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Five Quick Tips

1. Keep it simple. Use lights and sound bytes sparingly, or not at all.
2. Be consistent in your page designs. Visitors prefer the familiar.
3. Keep it fresh. Update your site at least every month.
4. Test everything. Click every link, and test it on more than 1 browser.
5. Keep links alive. Check your links every month to make sure they are still active.

Below are the web tips that have been shared with churches in the Presbytery of Lake Michigan:

File Naming

Even though you can use spaces and capitals in your filenames on your PC doesn't mean it will always work on the web. Filenames that do not contain spaces and capital letters have a better chance of working regardless of the web server being used and on that off-brand web browser your visitor is may be using.

Give ‘em a goodie!

This time our “web tip” really isn’t for your web site but an idea to improve your email communications.

Emailing periodic messages to your group is a great way to communicate! But, if your messages are not interesting, chances are people won’t read or remember them. I want to encourage you to add “a goodie” to your mass email messages. “A goodie” is something that people want to keep or anticipate receiving. Get in the habit of starting or finishing your email messages with a short scripture, quote, idea or prayer.  Here’s one I plan to use in my next mass email. 

Recently I learned of a focusing technique called the “breath prayer”. Silently pray the first line on your inhale, pray the second line on your exhale; repeat 3-5 times.

IN:       Be still and know…
OUT:   …that I am God.

Once, I have introduced this concept I can end my future email messages with other breath prayers. For example, 

IN:       God, you are gracious…
OUT:   …in all my seasons. 

IN:       This is the day the Lord has made…
OUT:   …I rejoice and am glad in it.

Editing Digital Photos

What do you want to do with the picture?

According to www.webopedia.com, the term “resolution” refers to the sharpness and clarity of an image. The term is most often used to describe monitors, printers, and bit-mapped graphic images. In the case of printers, the resolution indicates the number of dots per inch. For example, a 300-dpi (dots per inch) printer is one that is capable of printing 300 distinct dots in a line 1 inch long. This means it can print 90,000 dots per square inch.

For monitors, the screen resolution signifies the number of dots (pixels) on the entire screen. For example, a 640-by-480 pixel screen is capable of displaying 640 distinct dots on each of 480 lines, or about 300,000 pixels. This translates into different dpi measurements depending on the size of the screen. For example, a 15-inch VGA monitor (640x480) displays about 50 dots per inch.

dpi (dots per inch), more dots more detail, bigger file

300 dpi - photo paper on photo printers
150 dpi – Traditional paper on home printers
72 dpi – for viewing on computer screens

For more information about this topic, click here to see the handout from my workshop!

Broken Hyperlinks

Ever go to a web site and click on a link and get that annoying message " 404-page not found"? Make sure your users don't experience this at your church web site. If you are using FrontPage it is easy to check for broken hyperlinks. Follow these instructions:

1. Open your web in Frontpage.
2. Under the Tools options, click on "Recalculate Hyperlinks"
3. Select "Yes" to start the calculation
4. When your mouse turns back to an arrow (this is only indication telling you it is done....), go under the View option and select "Reports", then select "Problems" then "Broken hyperlinks"
5. A list of broken or unknown hyperlinks will be displayed.
    

1. Something in your web has moved or been deleted. These are the easiest to fix. Click on the page to fix the hyperlink. You can either edit the page or use the window to locate the missing files with in the web.
    

2. External site is unknown, if you click on the page, you should be prompted by Frontpage to check these external sites. For example, you have a link on a page to a file at www.pcusa.org. Frontpage will make sure that page is still in the same place at www.pcusa.org. If pcusa has moved or deleted the page the link will show as broken and you have two choices. 1) remove the link from your page 2) use the search at www.pcusa.org and try to find where they have put it.
    

3. The last type of broken link you may see is from Frontpage. Frontpage can  be quirky telling you one of its files is missing (things that have an underscore before the directory name _themes, _private, etc) - Solution: ignore these errors.

Re-calculate every month or two or whenever you make a lot of changes to your web site. Keeping your site up to date will give your users more confidence that your web site is up to date and has the information they need.

Newsletters

Some reasons to put your church/organization newsletter online:

1. Members can easily look up information.
2. You can eliminate some postage costs for those who want to read the newsletter online only.
3. Visitors can find out more about you.

Email Attachments

This month our web tip actually deals with email. I am positive each of you has had this problem or know someone who has had a problem opening an email attachment. This can be very frustrating! But knowing how email works can make viewing attachments more successful in the future. 

First, a word about safety - some email programs give warnings to not open attachments. Heed these warnings! Only open attachments from people you know or attachments you are expecting to receive (Aunt Betty is having her neighbor email you a picture of cousin Ed's baby)....

