Content in Pastors' blogs

What content should appear in a pastor's blog? Anything they want, of course. On the other hand, it depends on why the blog was created and the purpose of the blog.

Pastors may arrive at a church with a blog already. They may well use it for publishing daily happenings (journal style) and musings. If the church wants "their" Pastor's blog to integrate with the church web and church worship, the church and pastor need to discuss a blog that is directly tied to the church. Both type blogs can exist at the same time. Authoring multiple blogs is common.

The Christian Web Trends blog posting lists some great content ideas for "Supercharging sermons with a blog", which I have added to the below tips.

Come decision points about pastor blog content and design on which the church and pastor need to reach agreement:

• If the pastor has or wants a personal journal type blog, is the pastor also willing to author a pastor's blog that is a more direct extension of the local church?
• Should the design integrate with the church web design or its existing blogs?
• Should the pastor's blog contain any sermon texts, summaries, or outlines? Sermon messages can be one form of online evangelism.
• Should a "Sermon blog" be a separate blog or mixed in with the other postings in the church's Pastor's blog?
• Should the church offer (and link) sermon podcasts or video?
• Should the blog allow comments, as is the norm?
• Should any comments should be "moderated", so as to avoid anti-Christian rants and foul language appearing in blog comments? Yes, of course!
• Should the blog contain short "point of view" postings about spiritual life in a secular world? These could be "thought for the week" style, supplement a past sermon, or based on the pastor's and congregation's daily life experiences.

Sermon information

If the pastor's blog will contain sermon information, decide the following:

• When should such information be posted?
  Immediately or after a week or two delay?
  Some pastors and church leaders may fear that offering full text or even outlines immediately might lower actual church attendance. Others may want to immediately offer the message to shut-ins or people who were unable to attend church.
• Should it be full text, paragraph summary, or outline?
  I suggest a two-level outline format, which is easiest to scan. After all, research shows that most surfers scan, not read text on web pages. An outline of two levels includes the key points and yet is short.

Add sermon resource links

If posting sermon outlines, help people dig deeper by stirring in:

• Links to resources related to the sermon topic. Remember that your own church web may contain information or related link collections.
• Links to bible passages for the sermon.
• Titles of materials available in the church library.
• Links to Books, say available from Cokesbury, that are a really great reference.

Add the "So what?"

Sermons at their best are like editorials, not just commentary. Editorials urge their readers to take action. Here's the pastor's chance to reinforce the Christian actions that readers should take in their lives during the coming days and weeks. The Christian Web Trends blog calls these "Action Steps." Be specific. Make each action step short. Use bullets – make the action steps easy to scan.

Encourage contact

If you have enabled comments, your blog postings automatically have a way to "contact us". Some readers, though, may wish to contact the pastor personally, not via a blog comment. So it's best to also add a "Contact us" link. Since this is a Pastor's blog that is tied to your church, how about adding a "Send a prayer request" link too? It couldn't hurt and might be just what some blog reader needs.

Methoblogger Lectionary & other helps

When your pastor, teachers, or any other interested people want to get someone else's take on Common Lectionary readings for the week, surf on over to "The Methoblogger Lectionary Group" site.

There are a ton of helpful web sites and blogs related to preaching and teaching. Add to that web pages helpful to various committees and work areas in the church and you have the makings of a great resource page for your web.

Gather a list of such links and put them on a special "leader helps" type web page, similar to what Avondale Pattillo United Methodist Church has done.

Pastor blog uses

Your congregation might well benefit from a blog authored by your pastor. Why? Your church web site needs to include changing content -- content that will keep people coming back. A pastor's blog is one of many parts to a complete church web site, even for a basic site that's not "fancy":

Some types of static information church web pages:

• Information pages (who we are, what we believe, service information, location, contact information, ...)
• Resource pages (links to spiritual topics and online tools)

Some types of dynamic (changing) web pages:

• Photo albums
• Church news
• Pastor's blog
• Syndicated news
• Syndicated religious cartoons

Here are a few of the many possible uses for a pastor's blog:

• A weekly (or more frequent) pithy spiritual message, musing, or "thought for the week"
• Sermon texts
• Sermon summaries
• Sermon supplemental references (linked)
• Topics related to the denomination

I believe that the below possibilities are of much lower interest and value in a pastor's blog:

• "Pitches" for upcoming events.
  This type subject might be a low-interest item and better suited to a church newsletter or Sunday bulletin supplement.
• "Congratulations" on past events.
  Such items might be better posted in a church news blog or online newsletter.

Communications tips

The Web Evangelism Bulletin has a ton of tips and sample sites each issue, some of which apply to general communications or writing. Here's a few gleaned from that bulletin since November ...

• Communicating Well
• Writing tips
• Boomers and Gen-Xers communicate differently

Cool Kuler Coolest

Adobe Labs has come up with a winner -- Kuler. Fun to use and a boon to web and graphics designers of all types, this color grouping creator and sharing application is a very popular site.

Take the Kuler tour (aka tutorial) to see what it's all about. It even plays cool music while you learn. To create or share color groupings, you'll need an Adobe ID.

The Museum of Modern Betas (MoMB) lists Kuler as #7 in their "Top 100".

Web inventor explains impact of Semantic Web

Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web and is director of the World Wide Web Consortium, explains to MIT's "Technology Review" how the Semantic Web will transform the way we use data.

The video presentation is by Brightcove video publishers. I find the interface interesting and easy to use. The maximum size is not full-screen, but plenty big enough for a computer screen.

• View the 8-minute video of Tim Berners-Lee

My Maps a great new resource

Google has done it again! The Google Maps home page now offers "My Maps". This tool lets you add several map points, lines, shapes, balloon text, pictures, and more.

Prior to this new feature, I had tested MultiPlottr, which is a similar tool and does use Google Maps. Google's My Maps appears slicker and offers the familiar ease of use and easy to learn GUI we've come to expect from Google. With Google My Maps you have to guess at location by dragging a plot marker. Try both and see if you agree.

Side note: There is a limit of 50 plotted addesses per map at present.

Ideas for possible uses

• Plot the street addresses of your church members. A visual look at clustering and dispersion may give you added insight for outreach or visitation planning.
• Plot members' addresses, but use different colors for:
• Members who have moved out of the area but still attend.
• New members within the last year.
• Founding members (if the church is new).
• Members who have not moved out of the area.
• Your church's street address (the key reference point on the map).
• Location of selected community resources (City Hall, Courthouse, City or County agencies that help people, Clothes closets, etc.). This might become the basis for a "Where to get help" portal page for your community.
• Home address of visitors in the past year.
• Plot the location of an event away from the church. The Church Art Online Plus Calendar does this, but that is a paid subscription. You could email this map link to all church members and any visitors that gave you their email address.
• Plot any type of demographic information about your members that is related to their address. Just remember the 50-address per map current limit.

Special note about long links. Remember that if you email map links, you should check the length and potential for problems at the receiving end. If the link is a long one or contains special characters, the recipient's email messages may "break" the link, especially when it wraps lines.

A way to avoid that problem is to use the free "TinyURL" online service to create a special short link when the target is a long one. TinyURL creates a special very short link that points to the long one you provide. An example long link reduced by TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/ywzpx8 .

