Groovy Sputum

Busy Times

I didn’t realize how many things I had going on until I hit the wall around 8:30 this evening. I was listening to the kids read some books and I found myself barely able to keep the eyelids open. I drifted off into a short cat nap and feel a bit better now, but in my half-slumber, I began to think of all the projects I had going on. The big one, of course, is the building of our house. Then there is VBS that I am directing in June, the church web site which we just launched 10 days ago, and we are gearing up for state testing at school in two weeks. All of these things are enjoyable for me (save the state testing) so I really haven’t viewed them as stresses, but I think I have put in a few too many late nights listening to kids music and getting building material quotes. Anyway, here is an update on where things stand on some of these projects:

• The final house drawings will be done tomorrow and I will be sitting down with my subs to add electric, plumbing, and septic sketches to the plans next week.
• I should have my plans submitted for permitting near the end of April.
• I have my order in for VBS curriculum and am holding an organizational meeting next week to see what workers I will have.
• There is a very talented lady at church who is willing to design and create the set for me. I told her that I really couldn’t help much and she is ok with that. Hallelujah!
• My online registration form for VBS is finished (thanks Google Docs!).
• The church website is up and running and I have had a steady stream of new material to add which is what I had hoped for.

So, that is what has been going on in my world. Believe it or not, I am really looking forward to July when I can just do some mindless physical labor and see my house go up. Most of what I am doing now is in front of this LCD screen. I think my eyes are going bad.

Done…Finally

After much delay, our WordPress church web site is up and running. There is mostly static, for-visitor info on it right now, but we did manage to launch with 6 posts. There is a testimony, a message from the pastor, a brief summary about some recent events, and a few technical articles explaining how to use the rss feeds and explaining social bookmarks. Check it out here. I would love to hear some feedback about what you think.

The Blog That’s Not A Blog

Sunday was supposed to be our launch of the new church website, but due to many things, it has been put off until March 2nd. I think that date is pretty solid, mostly because Pastor Mike announced it from the pulpit on Sunday, gave out the web address, and said it would be up on that day. I figured that I would spend some time explaining a few things about the site that I think are rather unique.

When you think of a blog, even a church blog, you typically think of a Blogger or WordPress layout: a header image that changes with the seasons, one large column with the 5 or 6 latest posts, and a side bar filled with widgets and such. This is fine for a personal blog, but it’s not what I had in mind for our church site. I wanted to have an area where we could put static data (like service times, a map, statement of faith, etc.) but reserve the majority of the page area for posts. Here’s the catch: I wanted to display a number of posts from a variety of categories on the page in a way that readers could see them all.

After investigating many themes available for WordPress, I found that 99% of them don’t separate posts based on category nor do they display posts in multiple places. Then I discovered the phrase magazine style theme. After a Google search with that phrase, I found a number of themes that would do what I wanted. They all are built primarily for newspapers or magazines that display their info in separate categories. Some of my favorites are The Morning After, Mimbo, Structure, and Grid Focus. Others I found are Gridlock, Visionary, and a number of themes by Upstart Blogger.

After trying a few, I finally settled on the Mimbo theme due to it’s classic styling and use of custom fields. If you are a Seinfeld fan, you will recognize the name. Funny stuff. Anyway, I made a few changes to the sidebar and the CSS file, but not many. The first thing you see when you go to the site is the latest post from the pastor. Below it are the three latest testimonies as well as the latest post from the children, youth, and adult categories. The announcements are in the top right corner and are actually posts with only theirs title showing. The nice thing about this is that they show up on the page as bulleted lines, but are sent as posts via the rss feed.

When visitors come to the site, they have access to 12 posts from 6 different categories as well as navigation and special event banners. This is exactly what I wanted. A traditional blog format shoves all of the content to the bottom or the archives and the viewer has to search for the content they want. With a magazine style format, the viewer always sees the latest post from each category, regardless of when it was posted.

The static info that rarely changes is confined to pages and can be accessed via the drop down navigation bar at the top. The titles showing are the parent pages and the drop down choices are children of those parents. The only pages that will change much will be the events. I am planning to create a new page for each special event we have and then link the side banner ads to them. When the event is first presented, it will be written up and categorized into either the children, youth, or adult areas as a post. As the event approaches, I will create a post in the announcement category so that a reminder is sent to any one subscribing to the site feed.

So, that’s it. I think the overall visual appearance is nice (conservative, yet modern in a techie way) and it functions the way I had it in my head. I would love to hear what you think about the concept and design. We haven’t gone live yet, so who knows, maybe something you suggest will be worked into the final product!

T-Minus 5 Days

I met with Pastor Mike last week and showed him the initial build for the CFAC web site and he really liked it. I thought about providing a link for you to check it out, but because the content is just gibberish, I decided to wait until the site is up and running to reveal it.

Some of you may be wondering why I appear to have an obsession with WordPress. Well, when I first investigating CMS (content management systems), I realized that there were many to choose from. I had a list of criteria that the CMS needed to have, and as I began to investigate the possibilities, a few platforms really stuck out. Here is what I was looking for:

1. Open Source (i.e. free)
2. Well supported and tested
3. Large community of users for support and the sharing of layouts & customizable features (because I an not that creative)
4. Built on an open source database (again, free)
5. Easy to use login and user interface (if it is too difficult to change, the site will never be updated)
6. Blog ready, but not necessarily blog only
7. Able to be self hosted with my domain name (I didn’t want third party ads or logos on the site nor did I want my domain name to be whatever.blogityblogblogblog.com)

Based on these criteria, I narrowed my choices to Joomla! and WordPress. They are nearly identical platforms and fit my criteria to a tee, but I eventually chose WordPress because of the out-of-the-box blog features. Although Joomla! can be used as a blog, there is much more set up and customization involved to get there.

