Website Ideas
(In no particular order)
- Radical redesign; new look-and-feel
- Better organization of material into nested categories
- More photos, photo albums!
- Rework high-level format to restrict width -- for wide-format displays
- Rework format so that website ALSO works well with hand-held devices
- Or else switch on display type and offer a separate version for hand-helds
- DONE -- Create/maintain a Facebook page for Christ Church and link to it from website
- DONE -- Online pledging; online donations through PayPal
- Add Blog(s)
- Publically viewable, postable by members
- Viewable and postable only by members
- Using Blogger service, open-source installable S/W, or home-grown
- Postable through website, by email.
- Support plain-text only, or rich text (html)
- On broad on-going topics, or a series of more focused ones
- Use Wiki technology?
- Email discussion lists
- Trim away old content
- ONGOING -- Calendar of Major Church events for the year
- Active online calendar of daily events
- Small version on homepage
- Updatable through the web
- Auto hyperlinks to events
- iCal (?) links for auto-download of events to Outlook, PDA, etc.
- Feed to/from other types of calendars in use
- Replace most of the other calendars in use
- Optional display of different categories of events (e.g. Church vs non-Church)
- Auto-generation of email reminders for participants (ushers, greeters, committees)
- Weddings page
- DONE -- Bio page for staff members, with photos
- DONE -- Online photo directory of church families/individuals (password restricted)
- Post all press releases to website
- Index to past "This Weekend At Christ Church" emails online
- DONE -- Better page of maps, directions
- More photos of
- Typical events taking place at church
- Special events, mission trips, etc
- Rooms & spaces inside & around the church
- Audio files of entire services, musical events
- DONE -- Playable music -- background? indexed?
- Videos. Of what?
- A page on the history of Christ Church
- A section on stained glass windows, including close-up photos & stories
- A section on the labyrinth
- A section on organizations that we host
- A Flash or Shockwave animation for the homepage
- ONGOING -- More "What Christ Church means to me" webpages
- Improvements to Youth, Sunday School, and Music pages.
- Fun stuff on the Sunday School page
- More content on Social Justice
- Move to commercial content-management tools
- DONE A page or section with downloadable forms, including
- Room Reservation,
- Request for reimbursement,
- Church's 501(c)3 or ST-6 tax-exempt letter,
- Fire Emergency Call List,
- what else?
- Auto upload, process & configure certain things through the web
- DONE Bulletins
- DONE Meeting minutes for boards and committees
- DONE Sermons
- Audio files of sermons
- Monthly calendar & Clarion PDFs
- Database of members email addresses & committee involvement
- Church Windows ==> mailing labels
- Allow Prop Mgrs to edit their own info files
- WYSIWYG web-based editing of frequently updated pages
- Allow Janet to modify scripts for voicemail recordings
- DONE Greeters and Ushers lists
- DONE Allow staff members to control their own Out-of-Office email
- DONE "Teaser" email for Greeters, as requested by Pat
- On-line sign-up for mailing list (like
RenaissanceChurch.org?)
- On-line sign-ups for events like homeless hospitality
- Expand "congregation" page to include families without email addresses
- Link to download or sync whole email database to user's local Outlook address book
- Minutes from more boards and committees
- Reformat Minutes page using drop-down lists
- Add Search on Minutes page that is restricted to Minutes only, and can be further restricted by (a) group, (b) year, or (c) both.
- More info online to support the ongoing work of committees and boards
- Like what's there for Prop Mgrs, but more
- Could include online email archives for specific groups, as done for job searches -- and Darfur!
- For email archives, add search, as for MDSC
- Better structuring of content on Members/Open and Members/Only pages
- DONE -- Individual passwords, maintained through self-service using email
- Better treatment for podcasting and RSS feeds
- Improve the "Search" interface
- Put Google and WebSideStory together -- one field with 2 buttons, or else on a separate webpage
- Allow restricting search to (a) just Sermons, (b) just Bulletins, (c) by year
- Put a Search on By-Laws using MDSC technique -- result should be scrolled using bookmakrs, and highlighted with yellow background
- PDF edition of Church Member Phone Directory
- DONE -- Comprehensive online Information Technology manual as a Wiki
- Make Visit Stats publically viewable
- DONE -- Eliminate old anti-spamm encoding of email addresses.