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As an Orthodox Parish Webmaster, 2006 marked the year that I wanted to take the parish's Web presence into the 21st Century. First I did a Bulletin Board/Discussion Forum . Then I did a large-scale photo gallery. In the Fall of 2006, the next stop for the Web presence of the Orthodox Church of St. Stephen the Protomartyr was to go dynamic.
Before continuing, let's define two critical terms. Static HTML is generated by a program like FrontPage or Dreamweaver or coded freehand. Each page of a static site is an HTML file. To update a static site, you have to physically open the file and change it. If you need a new page, then you have to: create the page from scratch, upload the page (file) to the server, and then link all the other pages to the new page. If you want to have a common element, such as a banner, appear on multiple pages, then you have to physically add it to all of them.
This is a lot of work, which is why Static HTML sites are so rarely updated. It is not uncommon to run across static Parish sites which have not changed in a couple of years or more.
Dynamic indicates that a site is built using a framework like a Content Management System (CMS). A CMS automates a lot of processes, and it builds your pages for you. The basic gist of a CMS is that if you need a new article on your Website, you just type in the new article. The system formats the article, and adds it to the proper page based on the type of article that it is.
Dynamic sites are easy to change. They are easy to add new features to as well, and they do things that Static sites simply can't. Among these things are registration of members. Dynamic sites built using a CMS architecture allow registration of members, and the ability to set various levels of permission among those members. Not all members can see the same content, nor can all members do the same things.
What does that mean? It means that parishioners can be shown information that the common public can't see. It means that ministry heads can publish articles about upcoming activities directly to the site, without waiting for an overworked Webmaster to get around to it. It means that priests can add their own sermons straight into the Website, or quickly publish their thoughts, ideas, or announcements.
That was what I, as a Webmaster, was looking for most in late 2006. I wanted to take our parish site from being basically an online brochure about our community, to being a dynamic resource. Father Mark Stephens was on-board with this, as he wanted to capture and share his sermons with a wider audience. His co-operation gave me a ready-made supply of new material weekly.
The CMS that I chose to deploy was Joomla . I had just completed a lengthy evaluation of the most popular CMS applications in the market, and Joomla came out on top as the easiest to train non-technical users to manage. Since my goal, both as a parish Webmaster and Web designer, was to train my parishioners/customers to update their own Websites, ease-of-use was a big plus.
Joomla is Open Source, so downloading it and installing it was free. The biggest problem I had at first was getting a template that I liked. I used a free template at first. That was a fiasco, because while Joomla works great as a free system, with templates you get what you pay for.
I eventually picked up an inexpensive template to use, and have been much, much happier since. If you plan to roll-out a CMS application, I highly recommend picking a commercial template to use with it. A good template will save you all kinds of grief. Since most templates cost no more than $20.00 to $60.00, this is not a big expense.
From start to finish, it only took about a week to migrate all of the existing data from the static site to Joomla. Most of this was just copy and paste of old data into the new architecture.
When we first went live, we mostly just used the CMS to publish articles and sermons. Father Mark was easy to train on how to copy his sermons from Microsoft Word and publish them to the Web by pasting them into the Joomla editor. Some other members of the parish chipped in and added Weblinks, pictures, and articles.
Very, very quickly the numbers of pages and articles began to mount. And as the number of pages went up, so did our placement in the search engines. Content breeds placement in the search engines. The more unique content you have, the more search engines like you.
Later on in the year, we activated the registration option on the site. We created profiles for all the members, then gave them usernames and passwords. The profile pages work as an online Parish Directory. It's been well-received, as now parishioners who want to look up email addresses or phone numbers can just log in to the site and get the information they need.
We also rolled out a calendar feature to keep an updated calendar online. The calendar was especially helpful, as it came bundled with an Upcoming Events display module for the frontpage of the site.
Other benefits? We have a great statistics package that helps us keep track of visitors to the site. The site can generate RSS feeds now, so we have noticed a trend of people subscribing to the feed in order to get the latest sermons/news delivered right to their myYahoo or other feed aggregator. We can also display imported RSS feeds, so that has allowed me to take in and display the Orthodox Word, which is a daily podcast of scripture readings of the Orthodox Church.
From a display perspective, the CMS framework also allowed me to easily embed a Flash slideshow to use as a visual menu. Also, the CMS framework came with modules that let me display popular content, and recently added content.
Bottom line: I can now keep the site regularly updated with dynamic content for a fraction of the effort and time needed with a Static site.
And, in raw numbers, how did the new dynamic styling impact the popularity of our site? Well, since November of 2006 when our stats package went live, the Website for the Orthodox Church of St. Stephen has logged almost 11,000 unique visitors. We've had visitors from all over the United States, and from such foreign countries as China, Russia, the UK, and Brazil.
Think about that for a second. A little parish of 100 adults in Longwood, Florida (hardly a world renowned center of Orthodoxy) has logged 11,000 unique visitors in one year. Many static sites will be lucky to hit that kind of volume count in a decade.
The secret? Keep it fresh, keep it original, publish and publish some more. The world is hungry for Orthodoxy. To a world corrupted by the pursuit of the latest new thing, the unchanging nature of Orthodoxy comes like a breath of fresh air. That which was old, is now new.
If your Web architecture keeps you from keeping your Website fresh, then you need to seriously re-visit this situation. The world is looking for Orthodox communities to share their stories. We are doing both them and the Faith a disservice if we don't accommodate them!
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