May 2, 2008
by meandean
2 Comments
Those who fail to plan, plan to fail. While this aphorism is very worn, it is also very true. Here are some simple things you can do with mysqldump, crontab, tar/gzip and a little contingency planning to insure you don’t lose your sanity when your server crashes upon the shoals of of virtual disaster. Continue reading
March 31, 2008
by meandean
8 Comments
For what will it profit a man if his church website is the slickest in the Internet if he has to forfeit a month’s collections just to change the welcome message? If you haven’t guessed by the play on Matthew 16:26 (&/or Mark 8:36, &/or Luke 9:25), or the somewhat wordy “bad church web design poster #006,” the topic of today’s “sermonette” is website maintenance. Continue reading
March 11, 2008
by meandean
3 Comments
I find too many church websites putting their best information out of reach. Hence the idea driving today’s bad church web design poster is best sung to the tune of Nat King Cole’s classic, “Unforgettable” followed by my usual pithy enumeration of this pesky issue: Continue reading
October 10, 2007
by meandean
3 Comments
Programmer guru Joel Spolsky reminds us that usability tests often demonstrate that very few users read the words you put on screen. Couple this the fact that 1-in-3 users are un-churched, and I’d venture to say that Nielsen is right – just about nobody reads nuthin’. Instead like wild animals, they just hunt it, scan it, and categorize it in their pretty little pumpkin heads and move on. Continue reading
September 2, 2007
by meandean
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Nothing shouts at a potential visitor ‘your time is NOT important to us’ than making them have to wait for a pretentious Flash intro. Especially those renderings so gratuitous that they include a ‘skip intro’ link. Here’s why: Continue reading
August 16, 2007
by meandean
4 Comments
Kitsch is a term loosely in referring to any art that is pretentious to the point of being in bad taste, trite, cliche and/or crass. Kitsch is the term that comes to mind whenever I see cheap, cheesy clip-art gratuitously grafted into a church website. Continue reading
August 15, 2007
by meandean
1 Comment
Introducing ‘Bad Church Web Design Posters.’ Today’s inaugural entry: Christian Bling, or nothing says the opposite of ‘welcome to our church’ like a pretentiously ‘pimped-up’ splash page. Continue reading