Comments on: Note to Pastors: #1 – Why Website Maintenance Sucks

By: Florin

Florin — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 18:58:34 +0000

I use the Postnuke CMS for my church website. It’s easily maintainable, there are plenty of custom theme designers that could produce a unique look for the site and you can install all the modules you need: gallery, forum, calendar, etc…

By: Jeff Wilkinson

Jeff Wilkinson — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 21:53:11 +0000

I can definitely attest to the fact that it’s always easier to get people to volunteer to help with a site redesign than to help with the week-to-week ‘maintenance’ work. sigh.

By: Jeff Wilkinson

Jeff Wilkinson — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 21:48:44 +0000

I like to think of a good church site not as just as just brochure-ware or as something that members would never find a need to access, but rather as something that supports and fosters growth and community. It not only provides detailed and current information, but also ways for members/attenders to share information and discussion.

That means maintenance, as well as having a good basic system that allows for shared editing, etc. ‘Maintenance’ doesn’t have to mean just keeping the dust off and the server running, it can mean the week-to-week information updates and more.

(Admittedly we’re not yet doing enough of the sharing between members – that’s one of my goals to work on this year… but it is what I’m shooting for… as well as moving our site into a good CMS.

By: PulpitPodcast.com

PulpitPodcast.com — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 15:06:04 +0000

Hi Justin, It’s not spam when you just add a comment to a public message board regarding web design for churches. I found this board on google. I wish I had a way to propagate spam in that manner. My comment was personally written and was not a cut-and-paste of junk. Anyway, we offer a service to smaller and less geeky people who are trying to get their message out and are not as into the technical side. Have a nice day, and send us your cassettes and we’ll set you up with a sermon podcast at pulpitpodcast.com

By: Justin Baeder

Justin Baeder — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 23:07:35 +0000

Wow, that PulpitPodcast.com comment is spam if I’ve ever seen it (unlike Tim’s appropriate plug). I’ve been playing with an idea like that (SermonCasting.com), but haven’t done anything with it yet.

Anyway, MeanDean, I was just going to give you a hard time about upgrading…the only way to really upgrade MT is to switch to WordPress .

By: Tim Bednar

Tim Bednar — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 16:43:25 +0000

Great post Dean, I still prefer working with my own content mangement system rather than getting MovableType or WordPress to be a content managment system. I know there are trade-offs but bottom-line, I can make SiteNET manage just about anything, pretty quickly. Oh, I launched a new portfolio site.

http://www.turtleinteractive.com/

Sorry about the plug.

By: B Capranica

B Capranica — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 01:56:52 +0000

Well, being one of those pastors who is willing to pay a monthly fee to have our facilities cared for but not our web-site, I find myself guilty and ashamed. This is interesting reading, though I remian loyal to my FrontPage depravity. Perhaps more detailed reasoning and examples would convince me of my sin and lead me to the knowledge of web-design renewal.

By: Martin Kelley

Martin Kelley — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 15:07:40 +0000

Hi MeanDean, Great article! I'm always suspicious when I see a newly-designed website where the homepage fits neatly into one screen. You can just tell it was the result of some powerpoint presentation to a executive director or board chair that rarely uses the web. The problem is that the people who make decisions involving church website design are not the target audience of the website. I work for a national denominational body of Quakers and I can assure you that most members of our 160-member governing body never look at our site. They don't need to, because they already know what we do. When they have questions, they feel comfortable phoning in and know who to ask for. I've written a little about this in How Insiders and Seekers Use the Quaker Net (though I suspect some of the observations are pretty universal.) I think the way out of our insider heads is learning as much as we can about how people use our sites and put up my last usage report as Nonprofit Website Design and Measurement. Thanks again for the article. I'm going in for an interview tomorrow with a conference center looking to revamp their site. My proposal is all about integrating Movabletype and Del.icio.us and Flickr and everything else I can throw in to concentrate the content and give users a pathway for related articles, etc. I will not be recommending brochure-ware, that's for sure. I might just print out your article for them... In Friendship, Martin Kelley

By: salguod

salguod — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 04:48:03 +0000

I'm on MT 3.15 and the only TB spam benefit is mass deletion. Have you read anything at Six Apart on MT 3.2? Sound's pretty good, you might want to wait.

By: DaveW

DaveW — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 00:15:01 +0000

Instead of trackback see http://42.blogs.warnock.me.uk/2005/07/ongoing__the_ne.html
for my thoughts.