Some people feel attachments are just too bothersome and refuse to accept or view them. That is a choice but they are really limiting the effectiveness of their email potential by doing so.

The basics -
Email makes use of a "language" called MIME. My email program talks MIME and so does yours. If you are seeing MIME errors it is because something got messed up with the transmission of data between your computer and the recipient's computer across the Internet. There has been a great  improvement in email in the past 3+ years so we do not see as many MIME errors as we once did. Now what we experience is problems opening attached files.

An attachment is a separate file that gets send with an email message from one computer to another. It is not in a MIME format so our email program my not understand what the attachment is. This explains why you may not be able to view the attachment in your email application.

Solution #1
When this happens, try saving the attached file to your computer (I usually choose my desktop so I can find the file); minimize or close your email program and try to open the file as you would any other file on your computer (double-click on it). If your computer understands the format of the attached file, the appropriate program will start up and you can view the file.

Solutions #2
If this fails, then take a best guess as to what type of program created the file. I usually open my word processor and try to 'import' the file. Sometimes 'inserting' the file will work if it is a graphic or picture that I am not familiar with. If you are unfamiliar with Import or Insert in your program, look under Help.

Solution #3
Ask the person to resend the file in another format. If it is text, ask them to cut and paste the information into the body of the email message. If they are unfamiliar with another format, ask them to convert the file to a PDF format (this can be done free at http://createpdf.adobe.com/?v=AHP). A PDF file is one that can be viewed (but not edited) by the recipient using the FREE Adobe Reader
(http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html).

Please note, even if you get to step 3, you may have to repeat 1 and/or 2 to view the PDF file. Persistence is the key! You will be amazed how routine this will become if you just give it some time and figure out what is happening.

Favicon

This month we will talk about that little image that appears next to some web addresses in the browser. If you are not sure what I am talking about visit www.pcusua.org. Notice where you typed in the URL (web address) a little Presbyterian Cross appears. This image is know as a favicon (favorite icon) and it is simple to put at your web site. A favicon is just an image in your top level web directory (the same one where your home page is). The image can be either a jpg or a gif file but it must be called favicon.ico - this is a bit confusing for a person to understand but your computer will get it!

Save the Presbyterian Cross for your web by saving a copy of favicon.ico in your web!

2007 UPDATE: You may need to put the following line of code in the header section of your html file (between the <head> and </head>)

<LINK REL="SHORTCUT ICON" HREF="favicon.ico">

Check your web site

Every six months check your web site to make sure it looks good and has accurate information (make sure your hyperlinks work!). Also recruit two people to help. One who is familiar with your web site and one who is not. Ask these people to review the web site and ask for suggestions to improve the site.

Publicizing your web site and Basic HTML

Where's URL? What's URL? Why URL?

URL (pronounced Earl or by the letters U-R-L) is the Universal (or Uniform) Resource Locator. The URL provides information through the Internet so your browser can display a web site. In other words, the www. portion of your web address!

Avoid the #1 Mistake - secret web sites! Never assume people will find your web site. Make sure you put your URL on EVERY piece of printed or electronic material! This includes letterhead, business cards, press releases, bulletins, newsletters, yearend reports, visitor information, new member information, financial statements, newspaper advertisements, anywhere and everywhere you can think of. If your pastor or office has email make sure you use your email program to automatically add the web address to the end of the message (look under help for signature).

Are you aware the PCUSA web site gives an individual the option to view ONLY CHURCHES WHO HAVE WEB SITES? Check out www.pcusa.org/search/churches and you will see under each search option the following

“Check here to display only those churches that maintain congregational Web sites.”

 That means if your congregation does not have a web site you don’t even show up as an option for the person doing the search. Now, you (or your church) might argue about how many people look for a home church on the Internet. My response is that more and more people are looking for all kinds of information on the Internet before trying or buying something. Our denomination obviously agrees.

 If for no other reason, get a web site up with your name, address and contact information. This is simple to do (see the end of this message for the html code). You can later expand the site into something more but if you do not have the resources to maintain the site do not dream too large. A willing volunteer always sounds good but rarely have I found it to succeed for a period of time.

 To register a domain name (or URL) go to www.networksolutions.com . You can host your web site with any Internet Service Provider, you do not have to use Network Solutions, although their prices are competitive.

 If you change your URL or your email address, make sure you go through all your printed and electronic material to make sure it shows the correct information. To change your information at PCUSA, use this online form: www.pcusa.org/search/churches/cong_req.jsp

To update your information at the Presbytery web site, www.lakemichiganpresbytery.org, just send an email with the information to office@lakemichiganpresbytery.org.

