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  Weekly UUpDate | Homepage | Office | Webmaster | Sitemap

HOW TO DO THE WEBSITE, UUpDATE, AND LISTS

- in process (current as of Dec 3, 2008)

So others can know what's what in the church's electronic communications, if the need ever arises suddenly.

The church website can be downloaded onto someone else's computer and even into their own program (it's made with Mac GoLive, but that's not a problem since any decent web-building program can take a site from the web and make it work). Monica, you'll just have to find someone who is both web-savvy and connected to the church - I recommend that there be a team with divided work, such as an UUpDate editor, a category/page reviewer, a site-map manager, and a head web person to know what's what. Different committees and groups need someone who goes to all their meetings to be on Biz in order to be reminded to send weekly or monthly info about that group to the UUpDate editor. And there may need to be at least one listmanager for the listservs.

I could not add to my schedule being the PR committee (with the magnificent Marilyn Milne) who would take on more than just web PR/Info, but I think that is important too.

The purposes of the web page and lists include:

  • to provide current information about UUCE's mission, organization, philosophy, resources, events, activities, and opportunities
  • to facilitate internal communication of goings-on and contacts to members and friends
  • to provide external communication to others who are subscribed (those planning on moving to the area, those using our list as a model for their own church's list) so potential members can observe what we stand for and what our collective personality is
  • to provide certain historical documents often needed for review (growth planning background documents, archives/history, committee reports, Board and some committee Minutes back several years, bylaws, previous budgets...)
  • social opportunities and community-building

The website is e-hosted by UUism.net .  Jim Hermann (in Illinois)  support@uuism.net  is marvelous, so ask him certain questions AFTER you have found people to handle these parts of the project, and after you have created a series of questions that need answering.

UUpDATE PROCESS - current as of Dec 2008

To do the Weekly UUpDate, I begin at the UUpDraft page. Your process will probably be different from mine.

