Open or Closed?
The level of welcome we offer on our websites is always an interesting discussion that quickly boils down to our basic beliefs around security. This week I’m been particularly reminded of this as I’ve been installing security software and SSL certificates on a number of the sites that I’ve built and manage for clients.…
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Truth or Fact or Not?
It seems pretty timely to talk about facts and alternative facts. In our case, those emails that you receive from various companies telling you that your church’s domain is about to expire. Accompanying these “helpful” reminders are usually convenient forms for you to fill out to prevent the expiry of the domain (so long…
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TechSoup Canada
TechSoup Canada? Never heard of it? The truth is that until 4 years ago I had never heard of them either. But then I was asked to obtain a license for the Microsoft Office suite of products for a client. I went the usual route to the local big box electronics store and got the…
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Formatting the HTML Way
In today’s blog we’ll discuss formatting text in HTML. If you want to repeatedly format large amounts of text, then you should use CSS (a topic for another day), however if you want to emphasize a few words in a sentence or paragraph then what follows is the way to go. In all the examples…
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Space…(ing)
The use of space on a web page is needed to properly balance the elements on the page. Too little space and the page will seem overcrowded and “busy” while too much space leaves the impression that there is little worth saying. I’m using space here to mean a couple of things. It can be…
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Ransomware…late breaking news!
Your first question might be what is ransomware? And its a good question, because ransomware is the latest of malicious practices appearing on the internet. Despite my previous assertion that we would go a little deeper into WordPress and this post is most decidedly not about WordPress. The reason for the diversion came in the…
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School is in Session…w3school
As I’d mentioned in the last post, we’re going to take a more WordPress and website-specific approach over the next little while. A website, WordPress or otherwise, is composed of a minimum of three technologies that work cooperatively to generate what you see and interact with in your web browser. These three are HTML, CSS…
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Time for a little test…and reward!
There really isn’t a test…but there really is a reward! I did think though that this would be a good time to recap the 12 posts that have appeared here over the past 4 months. I’m averaging 3 per month but my output has been down in the last couple of month or so due…
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Commenting in not on your website…
Commenting is one of the best things that you can do for your church website and for those who take on the mantle of web aficionado when you are ready to pass it on. In this context, commenting is all about putting short notes into your web pages to help guide new volunteers or just…
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Is Geomapping for you?
Geomapping is the process of taking information with a location component and creating a map from that information. At first blush you may say, “Why would a church want or need to geomap anything?” The truth is that every church has a rich source of geomapping data and about 100% of them call it the…
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Audio Editing Software
Once you have recorded an audio file or downloaded a clip, audio editing is the next step before publishing the clip on your website. Audio editing can be something as simple as cutting out an unusually long silence before the sermon begins or as complex as removing noise from a recording to make it more…
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Some “sounds” advice…
Now that we’ve covered pictures and words, it’s time to think a bit more about sounds (aka audio clips). Sounds can be the perfect punctuation within a sermon, a church presentation or a play. Sounds can illicit soothing thoughts or visceral reactions, they can emphasize a feeling by being melodious or cacophonous. In short, sounds…
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More free image sites…
Before we leave the topic of graphics, I wanted to add a few more image sources to your technology toolbelts. It is an unfortunate truth that there is no one source for the perfect image to add impact to your website or blog page. So I’m going to very briefly take you through a list…
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And now for the right words…
This week we will build on last week’s pixabay.com experience and add the right words to give images even more impact for site visitors. The right words and the right presentation of those words can give images a “Wow” factor that creates a truly engaging visitor experience. Also, well crafted graphics give your site a…
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Just the right picture…
One of the best ways to have immediate impact on someone visiting your site is to display interesting and engaging graphics (pictures, photographs, illustrations or videos). One of the biggest challenges when updating websites is finding interesting and engaging graphics. Actually finding them isn’t hard (thanks to Google’s image search capability), what’s difficult is finding…
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Alert Box – an easy site improvement
Now for some fun stuff! In this post I’ll show you how to add an Alert Box to your website by adding a little bit of code (don’t worry you can copy and paste everything so you don’t have to know how to code or even how to spell code). The code we are going…
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WordPress, what is it exactly?
This is the first in a series of posts specifically about WordPress, how it can be useful as a platform for building your websites with both your existing church community and your potential visitors in mind. As many of you know already, the Presbyterian Church in Canada provides the WordPress platform and select themes and…
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How to get things done, the way you want to, with different people involved, every single time! (Part 2)
Last week we talked about the use of checklists as a means of gaining consistent performance of activities within your church. And I’d ended that post by saying that checklists are the foundation of many other benefits. So, when is a checklist not just a checklist? When it is: A Teaching Tool An Outreach ministry…
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How to get things done, the way you want to, with different people involved, every single time! (Part 1)
That sound’s a bit optimistic doesn’t it? If you’ve been a Minister or church worker for long enough, you’ll know that statement is …a…very…tall…order. Yet, it can happen and does in many areas and industries, though not as often as it could in church settings. As I’d mentioned in the inaugural blog, not all the…
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Web, Tech & Worship! (???)
After reading “Web, Tech & Worship”, I’m sure that many thoughts arise about what this blog will be about, whether it will be helpful, whether it will be interesting and understandable to the non-technically inclined or something completely different. At least these are the thoughts that came to my mind when I decided to offer…
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