TinyURL also offers a "preview" feature that lets people see the actual destination link before they decide to select it. Here's an example of the same link as a "preview" one: http://tinyurl.com/preview.php?num=ywzpx8

Church PR using Flickr

If your church uses Flickr or some similar sites for photo albums, you also have easy access to a unique avenue for identity products.

• Zazzle
  Zazzle site lets you design produce custom stamps, T-shirts, mugs, and more. Custom stamps come in varied sizes using photos of your choice and sizing. They are more expensive than USPS stamps, but it's a unique way of promoting your church. Flickr offers a cross-site link to Zazzle.
• QOOP
  QOOP uses your photos to create custom cards (myCards) of different sizes, calendars, Posters, an more. You can create picture-based business cards, for example. Or mini-cards with a photo on one side and printing on the other. You might want to purchase some for special seasons or to promote select events.
• Moo
  Make notecards or mini-cards

Church webs -- Heal!

A few sites dedicated to helping you improve your web site:

• Heal your church web site
• Is my web site ineffective? (including checklists)
• Top 20 confessed web site sins
• Don't do really weird navigation, no matter how "cool" some designer thinks it is. Go ahead. Figure it out. Then ask yourself if you really want to use it on that web site?

Hone your keywords

You can find out what words are getting associated with any keywords you specify by using Google's Keyword Tool.

Although designed for use with Google AdWords, the handy online Keyword Tool can help you tweak the ones you are using or considering.

Other free keyword-related tools:

• Keyword suggestion tool (1)
• Keyword suggestion tool (2)
• GoogleDuel - compare which of two related words is more popular
• Ontology Finder - get a list of related words. Use the synonyms in your page's text to boost search results.
• Keyword Density tool
• Keyword Cloud
• Keyword Optimizer - Deletes duplicate keywords in the list and alphabetizes the list.
• Add Keyword Typos - lists possible misspellings you may want to add in your Keywords list.

Free online web design course

Project: New is a free online course made up of articles on designing and developing a website. The course has several contributors and uses a downloadable syllabus.

Oh ... and it's not heavy on coding. So don't shy away from it if you're not a coder.

I found the site by selecting a link in a SitePoint book (free sample of Principles of Beautiful Web Design), then following a comment's link in the blog at that site. Aren't hyperlinks wonderful!

Search for free stock photos

The PicFindr site lets you search for free stock photos. It even lets you customize what restrictions you are willing to live with (give credit, not alter, ask permission). The default is no restrictions.

You can also use the Advanced drop-down to match any term (the default is all terms) or show partial match sites.

The PicFindr site describes itself as "not alpha - not beta - just not done yet", but it works well.

Have a Picnik with your photos

So you want to do some nice photo editing and maybe even a few fancy effects. But you don't want the hassle of learning some graphics program. Go to Picnik and use the free tools there.

All the photo adjustments are easy to access and very easy to use. Yet the results are great!

To make this app even sweeter, you can work on a photo from your computer, from Flickr, from a Picasa Web Album, from the web, from a webcam, or even from a Yahoo! image search result.

I did find that if I played around for several minutes with all sorts of adjustments to a large photo (1600x1200, 1+MB) Internet Explorer 7 crashed. It may have to do with temporary files in use, a bug in the beta Picnic software, or possibly an MSIE issue. I will stress-test FireFox similarly soon. But even though IE 7 crashed, after accessing the site again, the original adjusted image I'd made appeared. Cool.

With this online Flash-based application, you can:

• Resize
• Crop
• Rotate
• Adjust "exposure", including using a histogram, if you prefer
• Adjust color saturation and hue
• Adjust red-eye
• Add Sepia effects
• Add Black and White effects
• Boost color saturation
• Soften the image
• Sharpen the image (though the controls seemed to sharpen too much even at a low setting)
• Add a frame ("border") and matte
• Create a vignette

Most of these effects use a slider bar to control degree of effect applied. Instant on-screen results show. I found the operation fast (I use a cable modem), effective, and the results good looking. I was able to apply more effects than I normally use in much less time than with my graphics program.

The Picnik people promise even more effects are coming. An enhanced (paid) version will give you even more options, but the basic version offers much more than I expected and yet is very easy to use. Even in Beta, I recommend you give Picnik a whirl. Grab a photo, edit, use some creative tools, then save and share. It's easy and fun.

Keep up with Picnik happenings via their Picnik blog.

Footer fetish

Derek Powazek urges web desighners to use footers for something meaningful -- something more than just copyright information or addresses. He says that people who have read all the way to the bottom of the page deserve a reward.

How about suggestions (links) on where to go next?. Or maybe "Bonus links", "Related links" or some such, perhaps with an attractive image link or two?

Tips for great photos

Tips for taking great photos are usually of two types -- composition and camera settings. The Kodak page, Top 10 Tips for Great Pictures emphasizes composition and lighting, but also has some camera settings tips.

Another resource is the Church Communications: Photography Tips page. It's loaded with tips and links.

Evaluate newsletter, bulletin design

Dive into a newsletter and bulletin redesign by first getting a few copies of publications from other churches. That feels less threatening. Then, check out all the principles, guidelines, traps, and tips on this site and those sites linked from here. Lastly, apply those to the sample pubs you now have.

A good way to evaluate the pubs is to use a rubric. The Educational Service Center, Fort Worth, Texas, has a newsletter design rubric (PDF) you can download and print. It scores against major design principles:

• Contrast
• Repetition
• Alignment
• Proximity
• Graphics

Get your newsletter read

Why is it that so many church members don't know information that's printed in their newsletter? Because the design or content turns them off. Ironically, many church newsletters contain no news. Let me "shout" it ... NEWSletter. Did you notice the word "news"? Of course, that includes news feature stories too.

Below are some tips to improve tour church newsletter and actually get people reading it.

• Write to communicate, not to impress. Write clearly and simply, using short sentences. Don't use big words when small words will say the same thing.
• Proofread. Run a spell check and grammar check, but proofread yourself too.
• Write front-page articles that draw interest. Remember that information you might like people to know need not be what they are really interested in reading. Write for your audience.
• Use recycled paper. Your readers will appreciate your stewardship. Remember that "recyclable" is not the same as "recycled". Will it cost a bit more to use recycled paper? If so, consider placing a large jar in the entryway, with a sign reading "Give change for a change to recycled" or similar.

CompanyNewsletters.com has these and many more tips. Read and heed.

Use plain language

A prime factor in ease of reading is use of plain language – what I call “verbal essence.” The Federal Government has a Plain Language web site. It not only aims at federal employees, but has plain writing tips for the private sector too.

“Writing today is not a frill for the few, but an essential skill for the many.”

The National Commission on Writing in America’s Schools and Colleges adds its voice to the challenge in “The Neglected ‘R’: The Need for a Writing Revolution” (PDF format). “Writing, education’s second ‘R,’ has become the neglected element of school reform” the commission report says.

Whether you are a church web developer, communications committee person, or member of the church staff, you need to know how to write clearly and simply.

Key points

• Identify your readers – all of them.
• Know your readers! Understand what they need, how they read, and then fulfill their needs.
• Pretentious language wastes time.
• Complex language has hidden costs. People may not know what you are trying to say.
• Keep it simple!
• Use the right words.
• Avoid "hidden" verbs.