  1. Use the previous UUpDRAFT as a template - work right in it. Change the Dates it will cover, change the date the page was last updated (upper right column) to the date-right-before-the-UUpDate-itself-gets--uploaded.
  2. Build the new days on the Calendar Lite (What's UUp) section. Then copy (not cut) the date-range of "regular items" from the web-calendar, and paste them into the calendar-lite area. Change them into the same size as the Calendar Lite items, de-bold them, de-color them as a group.
  3. The asterisks inform our blind members: "here is a new item." Don't use colors or indention or bold "alone" - There needs to be some other kind of mark to qualify as useful to blind folks who need mouse-free pages and marks to help their computers read things to them.  H1 and H2 and such ARE helpful for "scanning" and skipping quickly around the page.
  4. Some items will be re-used.
  5. I also keep a cheat-sheet of my own at http://www.uueugene.org/CalPrep.html
  6. Rearrange the order of items in the HeadsUUp sections as needed. I usually do it by date and then by size or importance to the most people (Celebration Sunday comes before a committee meeting on the same date).
  7. Sub-sections: Worship (sermon titles, who is speaking, playing or running the show), Service Opportunities (clothing donations, Food for Lane County, etc), Congregational Notes (next cong. meeting, changeds in by-laws, special meetings), Gatherings and Meetings (committees, rehearsals, and social groups), Children's Religious Education, Religious and Ethics News items from far and wide with links, Background/Behind the Scenes (doesn't change much, board members, how to do flowers for the Sanctuary, how coffee on Sundays works, how to arrange childcare, etc ).
    I usually put Sunday Services info (note how the info is different here from the Calendar Lite section).
  8. Remind yourself to ask for items that are unfinished by putting a note at the top of the draft UUpDraft. Use that as the "nudge" to folks when you send out the Draft, although some folks don't read the draft, so they need a personal nudge with a very different subject line and a specific question or two. <sigh> Sometimes I copy and paste what I have into an email message and send it to the people who never take this opportunity to update their info.
  9. If it is a newsletter week, Kim knows to send the newsletter asap in basic rtf format so you can cull out items that are going on for the 10 days of this UUpDate or that will need some preparation, reading, or decisions early on (reading groups or events requiring an RSVP ahead of time).
       Note: If it is a Newsletter week, Kim will also send two versions of the Newsletter (without birthdays, anniversaries, or personal stuff such as "Francine Smith is still in the hospital and would love cards"). Those two versions need to be uploaded and a message sent out announcingn it in a day or two (right before they are to receive it in the mail).
  10. I try to edit many items to be shorter (though I NEVER edit Loescher's stuff. His are exactly what he wants and always on time). I often provide a link to another page (sometimes a page I make on the spot and, if the topic is hot, I also link it from the homepage table of contents) with the longer information there.
  11. For the Religious/Ethics News, set yourself a google-alert for the word Unitarian and perhaps even the word Universalis (without a T or an M). Or other sites' newsletters, such as Tikkun, OPB's Ethics and Religion, Templeton Foundation's newsletter, etc) As these come in every day, toss the uninteresting articles, and add the interesting abstracts and links to the news section. You can also find good quotes in what you read, in books of quotes, in the newspaper for in-between the three sections of the UUpDate...
  12. Verify that the larger headings on the website are coded for all the proper heading levels, and that the info below them is a different heading level. The heading codes are for our blind members whose "screen readers" use the headings to move them more quickly through the page. The coding does not matter for email messages.
  13. Save. Upload the UUpDraft page to the web.
  14. Repeat till you are ready to send out the UUpDraft to BIZ.
  15. On Sunday night or sometime Monday (and sometimes even on Tuesday morning), copy the whole main column (leave it on the webpage too, though) and paste it into the body of an email message. Track down and make sure each item is divided from its neighbor by a black line, clean up problems, move your questions/nudges to the top, state the date and time by which you need corrections back, and mail it to the Biz list. Tell folks they can watch it grow and change at http://www.uueugene.org/UUpDraft.html .
  16. As corrections come in, make changes, save and re-upload the page to the web. Be sure all links to local UU webpages will be hot when they reach the reader - in my case (on a Mac), they need to be full links with the http:// part—or hotlinked by hand, a four-step process for each one.
  17. When the deadline for corrections is past, finish the final changes, read through it for all your "This-needs-attention" marks, for logical structure, do a spell-check, syntax-check, check top-level dates, compare once more with the google-calendar from the office, phone those who have neglected to respond, then copy and paste into a new email message. Set the format to be "rich text". Go through and clean up run-on items, color and size, don't send pictures or graphs, remove drafty items such as the word Draft, the questions, question marks, etc. This is the final version that will be emailed to UUCE-News@uueugene.org from the webmaster@uueugene.org address any time between Wednesday at noon to Thursday morning at 8:30am. DO NOT SEND YET.
  18. Copy the whole UUpDate from the email message you are going to send. Open a 2nd email message window, paste the whole email UUpDate into it. This one will go to the plain-text subscribers (webtv, blind readers, non-html folks, those who think they don't need virus protection, etc) and should be plain text = without html - colors, bolding, italics, centering. Just make sure the spacing is ok between all items. Do not send yet either.
  19. NOW, save the UUpDraft AS the UUpDate. This overwrites the previous UUpDate. Remove the word Draft, verify the proper dates. Upload both the UUpDraft and the UUpDate pages to the web.
  20. Go back to your two email UUpDates, send each one. They will usually arrive back to your mailbox immediately. If they don't arrive in 10 minutes, check the archives. If it doesn't show there in about 4 hours, send to the listservs again that did not receive it and call Martha Osgood.
  21. Start over with the UUpDraft. Strip old stuff out, change dates, line-through those items with questions, begin building the new, use the web calendar, cheat sheet, and Regular Meetings section....
  22. Keep copies of old UUpDates in a folder on your email program folder for future reference (yes there will be requests, believe it or not). I keep them on my computer under UUCE Lists, News. But they also exist in the UUCE-NEWS listserv archives on the web (though not in html color, etc).
  23. Go back to Item 1. <grin>

MAILING LISTS

UUCE does not take responsibility for, and does not necessarily agree with the opinions expressed and information provided by UUCE members on email lists associated with UUCE.

Lists are offered by UUism.net, and there is no charge. Jim Hermann is aUU in Illinois or Indiana and is very helpful. While the lists are free, I make sure he knows how much I appreciate his good work and attention.

1. UUCE UU-NEWS Anouncements
The UU-News announcements list is intended to be an avenue to communicate church activities and events to Members and Friends of UUCE. The list is moderated and seeks to limit posts to fewer than two per week, barring deaths or disasters. Posts are directly related to church life; items we "should" be interested in do not qualify. The UUpDate is not a "newsletter" in that we don't usually report on what has happened. Rather it is more like a Calendar of future happenings and links to more information. We encourage both members AND friends to subscribe to the main/public lists . The Board has stated (2005) that the News list is an "opt-out" list where you are subscribed and have to do something to unsubscribe, rather than the other way around.

