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Author
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Topic: church webpage
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unclefungus
Highlie
Member # 2118
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posted February 10, 2004 16:46
OK, some girl at the church is in college taing a HTML course. For a project she made a cute little web site for the church. It is curently hosted at her colldeges server. She showed it to the pastor and now the powers that be want to make this a permanant thing. They know I'm the computer guy at this church (all 150 memebers of us), so I agree to help. These people are afraid of the unknown to no end. the internet is a big scary thing and they only know AOL! So the permanant host they want to find is some place like earthlink or AOL for thier domain. I say it's easier to use a hosting service but they think that it's to risky, even though I have found som places with very low prces (they think I mean Bob's Used Cars when I say cheap).So they want to give earthlink or angelfire thier money becuase they've heard of it. They also think the word processing computer in the churches office needs to be "online" to make this happen. When I told them how my site was remotly hosted in hong kong, but I could manage it at any time, I think that freaked them out. How can I explain to them that This is what alot of people do, and that these are professional companies? I would not mind taking over and managing this full time, even if I don't design the page, but they won't just let me. I do want to help them,, but the little paitince I have is wearing thin. I'm really not to worried, because the girl is still uses HTML 4.0 as basicly as possible, with those stupid spectrum scrolling aninmated gifs that are so annoying. I think any hope of a professional lokking page is lost. but any Ideas?
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Professional software should not have dancing paperclips.
Posts: 613 | From: changes, right now it's Jacksonville or Fayetteville | Registered: Apr 2003
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Gibbonboy
Geek
Member # 2426
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posted February 10, 2004 16:57
Somewhere there has to be a group for church web design, maybe a Yahoo! group or something. Perhaps if you can show them other church sites, which are hosted on remote servers, they will see that it is an accepted and normal practice. Perhaps somewhere like Oral Roberts University has a Media Department that can provide information? Not sure what denomination the church is, but many groups have very professional-looking sites that you could show them. In a couple seconds, I found Southern Baptist Coalition, United Methodist Church, and Baptist Hosting. Some of these could be used to convince them of the fact that AOL and Angelfire are evil, and will not provide them with what they are looking for.
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"It's not the end of the world, but you can see it from here."
Posts: 155 | From: A Very Small Hole in the Forest | Registered: Nov 2003
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GameMaster
BlabberMouth, a Blabber Odyssey
Member # 1173
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posted February 10, 2004 17:05
Find local hosting, or host it yourself... The later is probably better. The girl might not have the the HTML skill, but she has the right idea about getting things done. This sounds like rule-by-commity on the topic and thus every little peice is going to be debated, unless you do it first and ask questions later.
How many people do expect to be on the page at a time, if it isn't that many, running a little server with no-ip or another dynamic dns service would let you hold the domain to an IP, and then you just need an "always on" connection. Then they can see that the files are 1) local -- not in the scary unknown place on a remote server, 2) being taken care of by the "computer guy".
Just a thought.
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My Site
Posts: 3038 | From: State of insanity | Registered: Mar 2002
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Tut-an-Geek
SuperFan!
Member # 1234
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posted February 10, 2004 17:15
I actually have to deal with this a lot, as I design, maintain, and for quite some time hosted http://www.bnaijacob.org/ (The other fellow is more of a figurehead).
Here's what we do:
I used to host it on my server, and if you wish (a few bucks a month via paypal), the same can be done for your site. We have a committee of people who work on the website. It started out with me and the other person. I then designed the site, and got a skeleton set up. Slowly we imported all of the static content that is not prone to change. Now, the person who writes our bulletin is able to take the bulletin columns (siterhood, rabbi's column, etc.) and put them onto the site. Quite handy actually. Even more handy, the United Synagogues of Conservative Judaism hosts us for free at HiVelocity. It's quite possible that if your church is affiliated with an organization liike that, they may also do hosting for free. The only thing that we had to cover was the domain registration.
Here's the process that I would reccommend, after having gone through this:
1: Form a committee with people who are only of technical experience from the congregation. "Ooo wow I can use a computer" style people should be told politely that they will be needed, but not yet.