Resources

• Plain language at a glance
• Checklist of plain language elements
  [Extra checklist items for web-based docs and web pages]
• Quick tips
• Writing tips
• Editorial Style Manual
• Writing reader-friendly documents
• Exercises in plain writing [answers]

Newsletter, bulletin design tips

Once the exclusive domain of books, you can now find tips on design of newsletters and bulletins on the Web. Here are some tips and related sources:

• AVOID ALL CAPITALS. It's old typewriter and teletype habits and now considered "shouting". Plus all caps slow down reading speed.
• Avoid blocks of bolded text. They slow down reading speed.
• Use only single spaces between sentences. Two spaces is an old, typewriter-based habit. We use proportional fonts these days, unlike the typewriter.
• Use true dashes, not hyphens.
• Reserve underlines for hyperlinks. Don't underline headlines, subheads, or publication titles.
• Place quote marks correctly.
• Use serif fonts for text, sans serif for headlines and subheads. Serif fonts are easier to read in blocks of text. Using sans serif for headlines and subheads helps visually separate them from text elements on a page. It makes the page easier to scan.
• Use proper line spacing. Don't just add empty paragraphs – extra presses of the Enter key.
• Avoid rivers of white. Make effective use of white space. Look at your design critically – what's critical and what's really just "noise"? Remove the noise.

Steps to newsletter success

Author Roger Parker lists 12 steps to newsletter success. Here are a few:

• Be consistent – in frequency, number of pages, ...
• Choose a distinctive nameplate (also called a "flag" – the part that has the publication title).
• Choose effective columns and margins layout. Make effective use of white space. Don't try to fill every inch of every column.
• Make headlines and subheads easy to find and easy to read.
• Use subheads to break up "gray" blocks of text.
• Make body copy as easy to read as possible. (choose a good font, use adequate font sizes, use ragged right text, ...)
• Use good grammar and punctuation.
• Use photo captions.
• Be restrained in any use of color.
• Check "the details" of your newsletter – Avoid widows and orphans in lines and subheads; use non-breaking spaces to keep first and last names (and similar) together. In MS Word, that's Shift+Alt+spacebar.
• Keep the design simple. Create a newsletter template, then use it! In the template, create "styles" for a few levels headlines plus subheads, body text, etc.

Church website design checklist

"Does your church's website communicate to outsiders as well as to the members?" asks a new web resource. A church site is the congregation's 'shop window' to its community. To fulfill this function well, it must be enticing, people-centered and easily understood by outsiders.

Because many churches are unsure how to achieve this vital mix, the folks at Gospeccom have developed a Church Site Design Checklist that you fill out online and immediately see the score.

This helpful tool is a product of the Internet Evangelism Day team.

The Internet Evangelism Day ('IE Day') website also explains other types of online evangelism, such as outreach sites, video clips, blogging and podcasts. There is even a free 'conversation starter' screen-saver to download.

Cokesbury updates web

The Cokesbury web site may have changed a bit since you or your church Education Coordinator (or similar) visited it last. Check out these links, mentioned in their recent Christian Education Showcase email message:

• Children's Engaging Center
• Youth Empowering Center
• Adult Enriching Center
• Teacher Training and Helps

Common desktop publishing mistakes

A good place for church communications people to start in a review of church publications is the key mistakes many make in desktop publishing:

• Gray pages
  (Caused by too much text, crowded line spacing, crowded headlines, or margins crammed to the edge)
• Poor use of white space on pages
• Long or very short lines of type
• Narrow columns of justified type
• Inappropriate, distracting borders
• Overuse of reverse text, screens, borders, or rules
• Wrong punctuation (quotes, hyphens, and spaces)
• Widowed or orphaned text or subheads
• Colored text

These points come from Roger C. Parker, author of several desktop publishing books, including “One Minute Designer,” and NewEntrepeneur.com. He has several web pages of points and even checklists related to design of publications.

Read more in Roger’s “Desktop publishing’s twelve most common mistakes. His Pre-Flight Checklist is a handy reminder of the many aspects of publications that you should consider. Print it out and use it to check your Worship Bulletin and your church newsletter.

Avoid being ugly

Rick Altman says that the aim of the average person doing design (such as newsletters, bulletins, flyers, or graphics) should be the "absence of ugliness."

While that at first may seem harsh, he's pointing out that it's not realistic for average people to assume that they can become a professional designer in their spare time. Instead, he asserts, they should adopt simple techniques that will help them stay away from making ugly creations.

This also dovetails with a maxim of web site design – it's better to have no web site than to have an ugly one. Looks does count to visitors! Ugly stops them cold in their tracks.

Of course, content matters, so even if the product is not ugly, the text has to keep people reading.

Tiny fonts need alias

The smoothing out of fonts, called anti-aliasing, makes them look better on screen. But anti-aliasing turns out to be a bad thing at very small font sizes.

Fonts in the 8 point and under range look better "aliased". But merely turning off anti-aliasing for a font doesn't do the trick. You actually need special fonts created for use at what I call "squint print" size.

A recent "Design View" newsletter article from Sitepoint, "Tiny Typefaces - Five Fine, Free Fonts," gives examples and more details. (You can subscribe and get their newsletters by email or just periodically check out their web site.)

Googlers may want to search for "free tiny font." For the squintiest of "squint print", try the diminutive 4pt "Tiny" font at a very punny site, "I Shot the Serif". Hmm ... I hope lawyers -- those purveyors of fine print -- don't read this blog.

Another choice, especially for display of code, is one of the Proggy fonts, designed by and for coders.

Church bulletin design goals

When considering the design (or more likely redesign) of a church worship bulletin, we need to keep several goals in mind. These goals are the basis for specific objectives that will make a worship bulletin more “welcoming” to members and visitors alike.

• Design Goal 1: Make items easily to find fast
• Design Goal 2. Make text an easy read
• Design Goal 3. Make it easy for people to speak in unison during unison readings
• Design Goal 4. Make the electronic version "modern", not "old style"
• Design Goal 5. Eliminate distracting elements

Use established principles and techniques to accomplish the objectives. Most publishing industry principles and methods apply directly (or with slight adjustment) to church publications.

In the coming weeks, we'll address each of the above goals.

Blog Design tips

People are often wary about starting "something completely different", as Monty Python's saying went. That's also true when it comes to new technologies and new uses of technology. While blogs caught on monumentally, many are still in the dark about what they are, how much work it takes to start one, and so on.

The best bet is to start simple. I started with Google's Blogger because of Google's reputation for clean and easy to use interfaces. I have not been disappointed. The new Blogger (now out of beta) is no exception. They have made the drag and drop layout interface very easy to use.

Another aspect of blogs is their design. Free templates for your favorite blogging service, such as Blogger, are readily available online. Of course, each blog service usually provides a small variety of decent ones to start with (like this one from Blogger).

But beyond that, it's a good idea to seek tips on both design. So I did a – yep, you guessed it – Google Search for blog design tips, which yielded a ton of potential jewels.

Microsoft, Yahoo! adopt Google sitemaps

Both Microsoft and Yahoo! have announced support of Google's sitemaps instead of developing an alternative method. Sitemaps help webcrawlers crawl your site better, thus improving search results.

As part of this agreement, the three parties are co-sponsoring a new web site, Sitemaps.org, which has details about the new sitemaps process. The new method uses XML tags, by the way.

Google will support existing sitemaps, their posting at the Google Webmaster Central blog says.