There are two News lists, both of which receive the same information though in different formats.
~ UUCE-News - the largest list
~ PlainNews-UUCE - no html (no colors, italics, bold, centering) - for blind subscribers, webtv, or non-savvy subscribers (these are different categories - our blind subscribers are MORE e-savvy than most of us, but they prefer plain text for their screen readers)
There are just under 600 subscribers to these two lists (Dec 2008)

2. UUCE UU-SHARE list
This list is created and run by Monica Frank. The focus is on an extension of the Cares and Concerns and Milestones aspect of candlelighting during the worship services. It’s less a place for arguments or philosophical discussions; rather, it encourages mutual support and sharing from the heart about our own lives. About 120 subscribers as this is written.

3. UUCE CHAT
The UU-Chat list is intended to be a forum for broad discussions among members and friends of UUCE. This may include such topics as: sharing opinions on the impact of growth at UUCE; sharing ideas that might expand our spiritual horizons; possible social justice action that might be taken to support a cause; sharing significant book titles, software, movies, current events, political opinions, ethics, social opportunities, and other resources; and more. Silliness and banter is good. This list has very few rules beyond half-way decent good taste. We do not enforce netiquette, although we encourage it (for example, we prefer not to see chain letters, petitions, virus warnings...) Food fights and name-calling are not acceptable, but strong, respectful discussion is fine. The listmanager determines what is a food fight, and, if the unacceptable behavior continues, what recourse to use--from which there is No Appeal (although chocolate and deep bows and promises to never do <whatever annoyed the listmanager> again have been known to work wonders). Options include moderating the list messages till folks calm down, and/or suspending or expelling a subscriber who refuses to play nice with others.
About 70 subscribers as this is written.

4. UUCE Church Business List - BIZ-UUCE (members only, no friends)
The BIZ-UU list is for members-only to discuss board business with the Board and each other. This is not a public list, so difficult policy and board topics may be brought up here (although courtesy still reigns supreme). Subscribers are committee heads, board members, and interested members. (About 140 subscribers)

Other lists are available too –
>>>> • CUUPs - Covenant of UU Pagans • GreenSanctuary • Interweave • Religious Education families • SGM leadership • Young Adults • SPC • CUUPs • Leadership Council • Planned Giving • Yammer • and such

12. Our UUism admin base: https://host.uuserver.net:19638/webhost/services/virtualhosting/siteadmin/
or use: http://uueugene.org/admin without the "www" part.

Monica, I've sent you (and will continue to send you) the passwords for all these lists. If you need to verify them in hard-copy, just ask - or they are on my desk at home (rear office) in a heavy plastic cover (probably on the book rack on the desk or in the top left-hand drawer).

UUCE Privacy Statements (see also Policies)

UUCE respects the privacy of its members as well as that of visitors and friends. We understand that there are those who feel uncomfortable about having personal information, or information about their personal preferences disclosed, accidentally or otherwise. At no point does the UUCE web site capture or intend to capture personal data.

Not acceptable (at this point) on the UUCE website:
- Commercial advertisements or endorsements
- Endorsements of a political candidate, party, or ballot measure
- Copyrighted content without permission from the owner
- Content that is abusive, insulting, threatening, obscene, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable
- Content that contains inappropriate personal or embarrassing information
- Members or friends shall NOT find their name, email, photo, or phone number on the church website without having given the Webster prior permission. Permissions may be verbal or written, and will be dated and kept in a hard-copy file, available for immediate viewing on request. Permissions continue until revoked (and thus do not need to be renewed annually). Permissions NEVER include street addresses. [I ask the person if I can use their name, e-information, photo, and phone number ANY time it is appropriate, such as whenever they are included in the print newsletter.] The official file of permissions are in the small red spiral notebook on Martha's rear-office desk.
- Directory of members
- Directory of members' businesses

Monica Frank has list and web passwords. Martin Lewis always has the keys to our house (and permission to enter if Gil and I are out of the country or have kicked the bucket). 

