Archive for category Website Development

Passionates by Joshua Porter

Posted by John in Church 2.0, Church Websites, Churches, Web 2.0 on August 19, 2008

As a technology pastor, I am constantly working to make the mission of the church compatible with the technology that is used in the church. One of the blogs that I read regularly posted this article and I’m just buzzing about how to use these concepts in reaching the lost! Here’s the link to the article – I’d recommend reading it! I’ll probably work through this a bit later and try to make it relevant to to the work that I do.

A couple of quotes from the article that I want to remember for later!

The reality is that people are passionate about some things, and not at all about others. They love some activities and don’t care about others. The activity is what they’re passionate about (not the technology) and when they’re passionate enough they’ll learn the necessary technology as they find appropriate. Passion depends upon the activity in question.

It simply means that technology came along to help them practice their passion better, and so they adopted it because the value proposition made sense to them.

The activity is the thing to focus on, not the technology. Technology enables the activity, and people will get excited about the technology if they’re excited about the activity first and the benefits of the technology has been explained to them. But you don’t make passionate photographers by showing them lenses, you make passionate photographers by showing them pictures that rip your heart out.

A much larger population (although much more fractured) are those people who are already passionate about some activity or other, and can become passionate about new technology as it relates to that activity, but they just haven’t been introduced properly.

In other words, the task is not always to make people passionate about something, it’s to show them how technology (or your product, etc) can make them even better at what they’re passionate about.

Technology is merely the enabler of that activity.

So while yes, you should take advantage of early adopters, learning from them and focusing some of your effort on them, you can’t assume that just because people aren’t early adopters they’re not passionate. Passion is more about doing an activity well than it is about using the latest technology to do it.

I hope Joshua won’t mind me posting these quotes – they are just way too good to not share and I don’t want to miss them later!

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Blogs & Podcasts

Posted by John in Website Development on April 29, 2007

Blogs and podcasts are two very different concepts to talk about, but ultimately in my opinion they are one and the same.

Both are used to share and/or diseminate information. Blogs are of course short for weblogs which is essentially the same thing as the diaries that our parents grew up using. It is not a new idea to write down your thoughts and ideas with the inten to preserve them. What is new is the idea of publishing these former private thoughts in a public forum such as the internet. Blogs are something very personal to both the writer and the reader of the blog. The blog allows the reader to develop an understanding of who the write is as well as comment on various thoughts and ideas that the writer has placed online.

Blogs are used to express personal information and opinions, teach about certain concepts and ideas, rant about dislikes and frustrations, and promote products, businesses, and beliefs.If you understand blogs, then it is not a difficult step to understand podcasting, which in my opinion was developed by a group of people who were fundamentally lazy and looked at the idea of a blog and said to themselves, “I don’t want to type, I just want to talk,” thus creating the concept of podcasting.Like blogs, the concept of recording your own voice so that others can listen to you is not a new idea.

Edison was doing this way before the Internet came into exsistence. The difference once again that before, audio recordings were in a semi-public forum in that you needed to purchase, duplicate, or have hand-delivered the recording in order to be able to listen to the recording. With the development of increased technology, the ease of recording and uploading an audio recording onto the internet has become realitively easy. Podcasts are used in much the same way that blogs are used, the difference is of course the ability to actually hear the author’s voice and inflection as he or she talks about the subject.Obviously there are several differences between blogs and podcasts, but the underlying difference is that a blog is essentially a static page that you have to go to or have sent to you via an RSS feed where as a podcast is something that you can take with you wherever you go once you download it.

That’s it for now, here are a few of my favorite blogs and podcasts.

Church Marketing Sucks – http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com/

Church Redone – http://www.churchredone.com/

Dave Barry – http://blogs.herald.com/dave_barrys_blog/

Effective Web Ministry Notes – http://www.eministrynotes.com/

Emergent No – http://emergentno.blogspot.com/

Eric Nentrup – http://www.ericnentrup.com/

Geeks and God – http://www.geeksandgod.com/

Lifehacker – http://www.lifehacker.com/

Mustardseed Media, Inc – http://www.mustardseedmedia.com/

No Impact Man – http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/

ReadyMade Mag – http://readymademag.com/

Tallskinnykiwi – http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com/

TheResurgence – http://www.theresurgence.com/

Jesus Geek – http://jesusgeek.gmpodcasting.net/

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Churches that do Websites well