Email sigs pull visitors

So you have a great church web site and promoted it well. It includes down-to-earth plain language, people-oriented information, and is much more than just an online brochure. You added meta tags to each page that include all the topics on that page. You have added good "Description" meta tags. Your text on the page is brief, interesting, and in the "inverted pyramid" style -- most important information first. You have the web address on all printed materials, including business cards. It's even on your church roadside sign.

But the number of visitors to your site is not as high you'd like. What else can you do to promote your church? Increase the number of people who know your web address by using a couple of site tips that employ email.

• Email signatures of members. Have every church member add the following to the bottom of every email they send (under their signature or "sig" area):
  
  "My church: http://church-web-address"
  
  You get instant promotion to a lot of people. Some of those email recipients may check it out. Some may pass it on to others.
• Church leader sigs. Include the church street address, web address, email address, and phone number on every email any church leader sends in their official capacity. By church leaders I mean to include every member of every committee or work area in the church.

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.

Blog startup tips

Thinking of starting a blog? Below are some things to consider and postings to read:

• Decide on your target readership.
  If you don't know or can't define it, don't start a blog yet. On the other hand, readership may evolve as the content evolves.
• Blog what you know, who you are, or what you like.
  If what you know includes what you like, that's even more rewarding for both you and your readers.
• Decide on the type of content.
  Remember that this may change as you go, but you need to focus on a starting point. A blog may start as purely informative, shepherding people to postings at other blogs and web sites, but later start to add original content and even opinion.
• Select hosting and software based on technical expertise (and time) available.
  Blogger, as one example, is an easy one for novices yet allows more advanced coding, if that's your thing. Typepad (Moveable Type) and WordPress blogs generally require some coding expertise. If you cannot devote a lot of time, you may want a simpler platform even if you are a coder.
• Select a name that conveys what the blog is about.
  It may well help your blog rise in search results.
• How to start a blog. This series of postings might also be called "how to emulate the A-List bloggers". Excellence alone is not enough.

Church bulletin content, design

Most every church has both a Sunday Worship bulletin plus a periodic church newsletter. What goes in which? This is something that the Worship Work Area (will we never adopt the "normal" word "committee"?) and Administrative Council should deal with. It's a policy type decision. Making such a decision official helps everyone involved with the production of these publications.

Tips in Reformed Worship magazine are a good place to start in your decision-making process. The article covers the bulletin's purpose, cover, content, and composition. Some key points in the article:

Cover and Content

• Importance. Congregations acknowledge the important of the Sunday bulletin, but few put much effort into improving this crucial communications tool.
• Purpose. Specify a purpose for the Sunday bulletin and one for the church newsletter.
  Make sure the content and composition of each satisfies the stated purpose.
  
• Impression. Your Sunday bulletin says a lot about your church. Is it saying what you want?
  [Does it use church jargon? Does it have large blocks of text? Does it look crammed together? Can people, both members and visitors, quickly and easily find what they are looking for during the worship service? Etc.]
• Decisions. The Worship work area/committee and Administrative Board or Council should decide matters such as what types of information go in which of the publications (bulletin and newsletter) and who decides what gets in the publication when there's more information than space allows.
  
• Cover. The cover of the bulletin gives an initial and lasting impression and as such deserves special attention.
  Is that impression one you want?
• Ease of use. Matters such as size and number of folds affect how "user-friendly" a bulletin or newsletter is.

Design

Some tips for good composition:

• Simple. Use a modern, clean look. Use standard sections such as Order of Worship, Prayer Requests, Church Calendar, and Announcements.
  
• Short. [A standard goal in modern writing is to aim for a 50% reduction in words from the draft to final stage]. Omit items in the bulletin that can wait for the next newsletter.
• Spacious. Use white space to make the design attractive and to separate unrelated elements. Large blocks of text discourage reading.
  
• Sensitive. Be sensitive not only to privacy concerns of members but also to who will read the bulletin, including children. Make at least part of the bulletin attractive for kids. Avoid church jargon.
  
• Superior quality. "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well."
  

Site planning lowers problems

Many church webs sites would benefit greatly from better planning. While in the military, I heard an old maxim ... "One minute of planning saves 12 minutes of execution". In other words, a good plan prevents wasted time later. This certainly pertains to web sites.

When thinking about creating or changing a web site, a good place to start is Gospelcom's " Your first two questions" page. The page even has a Planning Worksheet.

Plan for:

• Clear writing (it doesn't come easy)
• Good accessibility (by people with varied disabilities)
• Great usability (for example, is text easy to scan and the site is easy to navigate).

"Who-What-Where-When-Why" is a standard journalism standard for writing a straight news story. Let's apply that standard to web site planning:

• Who do you want to reach with your web site?
• What results do you hope to get from your web site?
• Where will you host the site? Costs, services, and support vary widely.
• When does you church want this done? Be realistic.
• Why have a web? If your church can't answer this with enthusiasm, forget it.

Some related links:

• Planning your web site design (Macromedia -- now Adobe)
• Planning (Web Style Guide)
• Web site planning (TechSoup)
• Site Planning Basics - what you should know before you design a web site

Use Google's new Accessible Search

Google Accessible Search searches for pages that are easy to read for the visually handicapped. That is, if your web page is easy for a screen reader to handle, it scores higher in the results.

This is one way to test out accessibility of your web pages for visually impaired people. Test it by doing some searches that you'd hope got your web page in the first page of the rankings. If the rankings are not what you'd like, get to work on SEO (search engine oiptimization) and accessibility.

Site planning saves time

Many church webs sites would benefit greatly from better planning. While in the military, I heard an old maxim ... "One minute of planning saves 12 minutes of execution". In other words, a good plan prevents wasted time later. This certainly pertains to web sites.

When thinking about creating or changing a web site, a good place to start is Gospelcom's " Your first two questions" page. The page even has a Planning Worksheet.

Put in your plan:

• Clear writing (it doesn't come easy)
• Good accessibility (by people with varied disabilities)
• Great usability (for example, make text easy to scan and ensure the site is easy to navigate).

"Who-What-Where-When-Why" is a standard journalism standard for writing a straight news story. Let's apply that standard to web site planning:

• Who do you want to reach with your web site?
  Who will do the needed web page editing and site management?
  Who will provide content?
  Who will approve content prior to publishing it?
• What results do you hope to get from your web site?
  What type of site will it be -- simple online brochure, internal, outreach, ... ?
• Where will you host the site? Costs, services, and support vary widely.
• When does you church want this done? Be realistic about the time involved, both for thesite startup and for updating of content.
• Why have a web? If church members can't answer this with enthusiasm, forget it.

Some related links:

• Planning your web site design (Macromedia -- now Adobe)
• Planning (Web Style Guide)
• Web site planning (TechSoup)
• Site Planning Basics - what you should know before you design a web site

Design pages for speed!

Surfers just hate to wait. As computers get faster and more people have broadband, they expect pages to display in as few as 8 seconds.

Extracts of the book "Speed up your Web site" at WebSite Optimization has good pointers. The author says that people now get frustrated if a web page doesn't load in the first 8 - 10 seconds. The old dial-up days guideline was 30 seconds. That's a huge difference.

Some tips to reduce page display times:

• Use only essential images. Excessive use of images gives a cluttered look anyway.
• Optimize images. Optimizing images can drastically reduce file size (and thuis display time). Some free optimizers are online (some offer free "lite" type versions online) or use your favorite graphics editor (I use Paint Shop Pro -- it costs lots less than PhotoShop).
• "Chunk" information. Use subheads and bullets instead of long narrative text. This can also help search engine optimization (SEO).
• Reduce excess verbiage. I call this "verbal essence".
• Avoid very long pages. Try to reduce text by 50%. Then split up long pages and link to them.

