DebJournal

EDFL675 Project Notes

Debbie's Page Project Chart 12/1/07 It's snowing outside! A wonderful seldom occurance here. It's beautiful and distracting! My favorite thing is to watch the snow come down. :) I am logged into the online conference room and am waiting for others to log in to see if I'm all connected right. While I wait I am working on the summary of what I will present - it's in my head, but not noted here yet.

Presentation Summary: These, and other questions, came from my involvement on our church web site and discussions we had as to how to update and improve our site. My slide presentation gives more details of steps I took in studying church sites, and results and conclusions. I'm not sure this is the best way to incorporate my slides into my wiki pages, but it's what I found I could do. My presentation is completed here. Some questions asked were why I didn't provide links to the churches that scored low in my chart. My main reasoning is to not let one person's opinion (mine) publicly be negative about a church. As this is a public web site I want to be careful. For class members I would be fine with privately giving them the links.

11/30/07 I have completed my power point for my presentation, giving an outline of my findings in this project. I cannot figure out how to upload the powerpoint to this wiki. I'll have to keep looking into that. I have had some challenges updating the chart, as far as the table design, but it somehow came together for the most part. I have put in links on the churches that rated high on my scoring chart. I'm a bit nervous that things won't work right in the morning for my presentation. I'm not nervous about presenting, just the technology!

11/25/07 later I just read through Dave Johnstone's journal entries and sent a discussion comment to him. I'm interested to see what his conclusions are. Though, I did not see any entries past Nov 7, so am not sure he is continuing in the course. I guess we'll see. I am having great misgivings about my project. I'm not sure I'm coming up with anything that is useful at all for anyone else. I'm not even sure it's useful to me anymore. I'm still not convinced that online things are such a draw for people, yet somewhere in the depths of my heart I know people are drawn to the internet like a magnet - they can't hardly stay away. Frankly, I could just access my emails once a week and the rest of the internet only for research purposes periodically and I'd be happy.

I've even discovered that any employment opportunity must be applied for online these days - even fast food places. Unless you have some huge selling point on your application, there are hardly any calls. I think this is because the personal touch is lost. People can't turn in an application with a smile on their face, or with the ability to look someone in the eye and demonstrate that they are confident they can do the job. My sons have been experiencing this disappointment, and I experienced it while applying for teaching positions this past year. Often personality has alot to do with how a job can be accomplished, and a true assessment of personality cannot take place over a computer.

One of the discouraging things about maintaining our church web site was that we had no evidence that it was really being used. We guesstimated that a few people used it, but seriously weren't even sure the wage they paid me to do it was worth the use of it. I know there were mistakes at times that were never brought to my attention. I also know that because we had such an old program things were very limited. Even dropdown menus I created had to be updated manually page by page. So, often, they were not updated and very seldom did we get a complaint about that. I'm just not convinced that a website is to be considered a selling point for a church. I think I see it as more of an information gathering place - that needs to work well. I do believe that if it is going to be used for anything, it needs to be inviting, work well, and invite a person to become involved in the ministries it represents.

11/25/07 I have been doing some internet researching on web site programs. I found an evaluation page that I have put a link to on my links page. I completed the evaluation based on the web site I had been doing for our church. That just changed hands 2 weeks ago, and we have a completely new web site. On the old site we barely came in as doing well, but suggestions were made to evaluate it for improvements, such as assuring people regarding the safety of their children, having a clear purpose for the site, etc. Here are the comments: Your score is 153. Our overall assessment is: accessible and user-friendly to not-yet-Christians in your community, and test these changes with non-Christian volunteers to gauge their reactions.** I find that I agree with the assessment, as it confirmed some of the things I had thought. I hadn't thought about the importance of communicating on our site the safety precautions we have in place for children. It's a good idea. I think the purpose of the site has been reevaluated and that is why there is a change in web site design, the person doing it now, etc. As it's still being built up, it's difficult to evaluate at this time.
 * You are doing well, but analyze the areas that could be improved. Work particularly at areas that will make your site more

In going through this evaluation I think the check list I put together covered many of the same things. The area I didn't cover was child safety. I also liked the idea of having people outside of the church evaluate the web site - which is what I have been doing for the sites I completed check lists on. I don't think I will forward my findings to them, as it is just one person's opinion, but if I was to do a web site again, I would contact some acquaintences and ask them to evaluate it. I think that is a valuable exercise.

