Let’s talk a little about the usability frustrations we put up with in the name of daylight saving time – and see if we can’t cobble together an object lesson for our web design.
Okay, so in my best Andy Rooney imitation:
Why is it we can put a man on the moon, yet somehow we still [...]
Posts under ‘Reading Room’
Usability and Daylight Saving Time
Did Twitter just jump the credibility shark with #twitterlied?
Here’s another lesson we can take from Twitters poor handling of their @ replies notification setting problem: don’t tell users that they’re the problem when it is your system that’s sick (e.g.#FixReplies + #TwitterFail vs. #TwitterLied)
5 Things that heal your church website
What actually heals a church website? Here are 5 remedies I have to offer based on some of the many excellent comments in response to last Friday’s open comment post on the same topic.
weekend open thread: What Heals your Church Website?
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.
Working with the Wordpress theme Vigilance 1.16
I’ve been a bit dissatisfied with the HealYourChurchWebsite look-n-feel since early this summer. After a lengthy search of various WordPress themes, I’ve settled on Vigilance 1.16. Here are some of the reasons why along with some of the things I discovered and/or did to make it more suitable to my tastes.
What I was looking for:
I [...]
Politically active on your church website? Kiss your tax exemption goodbye!
In case you didn’t know, since 1954 there has been a federal ban on political activity for tax exempt, 501(c)(3) organizations such as charities and churches. A lesson Atlah World Ministries may be learning the hard way when this past February, pastor James David Manning stood in the pulpit of his little church on 123rd [...]
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 simple steps to stronger passwords
Just as good fences make good neighbors, strong passwords make secure users. Put another way, if your pastor is using his first name as a login, and his last name as a password, it won’t be long before your website and/or email system begins spewing spam for various online services not usually associated with a [...]
Cartoon: Flash Intro Screens – like setting fire to your money
Looks like some people with a great sense of humor took my August 25, 2008 post entitled ‘Don’t turn your front page into a splash page‘ to heart. As demonstrated by the following Signal-to-Noise cartoon of Rob Cottingham that appeared on ReadWriteWeb this past August 31:
And thanks to the quick commenting skills of HYCW [...]
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.
Sky News war reports from Georgia makes case for editorial control
Sky News is reporting that Russia is doing to the entire state of Georgia what Sherman did to the city of Atlanta – in doing so making the case for engaging in editorial controls for online content as this horrible conflict is actually taking place in Eurasian country formerly the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic now simply known as Georgia; and not the U.S. State immediately north of Florida.
Dumping Outlook for gMail – how and why
Ever contemplate saying bye-bye to Outlook forever? How about your church volunteers and staff – are they missing important messages because they can’t afford, nor figure out how to synchronize, the latest version on their home machines? Is the portability and price of Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions like gMail sound almost too goo to be true?
