I want comments on the following question: what actually heals your church website? Is it using WordPress over Joomla? Is it adding a Twitter widget to your sidebar? Or is it adding more spinning animated gifs of gold lamé crosses? I want your input – so leave a comment.
Posts under ‘Fast Five’
5 things we can learn from my 7:40 AM Thanksgiving wake-up call
I believe it was the slam of a large piece of plywood falling 2 some-odd stories onto other lumber that rudely awoke me at 7:40 AM this Thanksgiving morning. An no, I couldn’t go back to sleep as the hum of a noisy air compressor placed precisely next to the property line driving the pneumatic [...]
5 things more things about Christian spam email bombing runs
Ever get that annoying email from a church, friend, and/or family member who ‘accidentally’ sent a rant to everyone in their address book and/or a group-related email directory? Here’s how I respond to one such instance of a Christian SPAM email bombing run. Feel free to copy or link them to it my post to educate them on why this is such a poor practice of netiquette.
I cut you man! 5 things we can learn from the Microtech Knives website.
I cut you man! Seriously, it’s rare that I review a non-church nor charity website, but this site was so chock full of great lessons in what not to do on your church and/or charity website, I couldn’t help myself.
The basic message today being: don’t let fear of copyright violations drive your website design.
Site review
So [...]
5 Things Churches and Charities can learn from Google
So how did Google become a verb? Glad you asked … it did so by building an organization around intelligent people who understood how to grow the corporate needs around what the customer wanted. Put in more “Christian” terms, it’s about satisfying one’s self by first serving others.
5 things we can learn about password recovery questions from Sarah Palin
With apologies to Michelle Malkin, imagine waking up one day to this news flash: “Your pastor’s private e-mail hacked, family photos raided; cesspool blog gloats; feds investigate!” The hack of Sarah Palin’s email account via Yahoo’s password recovery system serves as a wake-up call that screams that no matter how strong a password you use – if you have weak password recovery questions – you’re open for an attack.
5 things we can learn from the SiteMeter debacle
Filed under “If it ain’t broke don’t Fix it,”SiteMeter, a webpage tracking service popular with pundit blogs, was compelled to roll-back a deployment and issue a public apology after they messed-up badly when they deployed new features that inflamed the blogosphere more than the myth that Palin and Obama are the pawns of an upcoming alien abduction to convert both Christians and Muslims to tenents of XENU. The end result were a number of prominent A-list political bloggers voicing dissatisfaction with the new SiteMeter reminiscent of the New Coke disaster of 1985.
A celebration of cruft, the king of kitsch ministries.
The WikiPedia defines ‘cruft’ is computing jargon for code, data, or software of poor quality and ‘kitsch’ as art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an existing style. The Celebrations Of The King Ministries in Loma Linda, CA provides a website that is both. The only real question being, what % is kitsch, and what % is cruft – as the design of the this church website seems to take its queue from the Hamster Dance school of design, circa 1998.
Don’t turn your front page into a splash page
What does it profit your church or charity’s website to have the most beautiful web pages ever designed if it doesn’t convince people to visit your church, engage in your ministries, or at least inquire for more information? Today I ask that question of the Westwinds Community Church of Jackson, MI – based in part on some advice offered by Cynthia Ware in her post 4 Simple Steps to Improving Your Website.
5 ways to save fuel and staff costs by screencasting webinars
One of the more painful big money issues facing churches and charities are upcoming energy costs that will consume more funds once allocated to other endeavors; while forcing some locations to have black-out dates to reduce the high cost of heating a facility during off-hours. Not to mention the rising costs to staff and laypersons to drive to said locations during the week. With such exorbitant expenses in mind, there are many online technologies now available to an ever growing bandwidth-enabled congregations that will allow them to save money by moving mid-week meetings and classes out of bricks-n-mortar places and into the web space.
Facebook facelift – 5 things I like vs. 5 things I dislike
The new.facebook.com is out, and with it comes a cleaner and leaner interface that is not only more configurable, but addresses the growing needs of its of an audience that is stretching well past the niche of the college students. Here are 5 things I like, and 5 things I dislike about the upgrade based on what I see on my own Facebook page.
Follow-up: bad church web design inspired by bad theology
Judging from the feedback on my last post – I’ve either let you down or built you up. To those who were critical, thank you for your honest comments in love. It is always welcome. To those who sent private form-feedback, I’m glad I was able to encourage you. To those confused – I think I need this follow-up post to clarify some points.
