Website creationFor the past several months, we have looked at Catholic parishes' websites. For the next three issues we will take a different approach and ask:How do you make a website? What's involved? What makes a good site good? How can a website be a useful pastoral tool for our parish? Website creation grows from identifying the need for such a medium of communication: What is the purpose of this site? Who is the audience? What information do you want to convey? Once you have addressed these questions you need to decide on a particular approach: How will the site be organized? What images will be included? Who is to write the text? Finally, you will need to consider the technical approach: What will the site look like at first glance? How many "pages" will there be? Will there be frames, Java script, or any other bells and whistles? Will there be MIDI music? Look at the effort as if you were creating a business brochure. It has a look, content, and purpose - a target audience. The success of your website will be decided by those who use it. Let's look at these issues from the perspective of creating a website for your parish. You need to form a small but informed committee. You will need input from the pastor, the pastoral staff, the parish secretary and the school staff. You should enlist the help of the person in your parish with the most computer-technical expertise. First, address the goals for the site: Who will see it? Is it just for parishioners (pastoral) or is it also for visitors (evangelical)? A better site involves both folks here. Some parts of the site will essentially stay the same: general information on the parish, specific information about each department, etc. Some parts will change: the "Pastor's Column," the parish bulletin, the latest news, etc. You might ask the various department heads to write a short summary - on disk - of what they would like included in their area. That would be your beginning. Putting together a site is a discernment process. After you know what you would like to do, and have some idea of how to do it, and have all your input from the necessary sources, you are ready to move onto the creation process. In the next installment we will discuss what separates the good from the not-so-good sites. We'll also talk about layout and webpage creation programs. ML Scott M. Fitzgerald is the Director of Music at St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Owosso, Mich. His homepage on the WWW is http://www.shianet.org/~orgel. |