What site activities do you offer?

A web site can offer many different "activities" for visitors:

• Email contacts
• Fill out polls or surveys
• Add or send information via forms
• Notify visitors via subscriptions
• Notify visitors via Web alerts
• Track Web site visitors with web site analytics and traffic reports
• Build online communities -- blogs, forums, other community avenues

Decide which activities your web editing team can handle, prioritize them, and then charge ahead on priority one. If your existing web hosting or content management system (CMS) doesn't offer some of the above, there are many free resources available, including those below:

• Free survey - SurveyMonkey. Others ...
• Free analytics -- Google sitemap and Google analytics. Others...
• Free blog - Google Blogger. Others...

Writely has become Google Docs

Google has now renamed Writely and made it part of Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

A fast test of the interface shows that it includes:

• Full-screen width text writing and editing.
• Common and easy to understand icons for buttons, such as bold, font, hyperlink, text alignment, cut, copy, and paste.
• Toolbar "Style" includes frequently used options, but no ability to add a style.
• Spell-check, with the ability to add words to your dictionary.
• Periodic auto-save.
• Collaborate with other .
• A "Publish" capability that can send a doc to a blog (but not multiple blogs).
• Insert an image, table, comment, bookmark separator, or special character.
• Edit the HTML that makes up the doc.
• Track revisions.
• Preview
• Save as Open Office or even PDF

Web Directions South resources now online

Get session notes, handouts, speakers' slides, and eventually podcasts of the sessions for the Web Directions South conference held in Syndey from September 26-29, 2006 at WD06 Resources.

Session topics include:

• Design
• Accessibility
• Web standards
• RSS
• Online communities

Surf and learn.

Corporate logo library

BrandsOfTheWorld.com is a free library of brands and logos. The service is searchable, categorized and provides scalable vector versions (usually EPS) of thousands of logos.

Could your web site use Catfish?

Catfish. n., A horizontal area at the bottom of a web page that overlays the normal page content until closed by the user. It's a "bottom-dweller", hence the name coined by Sitepoint, which started this technique a while back.

Matt Oakes has improved on it using a JQuery plugin. Check out both Catfish and JQuery to see if you might be able to make use of them.

Although Catfish was originally designed for ads, I see possible use as a cool and unusual "announcement" method.

• Catfish - Part 1 (Sitepoint)
• Catfish - Part 1
• JQuery
• JQuery implementation of Catfish
• SitePoint blogs

UMC now offers free Web Ministry 101 course

United Methodist Communications today announced the launching of Web Ministry 101. The free online on-demand training aims to let you and your local church use the internet for effective Web ministry.

Register for Web Ministry 101

After you have register, you will get an email with a link to the training sessions. This is self-paced, so take any or all of the four-part training. Come back later to finish or for a refresher.

Related resource

• Web Ministry Resource Center, which contains the Web Ministry Planning Guide and more.

After each training session, a link at the end of each training session gives you a chance to complete an online survey. A follow-up email will also contain that survey link.

UMC announces sneak peek at new site

United Methodist Communications today announced that a "sneak peek" at the new UMC.org site is now ready for previewing.

Access the sneak peek at http://www.umc.org/; click the "sneak peek" image banner link (in the center middle of the page) to experience the preview site.

View the short introductory video, then select one of the links to new features. After checking out a new feature, please give feedback. UMComm is actively seeking comments in order to make the final site better meet visitors' needs when the site "goes live" in January 2007.