If Jesus Had A Website

eBible is one of those things I've been following for a while now, but didn't get a chance to play with until recently. If you haven't heard of it yet, it's the latest electronic incarnation of the Bible, this time as a web2.0 application. Honestly, when I first heard of it, I wasn't all that excited, but now I'm beginning to see why it would be very useful.

Because eBible is available in beta by invitation only for right now, I had a hard time getting my first invitation, but finally got to the head of their waiting list on the site and got a direct invitation. The timing of my invitation couldn't have been better either, because I was invited to preach at my church July 9th while our pastor is out of town. So earlier this week, I was doing some searches for verses to compliment my sermon, and I decided to use eBible to do so.

Two features stuck out to me right away:

• Tagging verses allowed me to place labels on each verse regarding to the topic of the verse as well as why I was tagging it. For a pastor, this could be very useful because you could tag verses by sermon (by date, title, or some other label) to better keep track of when you last used that verse and why.
• Searching eBible was also much easier because it not only searches the actual text, but all commentaries you have as well. Not only that, but it searches for all forms of a word and not just a straight text search (for example, a search for "anxiety" will search for "anxious" and "anxiousness" among other variations). This makes searching for verses related to a topic much easier.

There are also several versions of the Bible available right now, so you can have your King James or your NASB, among others. You can also purchase commentaries, dictionaries and encyclopedias to search through as well, so the information may never end.

For now, eBible is a great tool to look into if you can get an invitation. While it may not have too many church website applications at this time, if you get in and look at the forums, you'll see there are a lot of add-ons and features that will be coming that could be great resources for any church website (Verse of the Day, RSS Feeds, Reading Checklists, etc.), so eBible is definately a resource to keep an eye one.

Oh, and if anyone would like an invitation to check out eBible, I've got one to spare, so please leave a note below with your e-mail address (in the name at thatplace dot com format so you don't get spammed) and I can get that out to you. All I ask is that you pass on at least one of your invitations (you get 3) to anyone else who leaves a comment below. Then we can share the wealth of this great new resource.

I wanted to quickly pass along a little details about podcasting sermons that was posted by Clif Guy of The Appian Way. He's got some great links to some of his older posts, as well as links to resources for putting together your own pod cast. He also makes the interesing observation regarding the reach of their podcasting efforts:

As to whether it is useful, we are excited that we have many people across the country and around the world downloading our sermon podcast. In fact, our weekly podcast downloads exceed our average worship attendance. A statistic like that will really make you take notice.

It's amazing how many people our sites can influence thanks to the gift of the internet. So even if you don't have a very computer-savvy congregation, podcasting can help spread the Word of the Lord much further than you could have imagined.

Sometimes things get in the way of our best plans and intentions. Sometimes they are blessing events like a wedding or the birth of a child, and sometimes they are trial events like an injury or accident. Regardless of the type of event, they are times when we are pulled away from our normal responsibilities.

I'm personally dealing with one of these situations right now. Last week, our pastor resigned at my home church, and as a board member and newly appointed pulpit search committee chairman, I've suddenly got a lot more responsibilities shoved upon me. Naturally, these responsibilities are going to be taking up more of my time, and thus cutting into the time I have to do my web work.

Now's when I wish I had been able to get someone to be more responsible for our site's content, and maybe it will become the time to press someone into service.

But in general, I'm not sure how to handle the situation exactly. I don't want to completely put the site on the back-burner, but I really won't have much time to deal with it.

Has anyone else dealt with this kind of situation (of changing priorities pulling you away from working on your church website, that is)? How did you deal with it?

This week's poll results are in, and over half of the churches surveyed are using some kind of content management system (CMS). This is a good thing to see because it gives many churches a professional platform to build from, and it makes managing the site a lot easier than editing the files directly. Since there are too many different CMS platforms to have in a single poll, I'd appreciate it if you could drop me a line in the comments below and let me know what you use.

I had a few responses that directly said no, and I'd be curious to hear exactly what they use instead. Lastly, it looks like I may have had a few jokers claim not to know what a CMS was. If you honestly are not familiar with the CMS, then you should check out my thoughts on content management systems.

This weeks poll is a survey to find out how experienced of web developers my readers are. You can vote at the main site (after the jump if you're reading the RSS feed). I'll have the results for you again next week.

In today's internet, the web is becoming just as much about interacting with other people as it is for gathering information. Because of this, sites like MySpace have enjoyed massive growth. The user-created-content has become the current model for the internet, and that trend looks to continue for some time.

With that said, many internet surfers are finding less and less interest in 'static' sites, who's content changes infrequently. Combine that with the fact that most churches do not have regularly breaking major news, we find that many church websites become relatively static. Most visitors to a site like that would find it boring.

With that said, there are features you can include on your website that can help to make it a more interactive place to visit. Here are three features that are realatively easy to implement that can give your visitors the chance to interact with each other online:

1. Polls – How else can you have your voice heard with just one or two clicks? Polls are often built into many CMS packages, but can also be implemented with a variety of free tools or services. Or if you're of the "I could code that myself" persuasion like I am, then they're pretty easy to put together. I was able to put together the stuff for my poll in just one evening after work.
2. Comments – Give your visitors to comment on the latest sermon posting, podcast or any other story that you have on your site. Yes, this does allow the chance that some people may come and be argumentative on your site, but if properly moderated and managed, comments can be a great conversation starter. Try not to make visitors register to post comments because you don't want to prevent a conversation from starting (a lesson I learned the hard way). Like polls, these are often built into CMS packages, but there aren't as many other alternatives, like HaloScan, a popular one.
3. Forums – Like comments, these can be great conversation starters, but forums give visitors a chance to pose their own questions and scenarios. They can also be a great place for prayer requests and minor announcements. Because most forum setups do require one to register, they are easier to moderate and manage. Again, there are a lot of free packages and services that can help you to implement this.

