Come for supper and discuss the direction of the new St. John’s web site—Thursday, May 9th at 5:45 PM.

Paul Newell and Jake Sterling have been working hard on the web site and the redesign is complete; or, anyway, it has reached the point where it can be used. Small changes will still be made as we discover what is needed. But now the site is crying out for content. The questions are, what kind of content? What is the web site for? Who is the web site for?

This is the point where we need input from the parish community. We are hoping that the site will become an interesting informative tool of communication for St. John’s; useful, not only for those seeking a church, but also as a medium through which we can share our thoughts, experiences, photographs, recipes, whatever — A place where we can speak to each other and to the larger community, looking both inward and outward. For that to happen the site will need support and guidance from members of the parish.

Communication, in whatever form, is the life-blood of a community. If you are interested in this process, come to supper at the church at 5:45 on May 9th. In preparation, think about what you would like to use the site for, yourself, and what you would find interesting to read or see on the site. Remember, there is space on the site, not just for writing, but for photographs and other images, for sound recordings, videos, and the publicizing of events.

Paul, Tom and Jake have had a number of discussions about the design, the functionality, and the content of the site. Here is an outline of some of our thoughts. (You also can download it as a Word file here.)

The web site

After Paul Newell’s request for help redesigning the St. John’s web site, Jake Sterling volunteered to get involved. The two of us have a nice balance of skills. Paul is the more experienced programmer, while Jake has a lot of experience with publications, both print and electronic, in small, non-profit organizations. We have been working on the structure and visual design of the site.

The web site is a primary source of information about St. John’s and is often the first introduction that those seeking a worship community will come across. For this reason the Home Page is particularly important.

We feel that the web site should be a kind of clearing house for as many of Saint John’s communication functions as possible. We hope that this will be part of an overall effort to increase involvement in our Parish community, to provide a medium through which we can look both inward and outward.

We are also interested in creating a section of the St. John’s web site for articles written by members of the parish. We thought this could include Book Reviews (both for adult and children’s books), Opinion Pieces, Reflections, Stories from various ministries and from personal experiences such as travel, and, in the grand tradition of parish cookbooks and because we have so many great cooks, Recipes. We had originally labeled this section, “Articles,” and Jake had started soliciting submissions; but Tom has pointed out the importance of making it clear that such articles come from individuals and that they aren’t identified as the institutional voice of St. John’s Church itself. So, I am thinking that it could be called, “Parish Voices,” or something like that. (If anyone has a better title, we are open to suggestions.) We have already had some submissions; but, for the moment, we have suppressed the whole section pending more feedback from the Vestry and members of the congregation.

Calendar of Events

We have added a Calendar of Events feature that allows us to display upcoming events both as a list in the sidebar and, on it’s own page, a monthly calendar with all Events laid out in normal calendar format.

News & Notes

Another feature we have added to the site is the integration the newsletter, News & Notes, with the web site and to publish it directly from our host server. The way this works is that articles for News & Notes are Posted on the web site first. Then, when the newsletter is being put together, these articles can be dragged and dropped into it. There are several advantages to this system,

• News information only has to be created once. Then it is available both on the web site and in News & Notes;
• Because each article has a link back to the relevant article on the web site, we can include articles that are too long for the newsletter format, giving readers just a summary and a link back to the website if they want to read the whole thing;
• News & Notes now becomes a draw, bringing members of the St. John’s community to the website. When readers are given the opportunity to read articles on the web site, they will become familiar with the site itself, its geography, where they can find articles and upcoming events, etc.;
• It’s cheaper. Until now we have been using an online service called Constant Contact to send out email communications such as News & Notes. This would make sense if we had a really extensive mailing list (say 1000 names); but our usual mailings are to fewer than 200. For that low number there is no reason we shouldn’t send them from our own server. Ending the Constant Contact service will save the Parish around $30 a month. (There is one caveat: we need to be scrupulous that we don’t send our bulk emails to individuals who have not agreed to be on the list or who have requested that they be taken off the list. This will assure that our email address doesn’t become listed as spam in the mysterious realm of the World Wide Web. However, since we have such a small list, this is not much of a danger.)