Posted by John in Church Websites, Website Development on April 14, 2007

So, with working with church websites for the past 6 1/2 years, I thought that I might share some of the things that I think about when it comes to website development and how it can be used in the church. I have compiled an initial list of sites and ideas that I believe would be beneficial to to begin thinking about. I am going to break it up into the following posts and I’ll try to post each night:

Churches that do websites well
Social Networking sites
Blogs and Podcasts
Web 2.0 vs. Web 1.0 Websites
AJAX websites (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)
Churches that do not do websites well

So, with that said, here we go!

http://www.takethejourney.org/home.htm
- Note that they are incorporating Flickr in their website for their photos.

http://www.vintagechurch.org/
- Note the ease of navigation – They do the BLACK theme well, the colors work well.

http://www.the-river.org/
- Please note two things:
1. The use of a community portal (http://the-reef.org) for the members of the church to be a part of
2. The use of Google’s calendar program on their front page with all of their events on it.

http://www.lifechurch.tv/
- Couple of things:
1. FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH – this is maybe the coolest and fastest Flash, How do they do that?
2. Locations: click on a location and each location shows what’s going on at that location.
3. Does the Black theme on the secondary pages as opposed to the primary page – interesting concept
4. Online Store (http://www.lifechurch.tv/store/) uses an Open Source program called OSCommerce (http://www.oscomerce.com/)
5. OVERALL: What you don’t see is a complete other website behind this that is part of the church community portal

FYI, I THINK ALL OF THE SITES LISTED ABOVE USE A CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM CALLED DRUPAL
(http://www.drupal.org)

http://www.skylinechurch.org/ (the obligatory Wesleyan Church)
- Couple of things:
1. Style is CLEAN and CRISP. This is a very popular concept, using white as a primary part of the website
2. Ability to build community online (Classified section and Community Involvement on front page)
3. PODCAST OF SERMONS – Essential if we want are “in it to win it” (Thank you Hillary Clinton).
4. PDF of Weekly bulletin – NOTE: The pastors sermon outline is NOT shown
5. ALSO about the Bulletin – The Bulletin MATCHES the website which MATCHES the church – this is called Branding

http://www.yorktownbaptist.org/
- Please note some things:
1. FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH – Constant but very suddle flash throughout the site. Watch the front page.
2. Ability to give online
3. The site is fully integrated with a software package called Fellowship One – (http://www.fellowshipone.com) Might be worth checking out and seeing what their software does and thinking about how you can adapt it or incorporate it into your site.

That’s it for now, have a great night!

Church Websites, Web 2.0, Website Development

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Social Networking Sites

Posted by John in Web 2.0, Website Development on April 11, 2007

So, it seems that one of the biggest things on the Internet is social networking sites. Everyone seems to have one. Rather then tell you what I like and don’t like about them, I think I’ll provide you with some links to go visit them yourself.

Before we get started looking at social networking sites, let’s clearly define what a social networking site is. The term “social networking website” refers to a website that members can join where they will have a profile of interest, write and receive some type of commentary, and interact and relate with other profiles that are displayed in conjuction with that profile.

A social network is not a bulletin board, a forum, a mailing list, a BBS, a MUD/MOO, or a MMORPGS. Yes you can interact and meet new people and make friends, but they are NOT social networking sites. Hope this is clear.

Why do I think we need to look at social networking sites in conjunction with our church website? Well, for one thing, this is something that very cutting edge with technology and at the same time very popular among the teens-30′s group. But, just because it’s popular doesn’t mean we automatically do it. I think we consider this concept because fundamentally, the desire of the social networking sites is to build a community of like-minded individuals and connect them to each other. If we can further the Kingdom by creating an environment where people can interact with other people from our church, then not only are we building the church, but we are building the relationships that people have with each other in the church.

There are some negatives and some drawbacks to social networking sites, but what I want you to think about is what could we do with this idea and how could we incorporate this concept into our church website?

Okay, so let’s get to it!

Church Related

MyChurch – http://www.mychurch.org

Friends/Relationship Related sites

MySpace – http://www.myspace.com/

Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/

Friendster – http://www.friendster.com/

Cyworld – http://us.cyworld.com/main/index.php

Orkut – http://www.orkut.com

Xanga – http://www.xanga.com/

Meetup – http://www.meetup.com/

Business Related Sites