Web Team Meeting 5/4/09

Results from previous meetings are highlighted. We will need to highlight new items since the last meeting too. We can add to this over time. The plan is to move things off this list as we address them, so that this will always be the current agenda (so the link doesn't change). Jeff's updates look like this. Charlie, thanks for setting up the Agenda this way.

This agenda is stored online at http://docs.google.com/ViewDoc?docid=dhc342g_15d5jdf79c . Previous agenda lists should be on the Web Team Blog .

New business discussion items--stuff to talk about or figure out:

1. Brochures--Randy was working on some, and Jeff emailed some recently. Do we want to put templates on the web site? Which? We didn't address this yet.
   

2. Logo--questions came up again recently on the color logo (or lack of). We don't have a color logo that we can easily change the size of. We have to be very careful not to ever distribute the wrong logo, because we could get in trouble with the United Methodist Church for doing it wrong (and we could waste money printing signs that are wrong.) The only thing to do right now is to give Ryan or the sign company the black and white logo and the PMS numbers as we have done in the past. As far as getting a color logo, we are waiting on the sign company for that and it is on the todo list way far down at the bottom of this document. Another possibility would be to farm it out to someone else or beg someone to do it (Perhaps Earthbound Screen Printing? I'll try to ask them when I'm in there.).
   

3. Address on the mychurchevents calendar--change the address or eliminate it (from 2355 to 6350 Jupiter Suite 103, Belmont, MI 49306) Done for the calendar, but oops, it needs to be changed on the web site too!.
   
4. Pictures on the home page--we need a few near the announcements.
   
5. Web site colors--Do we want to change anything else in the color scheme? Nope, they're fine, other than the font size problem.--Removed this from the agenda due to lack of current interest even though there is still a minor font size problem.
   We don't have to manually put in color and font on the web site any more--after hours of struggle, I found the CSS settings for the web site, and changed:
   
   • Default link color to dark green as we discussed last meeting
   • Default link setting to have an underline
   • Default text size to be 12px (our size 2) instead of 11px (our size 3). This is working for links, but might not be working quite right for text--more testing needed.
     
   • Default heading color to be dark green as well
   • Default font to be Ariel
     
   The CSS file is at /Portals/_default/default.css which so far can only be edited by using ftp to move the file to another machine. The main reason for having this information here is so it will be documented in the meeting agenda.
   For the styles:
   
   • We can pick styles while editing, which we may need to learn more about. One of the announcements on the web site right now uses a style.
     
   • We have some old junk to take out to make styles work.
6. Web site format--I tried to link to the web site for the Blandford Nature Center recently, after we took some kids from church there on a Sunday afternoon. You can't even find their site under all the announcements that are at the top of their home page! I finally decided not to link to them. Our site has the same problem. If someone tries to link to us hoping to tell someone what White Pines is about, they get blurbs about news reporters, Relay for Life, and Shamrock Cookie Bake (which is already past, so I took it out). I'm concerned that the message this gives to site visitors is that the site is primarily about communicating with existing members. If this is what we want, that's ok. But in this time when we're working hard to get new visitors to both White Pines and CHAOS, we may not want to make people wade through stuff they don't care about, at least not without some indication of what's going on. A lot of stuff will go away after Easter. Perhaps we can move the map up toward the top More columns may be the answer.
   
7. WorshipAtTheY.org now exists. It is hosted on godaddy.com using their free hosting, with a redirect to google sites. Unfortunately Google's hosting isn't that great--the site editor is limited (but better than anything except dotnetnuke that I've seen, though I don't know much about Wordpress or Drupal yet) and they put a banner along the bottom of the page that varies in location depending on what browser you're using. If you want a google account and email address yourname@worshipatthey.org let me know. So far I just set up a couple to see how it works. They have added the new features to our site, fixing some of the problems. For the calendar, we added a marketing@worshipatthey.org user, and shared it with everyone--new users can add it without the owner doing anything, but they have to add it specifically, and it can be shared individually as well so people don't have to add it specifically, but it's not automatic as it should be.
   
8. Blog stuff--Removed this from the agenda due to lack of current interest.
• Would we want a blog multiple people could post to? Google may have one available with blogspot and it might work with worshipatthey.org.
• Would more people read "Jeff Williams blog" than "Pastor Jeff's blog"?
  
