Website - Jane Morris
At the time of writing Paul and I are extremely busy working on yet another total rebuild of the Church Website. We're changing from a static structure to a database driven site and adding some new features.
Why?
The last version of the site had outgrown its structure and was becoming a nightmare to maintain. Also Paul and I have learned an awful lot more since we took over as the web team and wanted the Church to benefit from some of that increased knowledge.
We felt that the site as it was had become rather stagnant. Much of the content is static and does not seem to reflect the dynamism of St John's. As a church community we have so many great things to offer by way of groups, activities and the like - we seem missing the opportunity to share this on the web. The Internet is a great tool for promotion and evangelism... and one of the great things about it is it has the potential to reach so many people (as proved by our recent visit from Ian and co. from South Africa).
People are starting to get into the mindset of writing things for the site but we were struggling to fit new information round the existing site structure so we've been working to address that and there should be much more scope for new contributions.
How and where do we see the Website?
We would like the website to become something more than a place just to dump information, it has real potential to become an online community not only for the people at St John's, but for anyone interested in who we are and the things we're doing. We have a worship structure that reflects the hustle and bustle of daily life and allows people to worship the way that suits them best - we should be extending that opportunity to the Internet.
What's changed in the new version?
For a while the "St John's Online" Forum was quite active - people found a way to get together without having to make plans, check diaries, etc. It was a place to continue discussions from Sunday services, to chat about life the universe and everything, and generally catch up with each other. However, we dropped the ball a little and things have been quite lately. I suspect that part of the problem was that the forum was not really part of the website and felt a little like an afterthought so in the new build of the site we have changed the way we do things - the forum is now an integral part of the site and looks like it belongs.
We've changed the Photo Gallery to fit better with the site structure, the new gallery is much more user friendly - and it looks prettier too!
There is now the opportunity for other people to maintain various sections of the site if they so wish - no great technical knowledge is needed (though we can give anyone who needs it a crash course if necessary), also you won't need special software since it's all controlled within the site.
Along with the RSS feeds there are now email notifications - if you wish to be kept up to date with specific sections you can set the site to email you when there is new content.
We've added an events calendar to work along side the Notices - Upcoming events can be added as and when necessary.
There's a "Personal Messaging" facility built into the site - both people will need to have signed up for an account in order to use this.
We will now be able to upload content but not have it appear until a specific time and date - this will make some of the updates easier to manage.
We've not really changed the overall look of the site although it is now a little wider and we've tweaked a few bits to make them look prettier.
There is still a little work to do with some of the Accessibility features but hopefully that should all be sorted soon.
Web Awards 2007
In September last year we came in the top 6 nominations (best church website category) for the Premier Christian Radio Web and Blog Awards, the biggest reason for this is down to the wide range of content on the site, we need to keep our content fresh and Interesting - in order to do this we need your help.
If there's something you would get enthusiastic about to your friends, colleagues, neighbours, etc. then we need to hear about it for the site.
If you have photographs of a recent church event then send them to us and we'll put them in the Gallery.
Finally…
If you have any contributions or suggestions please let us know!
jane@stjohnshillingdon.org.uk