The more I have used WordPress, the more impressed with it I have been. It uses MySQL as it’s database and runs on Linux servers. It uses the scripting language php to access the database, although some programmers have complained that it is not a true php, but a modified version of it. I honestly don’t care because it is fairly intuitive and anyone with the slightest bit of scripting background can figure out the syntax. WordPress also has a huge following of users and that means tons of extras like themes and plugins (a small program that provides an extra service not normally preformed by the CMS). The main WordPress site also has a large resource area to assist people like me in customizing.

In my research leading up to our church web site, I came across many churches using all kinds of blog software. In my opinion, those running Joomla! or WordPress were by far the nicest. They just seemed to strike the right balance between and online billboard and an online community. I think that is really what I am going for. Too much of either and the site becomes a static ad or simply a church forum. I am not interested in either of those.

So, we are set to go live on Sunday. When you see it, I hope your reaction is, “Wow, that doesn’t look like a WordPress blog.” I am planning on explaining what we did with the layout in a future post, so stay tuned for more!

We’re Online

I recently got the ok from Pastor Mike to build a website for our church and last night I got the ball rolling with the purchase of a domain name. I also loaded WordPress onto the server and set up the MySQL database, so we are ready to roll. At this point, we just have to settle on the content, layout, and overall look of the site. Since we are going with WordPress, this shouldn’t be too difficult.

I also discovered a little plugin that is handy if you use WordPress. It is called Maintenance Mode and when active, it takes your site off line and replaces it with a customizable front page. As the name implies, this tool is used when you are doing maintenance on your site. It is nice to be able to quickly take down the site and put up a temp page. It is also nice for visitors to see a real page while you are working and not get one of those nasty “server not found” message. Check out the site and see what I mean: clearforkalliance.org. I just put up the church name, location, and meeting times. It will work for now and we can be working on the build behind the scenes and as soon as we are ready to go live, we can deactivate MM and BAM!…have an official web presence.

I thought about putting a spinning gif of a stick man digging with a message that says “under construction” (demo), or simply this icon (I like the backhoe), but I thought the simple page was more appropriate. The sad thing is, even in my 10 minutes of work getting the site up, it is probably better than 90% of the church web sites out there right now. I particularly like this site (check out the dancing Jesus) and am thinking of contacting the web master for some design tips.

The WordPress Driven Church

I was at prayer meeting a week ago and one of the requests that has been on the list for a while is for a person to coordinate community relations for the church. I inquired about this and found out that it is primarily a need to promote “Experience Bethlehem”, the church Christmas ministry. Anyway, the conversation lead to discussion about a church web site and I discovered that Clear Fork Alliance does not have one and the creation of one is not eminent. I told Pastor Mike that I have done that kind of thing before and would be interested in working on it if needed. He said he would check with the person who had been working on a site and get back to me. Well, last Wednesday at prayer meeting, PM said that I could have at it.

For some time I have been thinking about how to make a church web site into more than just a virtual visitors guide. I mean, let’s face it, that’s what the majority of church sites are. A static list of data that never is updated. Since Joe average visitor prefers to find info via the web, the site is used the way a yellow pages ad or newspaper listing was used 20 or 30 years ago.

Then I watched my wife blog. Man, can Valerie blog! I’m proud to say that there are no Google Ads adorning her blog and she is in it purely for the relationship building value blogging brings. It is the growth in her relationships that really started me thinking about having a church web site be a ministry.

That’s when the light went on. Why not make the church site a blog? Why limit the content of a church site to static data like times, locations, and a list of core beliefs? Why not allow the people in the church to express themselves by posting about their lives…what God is doing, how He is working, their faith in Him. Readers (church members and potential visitors) would be able to better know the body of believers and see what the church is REALLY about. Let’s face it, can a person really know what a church is like by looking at a picture of the building and reading their mission statement?

I think it would be great to have two main areas: static info that will serve as an advertisement for potential visitors and a blog area where there are new postings daily or weekly. Obviously, in order to have new posts, we will need writers to submit work and topics for them to write about. Here are some possibilities I have thought of:

• Testimonies: church members can write their testimonies out and we could post a new one each week. What a great way for church members to get to know each other. This would also be a great witness for unbelievers about how God reaches and changes lives.
• Pastor post: the pastor could submit a weekly post about whatever is on his heart. It could be a message to the church, something that God is doing in his life, or whatever. This would be a way for people to know the “lead dog” better.
• Age group posts: church members might write about various topics for children, youth, singles, family, seniors, etc.
• Discipleship: these could particularly be posts about topics that pertain to new Christians to help them grow.

I think if we had 2 or 3 regular people submitting posts weekly and then asked people for testimonies (we could post a new one each week), we could have enough new content to keep the site fresh. If people wanted to subscribe to the RSS feed, they could even get the posts delivered to their in-boxes! Also, if there is anyone into photography or video production, this could be a great way for them to express themselves.

I will post on how this church blog goes. I think the biggest challenge is going to be to make it visually look like a church site rather than a blog. Also, getting writers on board with the concept of it being a ministry may be a challenge. We’ll see how it goes.