Are youth shunning email?

"Email is the new snail mail..." for today's youth says an article in USA Today. What's causing that?

• Spam is junking up email inboxes. A 2003 Pew study, "Spam: How it is hurting email and degrading life on the Internet " stated that about half of all email was spam. Spam has mushroomed from then. People feel that it's out of control and they don't want to have to deal with it.
• Cell phones let youth communicate faster than typing email messages.
• Instant Messaging (IM) is gaining popularity with the young crowd, which favors immediate gratification in communication.
• Text messaging from cell phones and hand held devices fills a desire for immediate, "anywhere" communication.

Does quick communication have a down-side?

A problem with the faster ways of communicating is the chance of bad assumptions. The list below is in order of increased possible misunderstanding of the message:

• Face-to-face talking, which has the least chance of being misunderstood due to observation of voice tone plus body language.
• Phone calls
• Email
• Instant Messaging (IM)
• Text messaging (or should I say "TXT MSGNG"?) is fast and convenient but conveys the least amount of total information about the message.

Do we even need email anymore?

This is not the death nell for email. Even youth do see a continuing need for email:

• When the message needs to go to many people, not just one.
• For more formal correspondence. Not that long ago, email was looked at as too informal,; now some view it as more formal than their normal communications.
• When the message needs attachments.
• For better documentation.
• When they have more time and an increased desire to write (in sentences) and perhaps late at night when the other person is not available by IM, phone, or text messaging.
• When communicating with adults and people in authority.

How does this apply to churches?

Your church needs to communicate to youth on their level. In communicating with youth, do your leaders:

• Use cell phones?
• Use IM? (Address privacy concerns, identity theft, and attacks)
• Use web-based chat? (Address privacy concerns, identity theft, and attacks)
• Use text messaging? R U OK W/ TXT MSGS?
• Offer (via your web site) blogs or discussion forums where youth can engage each other and the church leadership via the web? (Make sure you address privacy concerns, protect identities, and protect against attacks.)

Grab ideas from blogs

Keep searching for new ideas, new methods of reaching people through your web site. One way to get ideas is to search for and read some blogs that pertain to webs or religion. Blogs and sites I found when scanning the Gospelcom evangelism area after reading their Web Evangelism Bulletin:

• Effective Web Ministry Notes
• Strategic Digital Outreach - the old story from modern wineskins
• Christian Web Trends blog
• Outside the box ministry
• Emerging Evangelism
• UIE Brain Sparks (UIE = User Interface Engineering)
• IEC ENewsletter (IEC = Internet Evangelism Coalition)
• Church Leader Insights newsletter. Archives are online

Also check out the dozens of email newsletters at Christianity Today.

When we stop learning, we are in danger. As Will Rogers said, "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just stand there." Are your church leaders doing the same old thing or are they proactive and seeking new ways to educate, empower, and equip the saints to carry out God's work?

Color tools for web work

While trying to decide on color changes for the Congo UMC - Mulungwishi blog, I happened across a simple but fast and effective tool — The Colorizer at WebReference.com.

Color Scheme not only helps you check out a palette, but also lets you check out how it looks to people with color vision problems. Cool. Their old version operates a little differently and can be fun too.

And speaking of fun, try the Colour Sampler. Play around with a palette and then select the "Sample Page" link to see all the combinations of text and backgrounds. ColorCombos' ComboTester is a nice, free online utility. The site also has many sample 3 to 5-color palettes.

For PhotoShop fans favoring free goodies, Visibone has downloadable color swatches.

WebReference also has a couple of pages on color, each with good links within the text.

• Communicate with color
• Emotions of colors

Common design errors

Many people have slid into creating web pages without any training in design. A similar pattern emerged after the advent of laser printers and easy-to-use word processors. All of a sudden, many people were producing newsletters and flyers. But the result was often horrible products that experts dubbed "laser crud".

Likewise, many web page editor programs are easy to use now. But that doesn't mean that the results people churn out are automatically great. Below are some common pitfalls to avoid. In the coming weeks, I'll cover several of these in more depth.

• Poor use of white space
• Poor contrast among headlines of differerent importance
• Poor text-to-background contrast
• Grammar and spelling errors
• Too many typefaces (a.k.a. fonts)
• Image display resizing without image file resizing
• Huge images
• Distracting animation
• Too much bold or italic text
• Too many elements on a page
• Too much colored text

Keep main roads running smoothly

Do you know your web site's main roads? These are the destination pages that are most popular. If you don't have a web site statistics report handy, take an educated guess. Think like a visitor. Think like a non-member visitor.

The navigation path ("click path") to these pages should be very clear and easy to find from anywhere in your site. This is a strong usability factor.

Adding a blog header background image

The FreeWebPageHeaders site only offers many free 800x200 pixel images for use as DIV backgrounds. The site also has a tutorial on how to add such background images to a DIV. The technique uses CSS.

Open source web page designs

The folks at Open Source Web Design offer free Web page designs. A spot-check shows that OSWD uses modern CSS coding, not layout tables.

You could use these as the basic for regular or blog-type web pages. So download, tweak, and enjoy.

Another source is the free CSS/HTML templates at Mollio. The six basic designs cover most of the common column types and all use CSS, not layout tables. Mollio offers these under three different licenses: Creative Commons, GPL and CPL.

Translate your web

Do you have congregation members or anyone in your Web site's "target audience" that prefer a language other than English? If so, offer them a way to translate your web page.

Google offers a Language Tools page that "translates" from one language to another. Just type in the web address of the page you want translated, and ... presto. Test it out by translating the Avondale Pattillo UMC home page from English to Spanish.

Outreach tips

The Church Outreach Lab has some interesting comments and useful web page content tips. It also accepts tips and comments from varied churches. Here are a few:

• Keep it very simple. Our brains break complex information into small bits before moving them to long-term memory. So make your communications literally more memorable — simply "keep it simple".
• Most church newsletters are horrendous. For more tips about newsletters , see Avondale Pattillo UMC's special training section. Does your church newsletter look "old school" and out of touch with the modern world?
• Make Sunday worship bulletins seeker-simple. If you truly believe in outreach, make your worship bulletin simple for a seeker to understand. For example, get rid of ancient terms such as Introit, Gloria Patri, Postlude, and the like.
• Hold special events that emphasize your "brand" -- what your church is really all about.
• Communicate by email and the web plus traditional means. Hold some "meetings" or pre-meeting discussions by email. Keep the membership up on late-breaking news by email. Let members receive publications via email. Have a web presence that's more than an online brochure.

Get free Sunday bulletin shells

To get you to try their Sunday worship bulletin shells , Outreach offers you a free week's worth of 1 of 10 designs.

These designs look good enough to use for church pamphlets or special events too.