Now that you've got the tools, next time we will talk about the challenges involved in managing user-created-content on your site. Until then, have fun playing with your new tools!

I came across a new resource for stock photos today called EveryStockPhoto.com. Basically, it is a search engine for all Creative Commons licensed images as a resource for designers, developers and other media publishers. They've already got over 270,000 photos indexed, making it a great place to start looking if you need professional looking photos for your website. Most images only require that you attribute the photo to the person who took or created it, making them easy to include in your work.

Well, the results of our first poll are in, and it looks like many of you are flying solo in your church web site efforts. While I'd love to see more churches look to spread their web work amongst several individuals, it's also the reality that most churches can only find or only afford one individual to take care of the web site.

This week's question asks if your church makes use of a Content Management System (CMS) for your web site. All you feed readers can vote after making the jump.

I'll check back in with those results on Monday, but look for more news in the meantime!

Just a quick update here to let you know that I've made a few changes to the way things function around here. You probably won't notice many of the changes, but I wanted to make all my readers aware of them.

1. Polls and Comments no longer depend on logins – I wanted to open things up so that everyone who came by could quickly join in the conversation. Now for comments, you'll be required to enter a name to display and an e-mail (which will only be used for gravitar reference). As always, IJHAW is committed to your privacy, and you can rest assured that your e-mail address will not be sold to any other source.
2. As a result, user accounts are no longer needed – I have not deleted them yet, but I plan to in the next few days. The only user accounts that will remain will be those of our authors (a.k.a. Wade and myself). Besides, it will keep you from needing to remember another username and password!

So, nothing too major, but just some functionality changes. I just realized that since there were no major benefits to registering here besides being able to comment and vote on the polls that I would remove that step. Just another step in the evolution of the site, and since I started from scratch in the first place, that will probably continue to happen.

I look forward to hearing more from all of you!

This is the fifth in a series of key concepts for your site that should help to make it a better place for all those involved.

Often times when we design websites, we are looking to make the most appealing look that we can. Sometimes, that involves a lot of images, content (written, audio and video) and/or various scripts. When pieced together, they can make a wholesome and vibrant home for your church on the web.

However, sometimes we web designers can forget to evaluate the efficiency of our sites. Everything we put on our sites takes up space and needs to be downloaded by visitors. While many web designers have the luxury of broadband access, statistics show that more than half the time the visitors to our site will still be using some form of dial-up access (and yes, the statistics are a few years old, but you'll still have a large percentage of visitors using dial-up).

Because of this truth, we must make sure we make our pages are optimized for all visitors. While one visitor may be using broadband and have to wait three seconds for a page to load, that same page may take more than 15 seconds to load via dial-up. For many people in today's demanding world, that's long enough for them to move on to the next option. Don't let them pass you up!

Here's a few tips to keep you site loading as fast as possible:

• Use text links wherever possible instead of images.
• Save all your images in a "web quality" format instead of the highest quality available. This will help keep the size of your images small.
• Check your web page performance using a free tool like Silktide's Sitescore or Dr. Watson.
• Keep the size of your included files (CSS and JavaScript in particular) as small as possible as well, as they can otherwise be easy to overlook.

Always remember that your church website is a reflection of your church. If your site visitors enjoy their experience on your site and it performs well, that is a positive reflection on your church and leaves a good impression with the visitorm Do your best to make the visitors experience as trouble-free as possible!

This is the fourth in a series of key concepts for your site that should help to make it a better place for all those involved.

There are few things more frustrating than not being able to find the information you need, whether it's sports scores or meeting times. On a website, sometimes its frustrating because you have to click a lot of links before you get to where you want, while other times you can't find what you need because it's been combined with too much other information on a single page. Somewhere there is a middle ground where your website is most effective.

However, finding that middle ground is not an easy process. It takes careful consideration and an understanding of your site's visitors. Some things think about are:

• Layout or Template – Is your site presented in an organized and easily readable manner? (If you need some new ideas for your site's look, you can try here and here.)
• Information Structure – Make sure that the information that is most generally needed is the fewest clicks away. On your church website, that should mean that items like your address, phone number, denomination, service times, and upcoming schedule events should all be priorities on your main page. Don't forget a short blurb about the kind of place your church is along with an invitation, which is a great tone setter for your site.
• Clear Link Labels – Make sure that the links on your site are clearly labeled. People are less likely to click on a link if they don't know where it will take them. So even if your youth group has a catchy name, try making the link just "Youth Group" so visitors know what it is. And don't try to use images as symbolic links (like a picture of children for "Children's Ministries"), because it may not even be evident that the image is a link.
• Try An HTML Site Map – No matter how you organize your link structures, there's a good chance that a number of people will be looking for things in places other than where you put them. If you have a site map page with all your key links together, then it's one more way for a visitor to easily find what they need.

A well-organized website makes a visitors experience more enjoyable, so its well worth the extra effort. Take the time to get your site in order, and you will find it well worth your while.