 

Working Background

Six important aspects of web sites: appearance, content, safety, navigation, accessibility, & search optimization + useful resources

APPEARANCE
Use images with smiling faces & racial, gender, age diversity. We're about people, not buildings or flowers, and people like to see people who they think appear to be like them - provide a vision of how you want to look. Home page should give good impression for potential newcomers; little or no scrolling for essential information. Include warm picture of the minister and some brief words of welcome. Consider every page like a homepage since searchers can enter the site from any page. All ways to communicate with the church should be clear & easy to locate. The church's name, street address, (and mailing address, if different), city, state, main telephone number and a "Contact" e-mail address should be on every page. Visitors can go at the bottom, so that people reading multiple pages don't have to scroll through them on every page, but they should be there. Consistency of design is important, background, headers, footers, palette, etc., make certain that you have plenty of color, but not too busy to be difficult to concentrate on content. Should view well with Firefox, Explorer, and other browsers - test on many by posting to Websters listserv (see Resources).

CONTENT
The Template Project & Web Check List (see Resources) have good examples of content, plus you can get ideas from the hundreds of other UU web sites. It's nice to have "Welcome", "We invite you to join us", and/or a tagline included in your heading banner, such as "Imagine a religion where ALL are Welcome!" or "Room for different beliefs. Yours." First pages should have directions, what to expect when you arrive, what's happening on Sunday. Content helps with searchability - the more pages, the easier it can be to find if the right keywords/text is on those pages. Remember what is unique about your church - among UUs it's your LOCATION, so put the name of your town and state at the bottom of every page besides clearly on the home page and directions page. What is unique about your church from other local churches? If you want a church that does these things? you may like our church. Remember searchers can enter your site through any page, so create your template and link list with that in mind. Don't use underlines as they may be assumed to be links, which can frustrate users.

SAFETY
Basic tips on safety can be found in several resources (check with the UUA listserv Websters). Primarily they include not labeling names on photos for children, blocking searches on more private pages, putting newsletters in a password protected area if they are uploaded in full or removing personal information, getting copyright permissions, and munging email addresses so that "robots" can't pick them up and send spam.

NAVIGATION
The Template Project has good examples for link placement (top and left of each page is good). If your site has more than 10 pages, consider adding a search function and site map link, too. Do use underlines for all links as users may not access additional pages if they don't see an underline. Organize links top to bottom, left to right. Consider using pithy statements that allow you to click and get to the details. Include a calendar of events that can be edited using a web browser for non-techie administrators or volunteers. May want a members-only part of the site; consider password-protected elements. Include a links page for all different kinds of interests related to UUism and your church.

ACCESSIBILITY
Remember that not all web users have good eye sight, good eye-hand coordination, a high-speed connection, the same Operating System you have, the same browser you have, etc. Particularly remember to use flexible font sizes, color contrast, colorblind checks (see Resources), alt tags on images that describe the image for the blind, don't use flashing objects, and be careful of scrolling text to minimize movement. Also consider accessibility for your staff and volunteers to update the site; a content management system could be used for easy updating, but could be used only on certain sections of the site if the software might affect other types of accessibility. If you have special pages such as a newsletter that may need printing, use both web pages that can be seen in a typical browser without a plugin (e.g. html, php) for online reading and PDF, but avoid using other file types. See "Resources" for more information.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
Without this, the only way people can get to your site is by typing in the domain name or clicking an email link. Certainly, do remember to include your web site address on everything (stationary, newsletters, phone book, signs), but also get your link in search engines, directories, and other sites.

… SUBMIT YOUR LINK TO GOOGLE
(www.google.com/addurl.html), YAHOO (submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request - "submit URL" & dir.yahoo.com in Regional:State-Town), & OPEN DIRECTORY (dmoz.org - Regional:State-Town) & make sure it's on the UUA's site (uua.org/CONG)

… MAKE SURE ALL PAGES HAVE GOOD TITLES (up to 60 characters) - not just in the content, but in the html header - that title appears in searches as the link & it appears when someone bookmarks a page - see it at the top of your browser

… ADD META TAGS in the html header - description maximum of 250 characters) & keywords (include "church" even if yours doesn't use it & "congregation, fellowship, temple, community" & other main words that appear on the page - up to 30 [not to exceed 1055 Characters] - create a different set for each page if you can)

BUT: META TAGS for the description of each page are good. Google is more likely to return your page when someone searches for "liberal religion" if" liberal religion" is in your description META TAG. Google and others also in some situations display what you put in the description META TAG on the search results page. However, the KEYWORD META TAG is no longer used by any major search engine for any purpose. Spammers abused this META TAG so much by stuffing misleading phrases into the keyword META TAG that this tag is ignored by search engines. The Keyword META TAG should not be included in a page header.