9. Google apps is set up for the worshipatthey.org domain, which means we can have email addresses in that domain and can use other google apps. It's set up somewhat the way I believe Ryan sets up things for his customers. It could be useful for us to be set up like a company, if we spend the needed time on it, which we probably won't. It lets you log into multiple google accounts at the same time as long as they are in separate domains, which is nice.--Removed this from the agenda due to lack of current interest.
10. We have the Worship at the Y artwork from Earthbound--do we want to (can we) put that on one or the other web site? Add colors and make it available on the logo page?
    
11. More jobs to do--some things that may be available for someone to work on include:
    
    • audio editing and posting the sermons (ftp to ftp://wpines04umc:newkirk12@ftp.whitepinesumc.org/Portals/0/Sermons/ worked at one time, but not tested recently)
    • video recording, editing if any
    • photo editing/archiving--Patsy does a lot of this but there are folks who haven't given her their pictures
    For some of these, if we try to store everything online, we find we run out of space.
    
12. Video and other information from the news coverage of Faith and Fitness--can we save it or link to it? Can we post the article, perhaps on a Faith and Fitness page?
13. Combine video testimonials onto single DVD for promotional purposes, i.e. East Nelson financial request; they are currently on 3 DVDs.
14. Jeff still struggles with putting pictures inline for Family Tree News...HELP. (It looks like he figured it out--the 3/23/09 FTN is fine.)
    
15. Google group WPUMC-CONNECTIONS, possibly coordinate with Family Tree News. Using a google group for news could make a list of the previous posts automatic, but might make things more complicated as far as posting old news and managing the mailing list. We have no idea what would happen if we tried to send a message with images to a google group so this might be something to test.
16. We are listed in the Find-a-Church for 49306 (Belmont), 49321 (Comstock Park), 49317 (Cannonsburg). Do we want to link to them? Does their page have a link to us? Can we put our logo on their page?
    
17. How recently has a backup on the desktop machine been done?
    
18. Review calendar:
• The Marketing Team calendar is currently in the strategic planning page--keep it there or move elsewhere?
• Near the end of the year, decide whether to use Google calendar or stay with mychurchevents for our main calendar
• Google calendar--embed in our own site, copy events among multiple calendars, easy to edit, free
• Mychurchevents--customizable with little images, event descriptions can have html
19. Set next meeting date (normally the first Monday of the month, 7pm at the church office).
    

Old business discussion items:

1. Home page--check on plans from last meeting:
   
• Mention the Y earlier in the home page and/or link to it
  We want to move the addresses around on the home page. Patsy got this done!
  
• Put some of our buzzwords out there
• Worship at the Y
• Spirit-Mind-Body Connection (We are the Spirit Connection at the Y)
• Faith and Fitness
  Jeff to write up something to go on the home page about Worshiping at the Y.
  
2. Logos on web page--we have the transparent trees and the WorshipAtTheY PDF, still need the black logo. What else do we need if any?
   
3. Templates on web page--what do we need, and how can we get it?
• Word -- Patsy has one.
  
• Powerpoint -- Randy has one
• Publisher -- Patsy has one.
  What other types?
• Banners--may not need templates for these. Signarama should have our artwork.
• Road side sign still needed--to marketing
  
• Posters -- Randy has some templates for these
• Communication cards? They are in Excel. We should put an Excel template up with the logo. We should put these on green paper next time.
• Thank you cards with our logo on the front, duplexed with the logo upside down. We may need an upside down logo. This will probably be in Word.
  What other formats?
4. What to get rid of--revisit what pages on the web site should be archived to clean things up. Make a quick list of these for someone to work on later.
   The ministries drop down menu is way too big, and there are plenty of outdated things there. Jeff would like about 5 items under a heading.
   
