected to a porn blog with the next button but it is possible.Anyway I understand the dilemma. What I would recommend is setting up one of the blog frameworks like Wordpress (wordpress.org (http://www.wordpress.org)) (I haven't heard of any adult oriented sites based on it.) where you can host it yourself with a little admin work and then you have the best of both worlds privacy and functionality.

[rgeyer]

I don't disagree; it's a bit overwrought. The issue is not whether we can coexist with ugly stuff (it's important that we do), it's how to avoid doing it on our letterhead. Thanks for the response, though. Wordpress is a possibility.

[GuruGreg]

Welcome aboard!

I would second Kyle's suggestion of using your own blogging platform, such as Wordpress, for maintaining your multi-user blog. It eliminates the problems of unwanted advertisements and should allow you to incorporate it more smoothly with the rest of your existing site.

I also have to ask the question of why do you have links to The Weather Channel, Yahoo! and ESPN on your homepage? If you're trying to make the church websited a startpage kind of portal, this might not be the best approch. Regardless, my pop-up blocker prevents them from opening.

In general, you have a very clean appearing site. I noticed you're using Extend from ACSTechnologies. What do you think of it? Strengths? Weaknesses? I ask because I've been slowly working on a website package in ColdFusion in my spare time, and I'm sure others may be interested in it as well.

[xhtml]

I just noticed that the Extend backend is putting all sorts of invalid and non-existent xmlns (XML Namespace) values in the <html> element opening tag. The root namespace: http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml is not even used! Wonder what that's all about? That's sure to make the pages not render if the documents were served with the correct MIME type.

Still like the look of the site though. I'll agree with GuruGreg - I'd go with Wordpress too.

[rgeyer]

Thanks for the consensus on Wordpress. I wasn't smart enough to see how to make it work for groups, but will revisit.

The first market for the new web presence was the staff. The links to The Weather Channel, Yahoo! and ESPN were put there to bait the them (and maybe a few others) to use it as their homepage (without occupying a lot of space). Ours were/are generally unaware of the possibilities of the site. At my workplace we set up all the machines to use the corporate website as their homepage. We don't have the same means at the church and staff was reluctant to give up the news and weather portals they were used to. It's probably accomplished all that was intended at the time and needs to be pulled. (It was also an early effort to practice flash design). I'm open to suggestions for other approaches.

Re: Extend from ACSTechnologies. As I understand it, ACS was an early provider of database software to churches that seems to have migrated successfully to web-based applications for different kinds of not-for-profits. We have been a longtime ACS customer.

In my experience, strengths are its integration with scheduling and other database applications, user-friendly interfaces that allow someone other than code geniuses to put together decent sites (I think) and generally terrific customer service.

I have found that some of my options are limited since I can't place file types or programs directly on the server. They have good instincts (I'm told that they plan to offer the blog support that has occupied so much of my space on this forum) but seem just a hair behind the curve on delivery. Ordinary hosting is very reasonable, but options like bulletin boards or galleries are expensive and clumsy. To their credit, the program seems to get better on a regular basis and the cost has gone down.

ps...I wouldn't know a "xmlns" if it clubbed me in an alley. I drive the car but don't know much about the spark plugs.

pps...I'm new here. Does someone come and scold us if we stay on the introductory forum too long?

[Faithhb_lutheran]

Ron,

Here's a suggestion. Get the senior pastor to agree to dedicating a staff meeting or two to technical issues. Let them set the issues, but work ways to use the website into the discussion. IMHO that will work better to motivate the staff to use the website then trying to make it look like a portal page. (also talk to them about downloading Google desktop. (http://127.0.0.1:4664/about&s=zAJAsHSVJVdUj3uvSD-zN_0Pce4) for their news and weather).

I haven't ever used extend but IMHO specialized church management software companies that have tried to come over to the web don't work very well. I would rather have to work on two programs that both export data to the same formats and are great at what they are meant to do than a program that does it all only half as good. Their are a lot of really good CMS platforms out there so don't think that you always have to be limited.

Don't worry the rest of us aren't getting scolded either so you should be safe:D