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HTML code to display a page with Church contact information:

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<b>Church Name</b> <br>
Address <br>
Town State Zip <br>
<br>
Phone number <br>
</body> 

That’s it! HTML is text – no funny characters (even though they look funny when you look at it). You can type in the code above using a text editor, save the file with the .htm extension and display it in your browser. An html file begins with the <html> tag and ends with the </html> tag. There are two parts to an html file, the head and body, they are denoted by the begin and end head tags (<head>, </head>) and the begin and end body tags (<body>, </body>). The only other formatting items used in this example are the begin and end bold tag (<b>,</b>) around the Church name and the line break tag <br> (this is the same as the Enter key in a word processing document). For more information about HTML visit a bookstore or go to htmlgoodies.earthweb.com/primers/basics.html

Intro to images

One reason the Internet is so successful is because it is visual. Graphic images help to create an appealing site. This month we will talk a bit about web images. There are predominantly two types of image formats used on web pages, GIF and JPG.

GIF is pronounced jiff or giff (hard g) stands for Graphics Interchange Format.  GIF files are limited to 256 colors. They also have the ability to have transparent regions within the image so the background of a web page can show through.  GIF files do a great job with line drawings, corporate logos and illustrations but not very good for photographs.

JPEG/JPG is short for Joint Photographic Experts Group (named after the original committee that defined this image compression format); it is pronounced jay-peg. The JPG technique compresses color and grayscale images. JPG images support 16 million colors. However, the user typically has to compromise on either the quality of the image or the size of the file.

When picking an image to use on a web site, be aware of the time it takes an Internet browser to load the image. Many people still use dial-up connections to view web pages. The larger the image, the more time required to display the image. It is best to increase or decrease the size of an image in an image editor and not in the web application. If the image is used in different sizes on your web site, have a separate file for each sized image.

A full-page image for a typical web page is 800x600 pixels. However, an 800x600 image will take a long time to load, so you may want to keep images to 400x300 or less pixels. The more images on a page, the more time required to load the page. If you have more than 3 or 4 JPG files on a page, you will want to make the images even smaller (e.g. 150 or 200 pixels in width). Going smaller than 150 for JPG files does not allow the user to view the photograph very well. GIF files can have a striking effect even at 20 pixel widths depending on the image being displayed. Some image editors give you an indication of how long an image will take to load. I generally keep my image files sizes to less than 50kb (you can check this after you save your image by looking at the details of the file in your folder view).

I will discuss image editing and page layout at another time. Feel free to email me your questions. This subject can be very confusing!

Sermons

The topic of Sermons often arises when discussing church web sites. Should sermons be available at the site? If a pastor is willing to share sermon text or notes with the public, the web is a quick and efficient way to do so. The problem is who will be responsible for publishing this information to the web. Ideally, the person who types up the sermon or notes would be the one but this is not always convenient. If the sermon notes are not consistently placed at the web site then it becomes a source of frustration for some members and for staff.

If your church publishes the title to the sermon in the newspaper then it should also be at your web site. The person notifying the newspaper is the likely choice for updating the site.

It is a big commitment for church staff and/or volunteers to place weekly information at the church web site. A leadership decision needs to be made if weekly sermon information is going to be distributed via the web.

Decisions like this seem simple but in reality it is additional work for someone and the church leadership needs to understand this when making these decisions.

Maps

Another option would be to create a hyperlink mapping web site. Here are step by step instructions for creating a hyperlink to your church location.

1. Go to www.mapquest.com

2. Enter in your church address, town and state, then click on ‘get map’

3. Copy the URL (web address) – it will be something unreadable (for example http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?country=US&countryid=250&addtohistory=&address= 4150+Kalamazoo+SE&city=Grand+Rapids&state=MI&zipcode=&submit=Get+Map)
    

   1. If you are using a PC, move your mouse to the Address field in your browser

   2. Select the URL

   3. Right click your mouse, and select copy
       

4. Edit your web page, create a hyperlink using the church address or some text that indicates ‘View Map”, paste the URL address into the hyperlink.

5. Remember your main page is usually usually index.htm or default.html.

Welcome Page!

Make your main page useful!

Many people who come to your site do not want to sit through some fancy introduction, they come looking for information.

Go to your church web page now and make sure your contact information is easy to find. If you can’t remember the www. name, you can go through the presbytery web site at www.lakemichiganpresbytery.org  then click on Church Directory on the left.

Can a web visitor find your address, phone and email? If it is not on your main page it should be no further than one click.

Minimize the number of clicks it takes to get to information. People give up after a few clicks.

Can’t figure which file in your web is the main page? It depends on your web server but it is usually index.htm or default.html

Always have a link to a map from your main page.

You can use a simple drawing program to create a map. Many word processors have the ability to make simple drawings. Save the image as a .gif file for viewing on the web.

Key-Web Solutions
Grand Rapids MI 49508
office@key-web.net
www.key-web.net