5. What to put back--go through the archived pages that are invisible and determine what should be made visible as past items. The rocketry page does a good job of looking back, but most other stuff only looks forward. There may be other things we want to look back on, that don't even have archived items or pictures--we might want a separate page for things like
• Children's Musical pictures
• Description and pictures for Shamrock Cookie Bake, Devos Children's Hospital
• Mention of things the youth groups do every year, like parent appreciation dinner, progressive dinner, GVSU visit, retreats
  
• Music Festival (?)
6. Figure out what to do with the different groups and how to promote them. Do we want to keep a list of these groups? Do we want to put links to them on the web site? Jeff wants to note them in an upcoming Family Tree News. We may want a list, with URL, description, and admin information. So far we have
   
   • multiple google groups--with ministry team sections
   • Need to list these
     
   • at least one yahoo group--they have an address book now.
     
   • a group on facebook
   • cafe press--any progress on getting our stuff back up after they took it down because of the Y logo? Yes, with letter Y.
     
   • several smileboxes
   • probably other photo sites (picasa?)
     
   • Google's blog on blogger.com, which ties the URL whitepinesumc.blogspot.com to my gmail account. That might be a bad thing since we might want Pastor Jeff or someone to post to it. I recently posted to it, and am currently using it as a personal blog about White Pines stuff.
     
   • Jeff's blog Jeff has a blogger.com blog of his own, and he has copied the blog on the whitepinesumc.org site to it so it's in both places. Do we have a link to the blogger.com one and does it have our logo?
     
7. SEO--we had talked about having Ryan Duba speak more to us about search engine optimization and about his services, but haven't done that yet. He charges $215 a year(?), which we may be unwilling to spend for little gain.
   

Action items--stuff to work on:

1. Jeff's Family Tree News Digest page might need a way to comment, or an RSS feed. See above discussion of using a google group for it.
   
2. Eliminate the telephone2 column from the contacts (or use it) if possible
3. Need 6 master logos--colored side by side, colored tree logo over, and tree only (versions--black and white, white background, and transparent background)--not done yet, though we have the black and white ones (and the tree only--the color is a bit too light on it). Jeff will talk to the sign company when we order the new signs, so on hold until then.
4. Need smaller versions of these logos, with multiple colors, that can be sized smaller for the web site (on hold as above).
5. Calendar logo not working - look into changing the logo size and possibly changing our web hosting for the logo, images work best if they are on a white background and are no larger than 200 pixels wide and 110 pixels high--on hold until we get hosting that can supply the logo. Found a setting in the webhost4life control panel that they added--security > security guard > level strong > set to medium--by default it doesn't allow us to set up new users, and also prevents linking to our images. So in theory this should be fixed.
   
6. Also for logos, make up a special login that can only see the logo page, to be used by vendors such as Earthbound. Or else make a portion of the page publicly available.
7. Revamp the directory page
   1. Make the directory info easier to find
   2. Move the pictures to another page?
   3. Move the leadership info to another page?
8. Update the online directory by doing a periodic export from MemberShip Plus--ongoing, updated 10/13/08. Since MembershipPlus is used for financials, addresses must be correct there. Thunderbird is used for email, and Jeff's Palm for telephone contacts.
9. Clean up Thunderbird on office desktop--ongoing
10. Need to make sure work email addresses are out of MembershipPlus and Thunderbird. We probably need to keep a list of them (like a do not call list) since they keep creeping back in.
11. Check web site for other problems, there are lots.
    
12. Google group--Patsy set one up, Charlie needs to confirm his ID. :)
13. Add more links to quick links, test web site without javascript.
14. Many updates to brochures, fliers, and other advertising material--ongoing.
15. Check on mobile version of web site, see swerve.lifechurch.tv (the old version of dotnetnuke had a way to make some modules not show up on mobile devices, not sure if the new one does--any announcements about worship cancellation due to weather should certainly show up!)
    
16. Make it possible to click for directions using the map on the web page, perhaps by replacing it with an embedded google map in an iframe (note that not all browsers support iframes, javascript, etc.)
17. Hide the Weekly Worship Leaders and Support Teams page.
18. Check the Meijer Rewards information.
19. Clean up/archive unused links and pages on the web site.
20. Put a copy of the peanut allergy information that includes the name and a printable copy of the original document in the subscribers area of the web site.
21. Check the web site for new registrations.
22. Move addresses around on the home page--worship site at the Y first and centered.
23. Add the Y to the quick links so it's on every page on our site.
24. Need the resizable black tree on the logo page.