2: With this committee (More than two, less than 6), create a plan of action (domain, probably a website that's more "professional" than "cute", who you would want in the long run to manage it, and secure hosting)
3: Propose this plan to the pastor and powers that be. If there is an overseeing board of some sort, propose that one of the members of your committe join the board as a delegate
4: Run through said plan
5: Now that you have a basic web presence, it's time to develop some sort of simple content management system, and it's time for the "i can use a computer" people to do be your slaves to fill in the content
Also, look for a good Listserv maybe. I'm on one for the USCJ (the same people that give us hosting), for webmasters on their server. Very handy.
I'd be happy to answer any other questions you have in regards to this.
Posts: 3764 | Registered: Mar 2002
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TheMoMan
BlabberMouth, a Blabber Odyssey
Member # 1659
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posted February 11, 2004 04:32
Uncle Fungus try getting in contact with Glen at
this site he may be able to help, also have the
board look at his site and he may even host I was
working with him a few years ago.
http://www.associate.com
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If it don't glow it ain't Ham Radio
Posts: 5072 | From: Just South of the Huron National Forest, in the water shed of the Rifle River | Registered: Sep 2002
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MTB Babe
SuperBlabberMouth!
Member # 2297
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posted February 11, 2004 05:22
Me can't read...THAT MANY MISSPELLED WORDS
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Samir: No one in this country can ever pronounce my name right. It's not that hard: Na-ee-ana-jaad. Nayanajaad.
Michael Bolton: Yeah, well at least your name isn't Michael Bolton.
Posts: 1001 | From: State College, PA, USA | Registered: Jul 2003
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unclefungus
Highlie
Member # 2118
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posted February 11, 2004 13:31
well, hosting it ourselves is out of the questyion. The only computer in there has to run windows (* and has already been declared not powerful enough to be even a small server, plus the "computer guy" does not really want to go fiddlin' and having to make some DNS service work, I'd aslo have to be there incase the machine died at some point or another, so no.
As far as the commity idea, we have already done that, It's the girl that made the page, me and a Decon who knows more than the average bear (IE works for spint). We are trying to figure out what to do with the little page she made, and these people won't listen to what I tell them. They want a professional styled page, but I don't think the wearthlink or aol is considered professional by any one. I haven't told the girl that the page totally sucks and isn't worth 2 shits until it gets rebuilt from the ground up ( heres a link ) I could have this thing setup and running in a day, but this is going to rack my mind I can already tell.
And grammar nazi's, I rilly don't care
Posts: 613 | From: changes, right now it's Jacksonville or Fayetteville | Registered: Apr 2003
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GMx
Solid Nitrozanium SuperFan!
Member # 1523
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posted February 11, 2004 15:37
She's batting a thousand so far, the link is dead.
Posts: 5818 | From: S-4, Area 51 | Registered: Jul 2002
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SupportGoddess
Solid Nitrozanium SuperFan!
Member # 822
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posted February 11, 2004 23:57
Just take them to tour some geocities/earthlink/aol pages that link to pr0n.
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"A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes."
-Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Posts: 1148 | From: The Digital Temple | Registered: Jul 2001
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Jace Raven
Solid Nitrozanium SuperFan!
Member # 2444
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posted February 12, 2004 00:02
For the sake of the girl, you can make a professional looking site using HTML, it just takes a lot of <>'s. Good luck with this, all i can say is look into what Tut-an-Geek is saying, i tried to do this once with a church (well actually a group of congregations that united in order to make real political changes in CA, maybe you heard of 'em, PICO) anyway, i found it really hard to explain to them the how's and why's and they didn't exactly trust a 17 year old computer geek to know what he was talking about so i just did what they said and they liked it. Unfortunatly, nobody wanted to maintain the site and i wasn't about to do it. I find that the religious type are commonly afriad of the unknown.
C wat ya can't learn 'em somethin' good.
Posts: 1791 | From: Seoul, Korea | Registered: Nov 2003
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Tut-an-Geek
SuperFan!
Member # 1234
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posted February 12, 2004 03:05
We actually had the same issue with someone thinkign that they could make a web page. It got to the point where it looked so bad that they were told to take it down or hit the road. Make an alternative design, and then ask for input again, and they'll change their mind about who they want doign it.
Posts: 3764 | Registered: Mar 2002
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