websites

Lisa Hendey

This presentation was given at the 2011 Catholic New Media Conference. Below are my notes on the presentation:

Why Bother?

• Educate about the Church
• Provide parish information
• Outreach to interest groups
• Build community

10 Best Practices for Parish Websites

From Craig Berry:

1. Useful contact us page
2. About Us/History Page
3. Prominent use of Social Media
4. Online Map/Directions
5. Calendar of Events
6. Weekly Bulletins
   
7. Blog
8. Site Map
9. Mass Times
10. Donate Online

What Parishioners Want (from online polling)

1. Priestly presence (this can be easy or hard)
2. Ministry schedule information
3. Homilies available online
4. Q&A with Pastor
5. Photos, photos, photos!
6. Religious education resources
7. Opt-in text reminders
8. Bulletin online early
9. Mobile version
10. Online forms and registration
11. Active Facebook presence for wired parishioners and teens
12. Online stewardship
13. Ride sharing resources

Outreach

• We are at the service of the Word.
• Never neglect human relationships.

Is social media right for your parish?

From Jared Dees, Today's Parish

• What are my parish's goals?
• Does the parish website align with these goals?
• Do I have the time and people to participate in social media?
• Will I be able to relinquish control of the conversation?
• Are you ready?

Building Community

• Involve many and non-traditional volunteers
• Offer cultural and linguistic diversity
• Include photos (within existing usage policies)
• Meet them where they are
• Establish a parish hastag
• Activate youth and young adult resources and don't forget "wired" seniors
• Hang Out (on Google+)
• Find a Knight in shining armor
• Check in at church

Dealing with Resistance

• What are some of the best practices for overcoming resistance in social media efforts in the parish?
  • Parish leaders are often unable to see the online component of the parish as more than a 'publishing medium'
  • Assure leaders that you can put limits and boundaries on things so it doesn't grow out of control or too expensive
  • You can still have active and beautiful online presences without vast resources
  • Start small, and incrementally grow. Sometimes you just need to take a small step, and then wait.

Hall of Fame

• ourladyofhope.net
• Nativity Catholic Church
• St. Mary's Catholic Center
• Introduction to New Translation of the Roman Missal
• eCatholic
• St. Clement Catholic Church
• St. John the Baptist in MA (couldn't find link)
• Lisa M. Hendey

After staring at a todo in my inbox for a few weeks, I finally got around to doing it on the flight back from Boston yesterday. I simply wanted an easy, quick, at-a-glance way of telling what time it was in different timezones/cities around the US (and eventually around the world).

So, I created Alltheti.me:

(as displayed on the iPad)

I've been wanting something like this for quite some time, and I finally got a few hours to play around with dates and times in PHP and JavaScript. The times may not be quite right when viewed in certain timezones, so I'd appreciate if any friends from outside US Central time could tell me if their own times are correct.

I plan on adding a few small features and visual tweaks soon (right now it's pretty boring), but I really want to maintain the site's speed and simplicity. The reason I don't use any other sites for this purpose is because they're way too complex, offer way too many features, and are usually overridden by tons of ads.

Any other suggestions to make it more useful? 

Lest I forget to mention it, flockNote's 'version 3' website has been launched as of Wednesday afternoon! I spent many (if not most) of my waking hours working on the website and hundreds of features contained within, and after a couple days up and running, the website's still going like a champ!

Excellent home page design by Matthew Warner.

The site is built entirely on top of Drupal 7, and over the past three months, I've grown to appreciate Drupal many times more, as I've learned so much more about the deep and thorough APIs—bugs and all—that have developed into an extremely solid, reliable, and capable framework that is Drupal 7.x. Heck, I even dream about Drupal these days!

Expect more writing about the new features and platform that is flockNote v3 in the coming days—the ride's not over yet, though my 10+ hour workdays are, for a time!

Catholic Tech Talk, a Catholic tech/web discussion website, recently posted what they believe to be the five best Catholic Diocesan websites, and I'm happy to report that our very own Archdiocese of St. Louis was ranked #2!

Other dioceses to make the list:

1. Archdiocese of Boston
2. Archdiocese of St. Louis
3. Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis
4. Diocese of Trenton
5. Diocese of Scranton

I am, and will always be, honored to have had the opportunity to work with the Archdiocese of St. Louis for a few years, and that website was pretty much the lion's share of my work with them. Through my many posts sharing information about how I built the site on Open Source Catholic and elsewhere, I hope other dioceses can take some of the ideas from archstl.org and expand on them, making even better websites in its wake!

The founder of Catholic Tech Talk, Craig Berry, interviewed me a week or so ago for the CTT podcast (CTT Podcast 004 - Interview with Jeff Geerling)—I talked with him about my work in the Archdiocese, Archdiocesan web development in general, and my new role at flockNote. Suffice it to say, I'm not finished trying to help the Church leap forward in its online communications effort!