11/24/07 I completed my viewing of sites to compare for this project. I selected random sites, various denominations, and tried to find varying congregation sizes. I'm still working on how to go more in depth in this study. Tomorrow I plan to evaluate everything and consider how to proceed with this project. I have updated my chart with numbers and totals.

11/18/07 I have to admit that I have not had a spare moment this week to work on my project. Overwhelming job responsibilities and health issues have kept me away from the computer. I have been mentally evaluating what I have been working on and am not real happy with the way my project is coming together. Somehow just observing the sites is not giving me the information I had hoped to glean. I need to do some research into how to get more behind the scenes information on these sites.

I completed my committment on our church web site last week. Now a new site is up and running, with many things still in progress. I have to admit that I really am not drawn to the new look, and find too many words and no photos. We'll see how it progresses over the coming weeks. I'm sad not to be involved any more, as I've been doing it for about 4 years. Yet, things change, and fresh eyes and input are good. I think there are lots of possibilities with this site, so look forward to seeing how it all comes together.

11/12/07 Today I am exploring the web builder program our church has used to create a new web site. It is called Drupal. I have found it very frustrating to find a way to see what in the world a web site designed by Drupal would be like. I finally found a list of contributors and clicked on his own web site for a demonstration: http://highervisibilitywebsites.com/ This gave me a nice overview of what the possibilities are. In exploring Drupal it offers to do many of the same things that Wiki does, perhaps in a more complicated way, however. I could not access the demo, nor could I understand half of the language used to describe the Drupal possibilities for use. From this first exploration of their site, I would not choose to use Drupal, as I can't find simple directions on what it does, how easy it is to use, and what things are possible with it. I had to go outside the site to even see a basic demo, which, by the way, was very well presented. From the demo and the variety of things I picked up while searching the site, I think Drupal has many possibilities. I just didn't find any selling points on how to easily see possibilities and how easy it is to use. Examples. I guess that's what I mean. I need examples. I added the link to my links page.

I'm doing most of my comparisons today, trying to complete my chart so I can do more evaluations with it. I still don't know how to find out what program is being used by each site. I can guess which ones are older and which ones are more current, but I have no specific names or years to go with them. I guess I'm finding that I would like to have that info available on a contact webmaster page. That way when churches are looking to change their sites they can easily see what other sites are doing and find ones that appeal to them. I've decided to just decide if the site is a standstill program or if virtual movement is incorporated.

I'm also finding that church attendance numbers are next to impossible to find. This is interesting. As a person searching for a church I would be very interested in the size of the congregation. For instance, I prefer mid size churches over mega churches. You can't always tell from the front of a church building how many people are inside. I'd like to have this information up front. That means calling the church to find out, which isn't my personal cup of tea.

11/8/07 I am concerned that I am only going to call up large, major churches when I do a search for sites to compare. I'd be thrilled to have someone suggest any church sites they'd like me to evaluate for this project. I'm trying to choose randomly, but realize that there might be some great sites put out by small churches that won't show up as easily on an internet search. Perhaps I should go to page 10 or so of my search findings to select a church. I'll try that.

I am not sure how to discover who the web host is for these sites. There must be some code, or key stroke, that will allow me to find this information. I'll put a question on the group discussion page to see if I can get some help on this.

Somehow I feel like I'm missing something in this comparison work. I'm just "looking at the outside" of the church, and am not able to really evaluate what's truly going on "inside" the church. If I was to take this research one step further, perhaps I would email one of the church leaders with some questions. However, being respectful of their time, I don't feel comfortable doing that right now.

I just spent some time adding a discussion thread to Mike Horwood's page. I think his project has great potential. It brought all sorts of things to mind, which I shared with him. I hope they are helpful.

11/1/07 I viewed two random church web sites in the past few days. I have logged my findings on the chart. I am working on how to score some varied things, like when a site doesn't offer something - do I give it a 1 or 5 based on my interest in it being there, or on what I think most people want? I'll have to do some more thinking about those things.