Review: Picasa Web Albums

Google's free photo organizing and editing tool Picasa, also integrates well with Picasa Web Albums. Both Google (Picasa) and Flickr offer free and subscription photo storage. Here's my fast take on the two:

Picasa Web Albums vs. Flickr (free version)

• Picasa Web Albums offers 250MB storage space vs. only 20MB at Flickr
• Uploader: Picasa is more "fun" and attractive vs. Flickr Uploader. But Flick has tag-oriented input fields at upload time.
• Photo editing: Decent, free photo editing using Picasa. Flickr doesn't offer a photo editor.
• Slideshow: Picasa Web Albums gives a significantly larger photo view than Flickr's slideshow.
• Flickr lets you add rectangular hotspot "Notes" to any photos. I don't use this feature, but it is a difference between the two services.

Overall: I am using a paid Flickr account for my church, but will definitely give Picasa a try soon. Picasa Web Albums may become my preferred site for church galleries and slideshows.

But ... you knew there was a "but", didn't you! Picasa Web Albums is in beta testing (like a lot of the current Google projects). You must request an invitation and wait until Google gives you the "OK".

If you are just starting Web photo albums, want a free photo album site, and don't feel the need for blogging-related tags and such, Picasa may be perfect for your needs.

Keep personal info off your site

In Microsoft's article, "9 Things Not to Have on Your Web Site", one often overlooked by churches is not including personal information about staff and members.

Everyone likes to see their name or photo on the web. In these days of increasing data theft, though, churches need to do more to protect identity-type information about their members and staff.

Do not show the following on your web site:

• Full names (the most common exception is the pastor)
• Home street addresses (even for the pastor)
• Home or cell phone numbers (even the pastor's cell)
• Members' personal email addresses
• Personal names as staff email addresses
• Staff or member photos (again, the common exception is the pastor)

Coping

• Use email attachments, rather than the web, to give members electronic access church newsletters, advance copies of the Sunday bulletin, and even the church directory.
• If you put your newsletter or similar articles on the web, identify people by position (no name) or by first name only. You may find, like I did, that you'd need to "scrub" the newsletter so much that the effort isn't worth it.
• When you show photos, either avoid using names, or use first names only. Be general. Consider what a thief might do with the information you provide.
• For staff email addresses, use the generic position, not their name. Use pastor@mychurch.org or music@mychurch.org, for example. An added advantage to this is that the staff email address is valid even if (when) the person changes.
• Be very careful when adding names to email lists for bulletins, newsletters, and directories. If someone in your church doesn't personally know them, require them to appear in person and fill out a request form. Don't "assume" that a request by email is an honest one.
• Advertise your personal information policy -- your members will appreciate your concern.

Web myths lead to church decline?

The World Wide Web is changing the world and the way we live in it, including our religious lives. "... those companies and organizations not ready for it are dying as predicted," says a CNN article today.

Many studies show an ever-increasing use of the Web both by religious organizations and individuals and by those seeking spiritual information, direction, or advice. Yet, some churches today disdain the web. Why? Some misconceptions may be at work:

• Myth: It's only for geeks and kids.
  Fact: With millions of people using the web and many more each day, it's no longer the nerdville that it used to be. Soccer Moms are using the web. Seniors communicate with email and get online news and information. Clubs and organizations have their own web sites and email groups.
• Myth: A web site costs too much to host.
  Fact: Any United Methodist church can get a small (5MB) web site free from the General Board of Global Ministries. Microsoft offers a free 30MB web site and your own domain name. Google offers a free 100MB web site. Blogger offers a free Blog. Flickr offers free online photo storage. Cost is no excuse.
• Myth: A church web site is a low priority because it doesn't help "the bottom line".
  Fact: First, a church should not get preoccupied with money, the root of all evil. Secondly, A church needs to minister to all its members, their local community, and "to the ends of the earth". A site on the World Wide Web fills that broad mission need.
• Myth: We don't have any web developers at my church.
  Fact: With free Microsoft and Google type web sites, setting up and maintaining a web site is very simple. You can have a good look and great content without any knowledge of web design. Next excuse?
• Myth: It takes too much time.
  Fact: Your church web site can be simple or complex. Use the time available to set how complex you get. Start simple, then add more pages. The web is too important to ignore. As more people use the web to locate churches and even "preview" a prospective one to visit, church web sites will become even more critical. A visitor to our church this past year said he checked out our entire web site before deciding to visit.

Writing for the web

Here are some fast writing tips that will make your web pages easier and faster to read:

• Write for "scanners".
  People don't read on the Web – they "scan". Let readers easily and quickly find and read the information they seek. Printed documents and directives of all types can benefit from web writing techniques. Even people with PhDs like easy reading.
• Simplify the language.
  Delete words that are not essential. Blast folksy or bureaucratic language. Be direct and clear. Aim for a 50% reduction in words.
• Reduce polysyllabic words to familiar one or two-syllable ones.
  For example, favor "use" over "utilize", "make" over "fabricate".
• Use strong, present tense, active voice action verbs.
  "Someone does something", not "something is done by someone."
• "Chunk" content.
• Use short simple sentences (25 words or less) of varied length.
• Put key information first. Answer the "who, what, where, when, why, and how." Good news journalists use this " inverted pyramid" style too.
• Use "white space".
• Use short paragraphs of just a few sentences, each with one idea.
• Add structure
  Use subheads and bullets to help readers scan the page.
• Use "Styles"
  Just make sure the styles follow the document structure. Heading 1 appears before you use a Heading 2, for example. Subheads would become Heading 3 styles in this structure.
• Limit use of images and apply alt text.
  Use only images essential to the document. Blast the clip art and cute stuff. Look professional. Remember that Section 508 and WCAG require images to include alternative text. (In MS Word, select "Format", "Picture", and then the "Web" tab).
• Never use red or green text.
  Why? Red or green text violates Section 508 accessibility for the handicapped.
• Never underline words.
  Why? Underlines in a web page or doc imply a hyperlink.

Tips for accessibile web pages

Below are some ways to make your web pages more accessible to the handicapped. Read more at the W3C's "Quick Tips to Make Accessible Web sites".

• Page organization. Use headings, lists, and a logical, consistent structure. Use CSS for layout and style where possible.
• Hypertext links. Use text that makes sense when read by itself. For example, avoid "click here."
• Images. Use the alt attribute to describe the function of each image. Avoid animated images.
• Tables. Use tables for data,not layout. Ensure that line-by-line reading ("linearization") of data tables makes sense.
• Graphs and charts. Summarize or use the longdesc attribute. Offer a data table.
• Scripts, applets, & plug-ins. Provide alternative content in case the user's browser or settings does not support these features.
• Frames. If you must use frames, at least use the noframes element and meaningful titles.
• Proofing. Check your work, validate pages, and use the tools, checklist, and guidelines at http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG.

Free online survey tool

SurveyMonkey offers online surveys. The basic version is free and lets you ask up to 10 questions and collect up to 100 responses. This is perfect for a small to medium organization, including a church. Their professional version is relatively inexpensive and allows unlimited questions and up to 1,000 responses. More responses incur a slight per person charge.

So what could you use it for? Did you ever wish you could poll your members about an issue or even how they like your web site? SurveyMonkey may be the answer to your prayers.

Editorial tips

The "Learn One Thing" blog has an article with several great editing tips . This article includes use of English (insure vs. ensure, for example). The article also links to the ESA Training site's " Editorial Tips" page.

I recommend you bookmark the "Learn One Thing" -- it's a site you should return to often.

Use Google Sitemaps for better SEO

Google Sitemaps can help raise your ranking in Google search results. Google says, "By using Sitemaps to inform and direct our crawlers, we hope to expand our coverage of the web and speed up the discovery and addition of pages to our index."