… See CONTENT suggestions & think of other content - belief words & keywords people in your area might use to find your congregation and programs who never heard of Unitarians before. Do you serve a broader area than just your town? Make a list somewhere on the site - maybe on the "About Us" page & say "our members are from?" including the county name and any other geographic location that could be used in a search for your area.

… LINKS FROM OTHER SITES - Search with Google and/or other major search engines for sites that list local churches and try to get your site listed there, too - email the web site manager or if it's a directory site, look for a "submit URL" or "add your web site" form. Get links to special pages, such as if you have a Coffee House, create a separate page for it and list it on sites that list coffee houses in your state. Do the same for other programs (theatre, women's, pagan groups, social action programs, etc.) and consider including pages for renters and links to them. Link to UUA, your district and the UU congregations near you.

… USE PERTINENT NAMES INSTEAD OF NUMBERS IN PAGE NAMES & IMAGES - The home page is usually "index" by default (and ends in ".htm", ".html", ".asp" or ".php" depending on the program you use). For other pages, you can name them whatever you want, but choose one that is pertinent, preferably one that is in the title. For instance, if you have a page that lists sermons, you could call it "sermons". If a sermon title is long, you won't be able to use all the words, but you can use important ones and separate the words with dashes, such as "A Look at the Present and Future", you can use "present-future" rather than the date. Use pertinent names for images, such as "minister.jpg" for a photo of the minister. Always use alt tags for images with a short description of what's in the photo - hopefully something pertinent to the information you're trying to convey that would be useful to a searcher, too.

… CREATE A CUSTOMIZED 404 ERROR PAGE - Check your error message by typing in something that is not a page on your site (e.g. www.yourchurch.org/e). If your server supports it, you can use a .htaccess page that is a plain text document with this in the body "ErrorDocument 404 /404form.html" (no quotes) and then create a page named "404form.html" using your template with your special error message. See www.dmuuc.org/e for an example.

… TEST YOUR SITE ON GOOGLE which is currently the #1 search engine. Use "uu" or "unitarian" and "site:" with your domain name next to it with no spaces and without quotes. As an example, you'd put this in the Google search window: uu site:uua.org Since "uu" is in most domain names, you should see most or all of your pages listed. This is how many searchers will see your pages first. Also test with town names and other terms that searchers might use, without using "site:".

AND: Testing in Google and other search sites is great. However, I recommend suggeting the test be for "liberal religion [location]", "liberal spirituality [location]", "liberal Sunday school [location]", or other phrases that don't require that inquirers already know about "Unitarian Universalism". If you test for these general phrases, this also means that the phrases must be heavily used on the web pages themselves. Otherwise, your pages won't show up in Google et al for those words. I think that best practices for UU websites should include focusing on "liberal religion" and other terms that emphaisize what we offer, what we do, and how we are in community. We should be proud of being Unitarian Universalists, but our websites should also be filled with non-UU terms so that passing visitors are snagged.


RESOURCES:

UU Wiki at http://www.uuism.net/uuwiki and click on the link for "Websters" for an encyclopedia of resources for UU web folks
Template Project http://www.firstunitariansociety.org/templateproject
Web banners with photos of diverse groups
http://www.uua.org/uncommondenomination
Open Web Design free templates & tips http://www.openwebdesign.org
UUA Banners http://www.uua.org/ads
UUA Online Services http://www.uua.org/programs/online
UUA Media Manual Appendix 2: A Checklist for Church Websites
http://www.uua.org/info/prmanual
WWW Consortium for standards and checking tools http://www.w3.org
Current Issues in Web Usability (updated annually) http://www.useit.com/alertbox/
See how many links are on major search engines http://www.linkcounter.com
Colorblind site checker http://www.vischeck.com
Viewable with Any Browser is updated with browser accessibility information
http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/

Listservs:
Websters (Building & maintaining web pages) http://lists.uua.org/mailman/listinfo/websters
UU Podcasters http://groups.google.com/group/UUPodcasters