10/29/07 I have created a chart page, rather than having to upload my chart everytime I update it. I'll just track my findings on this chart. It was a little tricky. I asked for 30 rows and it gave me 13. So I started creating another chart, thinking that was as big as it would go, then I realized that if I clicked on a red arrow it would give me another row. So I went back to the original chart and created as many rows as I needed. I was frustrated in not being able to change the size of my text. I'd prefer it a little smaller. I also was limited in that I couldn't darken lines on my chart - such as below my titles. It will work, it's just not like what I work with in Excel. For this chart I am in fine shape. But if I wanted to do any sorting, or math in the chart I'm sure it would be limited in it's use and capabilities.

I hope I've covered the types of things people look for on web sites. If anyone has an additional item they'd like me to add to the list, please let me know. I'd rather add to it than not have covered the bases.

I have discovered that I really like the ability to link between my pages on this Wiki. It makes moving from page to page so much easier. The one thing I haven't figured out is how to change the name of one of my pages. I'll keep exploring to find that out. I also am not locating a "Help" link on this Wiki. When I get stuck, that's what I look for.

10/25/07 I explored the project journals of a couple class members. I am trying to set aside a nice chunk of time to work on my comparison chart. We had more illness at home this week, so my great plans fell to the wayside again. We'll see if Friday can hold together for me.

10/21/07 I was able to get the name of the program our church is working with and will start eploring that, along with searching out other sites to see. I've been ill most of the week, so haven't had the ability to work on this as much as I'd hoped. My plan is to do quite a bit of my research work this week.

10/14/07 I have not had any returned contact from the person working on our new church web site, so am just a bit frustrated. I put together my proposal and designed a rating chart I will use when I visit various web sites. I'm still deciding on how best to find sites to see. I'll probably do searches of some specific denominations and compare a couple from each category. I'd like to do sites in various states as well.

10/6/07 I met with Headley yesterday and cleared up most of my confusion on how to make use of this Wiki site. I am attempting to use it for journaling my project information, and the steps I am taking as I work on my project.

I am looking at the new web site that is being created for our church. I currently maintain the web site we have using an older version of Dreamweaver. Essentially I taught myself how to use Dreamweaver, as the books out were very complicated language wise. I met a couple people who showed me some ways to simplify things, and gave me pointers of making pictures smaller and less in memory size so they wouldn't take so much time to load and thus slow down the web site. I have worked faithfully at this for over 2 years and learn little helpful bits all the time.

The web site started before I began working in the church office. I would just update basic paragraphs on the front page as part of my responsibilities. Then, as always in a church, people changed ministries, new things began to happen, and information changed. So I had to explore how to change these things on the web site. As I tried, and failed often, I learned how to created pages without using tables (which had been the basis for all the pages), and how to incorporate backgrounds and photos into the pages. Eventually we changed the whole look of the web pages, the front "index" page a couple times until we came up with the current page. The most recent addition is the drop menus at the top of the page, as all our ministries were formerly listed along the side of the main page and took up so much space. The difficulty with the drop menus is that after I change a link in the menu I have to save and post each page that has a drop menu in order for each page to work properly. Usually there is not time to do this for each page, so only the main page and any other page I happen to edit after the menu change will have the changes. I have tried to synchronize the host computer site with the online site, but as I tried to delete or clear out older pages they would sometimes re-appear in the online listing. This meant that older pages would sometimes be called up when people were searching on the internet. The other thing is that our version of Dreamweaver and the computer it is housed on do not like each other much, and often after posting a page the program freezes, thus ending any synchronization happening.

As one of the office support people I have been involved in several conversations about what type of things we would like to see on a new web site, knowing that we would be seeking a new program or hosting program to use. One that we investigated was fairly new in the industry. After interviewing the support staff for that program we decided that the offer sounded better than it actually was. I was not happy with some answers I received from them, and it was not aiming to solve some of the problems we were experiencing. I did not feel good about the cost when it didn't seem to fit our needs. I appreciate that our pastor weighed my opinion and decided to look further.

Now, the site is being put together by someone who works at GFU. Though I met this person last spring, I have not had interaction with him since then. My understanding was that the new site would be managed by the office staff as a team - each having access to different parts of it. So, I was maintaining the current site and stepping back to just let the new site take over when it was time. Now this class project has prodded me to study what he is doing, and see if it has answered many of the desires we have had for a web site. I have gotten his information, have viewed the basic page he is working on, and have emailed him for more information. I know that our Pastor has been meeting with him and will be interested to see what has developed since Spring.