Mary Gillen, author at Learn One Thing, has tips on using the site maps:

• Google Sitemap Tips - Part 1
• Google Sitemap Tips - Part 2

Also check out "About Google Sitemaps" and " Inside Google Sitemaps" at the Google site.

Using images for bullets

Would you like to have bulleted lists with fancier bullets? Have you tried using an image as a bullet and hated the result? Buddy, have I got a deal for you.

The MaxDesign site has a LisTutorial specifically for this. The step-by-step details are easy to understand and the code is short. Try it; you'll like it.

Writing: Writely coming soon

The free Writely online application will start issuing "invitations" in July. People have described Writely as an "web word processor" or a "wiki with permissions". Some features include:

• Edit, save, and share files online
• Add tables, images, links, colors
• Limit view and edit access to specific docs
• Collaborate with others and see who made changes when
• Easily compare versions and revert a doc to a prior version
• Make a web page from a doc
• Edit in HTML if you want
• Create a blog post and post it from Writely
• Use blog categories. This may also imply that Blogger, also owned by Google, will allowing use of categories starting in July.

Not on the list to get an email notice when you can sign up? Request an invite.

Presentation Tips

Do you want to create more effective PowerPoint presentations? Check out Guy Kawasaki's pages:

• Presentation Zen
• Presentation Tips
• What is good PowerPoint design?

Methods of PowerPoint presentation design:

• Lessig Method
• Godin Method
• Kawasaki Method
• Takahashi Method
• Wabi-Sabi and Presentation Visuals

Learn one thing ...

The Learn One Thing blog, run by Mary Gillen, has a bazillion tips on subjects including writing, marketing and sales, web technology, SEO, RSS feeds, podcasting, and blogging for business.

Mary says the name came from a class she taught, where the student said he was there to "learn just one thing".

The blog doesn't have categories yet but Mary says she'll be adding them soon.

Look more professional

Want to make your design to look more professional? Here's a few tips:

• Use a good color scheme.
  Avoid wild colors. Avoid distracting background images or ones that do not help a "professional" appearance. Match the color scheme to the intended audience, not to your own tastes.
• Use safe fonts.
  Avoid weird or wild ones. Also remember that fonts carry emotions with them. Do you really want your church to come off as "Comic"? Is that professional?
• Develop a clear, logical layout.
  A simple, clean design looks professional. Avoid a cluttered or cramped look. Navigation should be easy to understand. Minimize multiple navigation menus on the same page. Use bulleted lists logically. Use headings and white space to visually show which elements are related and which are not in the text area. Test your pages in multiple browsers -- they won't all look the same.
• Keep any graphics simple and fast.
  Images slow down display of a web page. The larger the total image file size, the slower the page displays. Sprinkling in images can also distract the visitor's eyes and create an unprofessional appearance. Animated images are very distracting and often give an unprofessional look. Always question their use.

Learn more ...

• 5 steps to a great home page (NetMechanic)
• Top 10 reasons visitors leave your site (NetMechanic)
• Web Design Tips
• Design tips (link collection at UseableWeb.com)

Looks counts

A couple studies by the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab and Sliced Bread Design show that people relied heavily on visual appeal in deciding credibility.

• People said they judged web sites' credibility on non-visual factors.
• In the study, trust was actually associated with a "professional" look.
• Once satisfying the user's criteria for a professional look, visitors used other aspects of the site in evaluating credibility.

The studys' authors say that this shows a need to better educate people to be careful not to place too much trust in sites solely based on "looking good".

On the other hand, it also means that even church web sites will be "graded" by visitors based on looks. Look unprofessional and suffer the consequences.

• Read more about how people evaluate a web site's credibility

Avoid in-page links

Usability expert Jacob Nielsen says to avoid same-page links. Why? Almost all links work one way, so users expect the following:

• Clicking a link navigates you to a new place.
• After you click, the old page goes away.
• A new page loads into the window, replacing the old page.
• You first see the top of the new page.
• The Back button returns you to the old page.

Useit.com has a page of links to current issues in Web Usability

De-hack your code

While most church web developers won't want to get into the code this deep, everyone needs to know that when the new Internet Explorer 7 arrives, it will "break" some old techniques that coders used to force IE 6 to "behave". Some that code will need to be edited.
How widespread is this? Even some blog templates use the IE6 "hacks".

The Sitepoint blog has a posting on this, " Microsoft Says: De-hack your CSS". It gives code samples that won't work in IE7.

After IE 7 arrives, you may want to keep an eye on any site that produces web page "templates" you have used -- many will update their code. You can also email them and ask how they plan to handle the transition.

Assemblies of God site

The Assemblies of God (Northern California and Nevada) site uses a blog format. It has an appealing look. Great photos, all wider than "normal" (490x162 pixels), are always placed above their related heading, always within a thin gray-ruled box (a DIV tag, naturally).
Each news story has a "Tell a Friend" link to an email form plus a link for Del.icio.us bookmarking. They've also used the new standard feed icon, as agreed upon by Microsoft and Mozilla.

Tips to improve blog content

While churches probably don't need to "drive" bloggers to a church blog, the tips on the "Art of Linkbaiting" page (I know ... I cringe at the title too) can actually help you improve the content of your church blogs.

Know who you're evangelizing

Ben Gray, at "Blog Ministry," says that when we start to evangelize, we need to understand the culture of the people who are our "target audience". He briefly discusses boosting your effectiveness as a youth minister by understanding today's youth and pop culture.

For example, he says that young kids prefer IM and MySpace to email. Read the comments, too -- there's some interesting stuff there.

"Skip to content" link code

You can improve accessibility to a web page by adding a "Skip to content" link that jumps past the header and any navigation area on your web page and goes straight to the text ("meat") of the information on the page. But you don't necessarily want sighted people seeing a link they might not use. What to do?

One solution is to add a special class that hides the text. Example:

.skip2content {display: none}

This lets screen readers for the visually handicapped hear the link and use it but hides it form the display for a sighted person.

• How to add "Skip to content" in a Classic Blogger Blog

Are there any situations where you'd want to display that link? Perhaps. Consider a person with a motor handicap -- they can see just fine, but it takes them much longer to move a mouse or other pointing device around. They may well want the ability to Tab to that link and press Enter to jump to the page's text. In such a case, they'd need to be able to see the link.

Use English good

OK, OK. I know it should be "well," not "good." The headline makes a point. The language we use reflects on us and on the site on which it appears. So when writing for a web site, use language correctly.

A good references for proper usage of the English language is Mr. Grammar's English Study Blog. Mr. Grammar gives excellent, clear examples as well as several quizzes. Recent subjects have included different parts of speech (POS) and samples of tenses. Do you remember what the future perfect tense is?

Web page views get an 'F'

Jacob Nielsen, renowned Usability expert, says that a recent study on eyetracking visualizations shows that users read web pages in roughly an "F" shape. He lists three main implications of that:

• Write for scanners.
  Users won't read your text thoroughly. They scan parts of pages.
• Use the inverted pyramid writing style.
  The first couple of paragraphs must contain the most important information.
  This is not news to anyone versed in newspaper writing. You start with the "Who, what, where, when, why" (the 5 Ws), and sometimes "How" of a straight news story. Then and only then do you elaborate.
• Put key words in heads, bullets.
  Your page's subheads, paragraphs, and bullets should all contain key words that users will notice as they scan down your page (down the left side of the "F").

Related tips

• Use flush-left subheads vs. centered ones. Centered ones are a good bit in from the left, where readers seem to want to read.
• Use bolding in subheads and perhaps even in the start of bullets. Bolding makes words stand out and might increase the chances of getting read. Just don't go bold-happy. A long stretch of bolded text slows down readers.

How to write for the web

Below are some tips related to improving your writing for the web. These come from Jacob Nielsen, renowned Usability guru.

• How users read on the web, including scores on a sample paragraph in different writing styles.
• Why web users scan your text
• Information foraging
• Write in inverted pyramid style
• Keep it terse
• How to write for the web (this has long text)
• Apply writing guidelines - increase usability 159%
• How to write heads and subheads

Do pets blog?

This isn't eactly on-topic, but I couldn't resist this link to a funny cartoon:

• cat vs. dog blogs

More ways to read these postings

You can always come to this blog's web page to read the posts. That's my personal preference. But if you start subscribing to a "bunch o' blogs", the number of new articles may get large. One way to manage scanning them for what you really want to read is to use a " Feed Reader", which I've mentioned in prior posts.

Blog readers (a.k.a. feed readers or RSS readers) come in two basic forms -- web-based and ones installed on your PC.

• The web-based variety involves setting up an account at Google, Yahoo! or similar wites, then adding blogs to track. You log onto the Web site to see new headlines from the blogs in your list.
• The local install method gives you a program. When you run the program, many of which look similar to MS Outlook, you "subscribe" to blogs. The program then pulls down information about the blog postings and you read as you like.

Here are a few recently touted feed readers (blog readers):

• SharpReader (donationware)
• RSS Bandit (donationware)

Don't make them think!

Steve Krug's First Law of Usability for web sites is "Don't make me think!". Some of Krug's points:

• Make everything easy for the visitor.
• Visitors scan pages; they don't read them. Design accordingly.
• Visitors don't take time to learn how site navigation works. They muddle through.
• Visitors "settle" for a link they consider most-likely when none seems "right" to them.
• Users like mindless choices (again -- don't strain their brains).
• Be pithy, not verbose.
• Design navigation with all the above in mind.
• If it's too hard to use your site, visitors leave and may never return.

Steve's book, " Don't make me think: A common sense approach to usability", is thin but pithy. And it has pictures and even some cartoons to bring home the point easily and quickly. This book is for beginners, through we all can learn something here (or at least be pointedly reminded of a better way to design our web sites for visitors).

Blog template, design tips and tutorial

Users of Photoshop will get the most out of Jennifer Apple's "Blog Tutorial - Tips For Blog Templates & Blog Design In Photoshop", but there's some good information there for any blog designer. She suggests making a splash, changing the banner background, and more. She also has a very nice collection of blog-related links, including to Wikipedia's blogging terms.

Top 10 blog designs

On-page samples and links to sites the author believes are great blog designs. They can be a good source of inspiration.

Validate your web pages!

If you create your own web pages, you should validate them to make sure the code is correct for the web "document type" (DOCTYPE) you have specified. If you don't specify a DOCTYPE, one gets assigned by default.

Online tools let you check:

• The HTML code
• The CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) code
• Accessibility by the handicapped

If you buy a web design creation service instead of creating your own, it's still a good idea to see if the firms' code passes these checks. Validators usually refer you to a specific line in the code so you can locate and fix problems.

Below are a few links to get you started. You might also want to read, "Should you validate your web page?"

HTML validators

• HTML and XHTML Validator by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
• CSE HTML Validator Lite
• W3C Link Checker - checks for bad links
• HTML, XHTML, WML, XML validator
  

CSS Validators

• W3C CSS Validator
• WDG CSS Check
  

Accessibility checkers

• AccMonitor online
• HiSoft Cynthia Says
• WebAIM's WAVE
• WebXACT
• Accessibility Valet
• LIFT Online - 5-pages evaluated free
  

Why adopt accessibility guidelines?

Web developer Andy Hagans found that a high degree of web page accessibility greatly improves Search Engine Optimization (SEO)." Do you want better search engine ranking? Make your web pages more accessible.

Andy had this "Road to Damascas" moment after editing his website to comply with most W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

• Read Andy's full article

Yahoo! gets hybrid maps

Yahoo has scrambled to adopt the satellite and hybrid maps that Googled has offered for a while. Here's a Yahoo! hybrid map of Avondale Pattillo UMC . Personal opinion -- I like Google Maps better.

Code stylin' tips

• LinkTips blog (links to CSS, color, ...)
• Flow text around image using CSS
• Sample revised blog CSS
• Fluid CSS with extra info in footer ... "Arkanoid" design of SimpleBits
• Dave Shea's CSS Crib Sheet at MezzoBlue has great pointers -- guidelines for web developers.
• CSS crib sheets - Andy Bludd
• CSS-Discuss Wiki has been gathering great tips since 2002. Chek it oiut for tips and explanations.
• CSS Formatter and Optimiser. Based on the free csstidy app, this online code optimizer works well. You get options and code layout choices.

The Terror of Feed Readers

Bryan says that he has kicked the Feed Reader habit and visits blogs he likes via his web browser. Why? Reading all the feeds he had subscribed to was like a black hole sucking up the hours of his week.

So, OK ... maybe you shouldn't subscribe to this feed. Just check back a couple of time a week to see what's new. It's your choice. Just go blaming me if you start down the path leading to Feed Subscribers Anonymous!

Free Google organization email accounts

Google is now beta testing organization email accounts and administration. You have to have a domain address already, but Google lets organizations sign up for and administer email accounts within their own domain. It's free.

So, let's see ... you can now get for free:

• your own domain name and web from Microsoft,
• organization email from Google,
• blogs from Blogger (Google), and
• photo albums from Flickr.

There's no longer any excuse for churches not to have their own web site, email, and more. These online offerings and related tools are easy to use and the price is unbeatable. These are all simple to use and attractive.

CSS tips from NetMechanic

The NetMechanic site is a great one with tons of tips. If you want to learn more about Cascading Style Sheets or just troubleshoot a current challenge, you can find a lot of information in the "CSS Tip" pages.

Check out the latest Usability, HTML, and CSS Tips at the newsletter index.

General principles for church web sites

• Each hour of planning saves 12 hours of changes later.
• Web site visitors mostly "scan" pages
. They don't really "read" all the nice text web designers and content people put there. So plan on it and design based around that.
• Less is more. That goes for design as well as content. A big block of text is visually discouraging. Tons of clip art or small photos is distracting and gives pages a "circusy" look -- not exactly what your church has in mind, I'm sure.
• Use Cascading Style Sheets, which will make site-wide changes much easier and faster to accomplish.
• Aim for a strict HTML 4.01 code. If you can't get there, make as much meet the strict standard as possible. That will save time later, when recoding might be required due to web browsers becoming more standards-oriented.
• Start small in both scope and content. Let the site grow naturally. If your site seems to have a ton of information but not a great organization, consider cutting back content as you think through site organization.Don't post what you can't maintain. There's nothing worse than an obviously outdated site to give your web site visitors a negative impression.
• The only thing constant is change. Go with the flow; expect changes. The web you have in one year should not resemble what it looks like now unless nobody is maintaining it. Every few years, plan on a change in "looks" and features.