WPtouch Theme {view site}
Great plugin that formats your site with a mobile theme for the Apple iPhone / iPod touch, Google Android and other touch-based smartphones.

Custom Login Page {view site}
Allows for the admin login page to be customized to reflect the overall branding of the site. This speaks loudly when logging into the admin panel.

Google Analyticator {view site}
Adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google’s Analytics, a powerful tool that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features let you see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way.

WP-Cumulus {view site}
Allows you to display your site’s tags, categories or both using a Flash movie that rotates them in 3D. It works just like a regular tags cloud, but is more visually exciting for you visitor’s.

Sociable {view site}
Great way to automatically add links at the footer of your posts, pages and RSS feed that allows visitors to share on your favorite social networking sites.

When I saw these statistics it made me reflect on a church community web site that is going to launch this week. It left me wondering with the connectivity in social networking how are, and can church web sites reflect their true flavor. A flavor that is dynamic, true, raw, and real. A web site that has a balance of information for regular activities and the raw life it’s community is wrestling with that engages. Ultimately “raw life” plays out in the physical relationships with others.

• Do you agree or disagree that the church should engage more in social media?
• What would balance if information and “raw life” look like in a church web site?

In the last three months I have watched about 5 online church services, got glimpses of 3 live church leadership/communication conferences. One was all prerecorded by various leaders around the globe that had nine minutes to share what was on their hearts. It was powerful to see the variety of church leaders and the impact they are making in their respective communities.

I have appreciated the church leaders who have stepped outside their tech comfort zones to communicate in new ways. In addition to these conferences I would follow comments posted about the conference on Twitter. Even though I was unable to be present and missed some of the speakers, I was able to gather various quotes that stuck out to people as they tweeted during the conference. Gone is the day where you only have the option to be present o learn. You can learn and discern through comments and blogs by others. I am not saying that it is not worth while to attend conferences as that is the only way to truely connect with fellow believers, church communication or church leadership folks.

It is my hope and desire that church’s continue to make steps to reach out to people by utilizing technology.

Shortly after this change we started printing custom notes pages for each night and we discovered that again we were throwing away paper that weren’t even touched. Currently we are printing notes pages that are used for the whole series with much less waste.

All opendoor communications are conveyed through

• upfront time at the gatherings
• detailed info online with documents available for download
• weekly e-mails

For the first time visitors, we have designed a simple card that just gets printed as often as we need to restock.

By reducing print we have also been able to focus information about last minute changes.

Recently moved the members from the opendoor facebook group to the opendoor facebook pages. We have already seen a much higher interaction with members commenting and “liking” the updates. The next project is to test out Twitter for opendoor.

I came across sentenc.es on a couple retweets on Twitter.

Simply put, It is a challenge to avoid extra words that we often put in messages and streamline it.

Between a text message and a status update on facebook or Twitter.

Think about the time saved by condensing it all down to four sentences just like this post.

Most people would agree that web sites can be a powerful tool to connect and convey important information. I have heard these phrase way too much. “We need to put something on our website ‘to get it out there’ or ‘so people can see our info’.” This bugs me so much, because it a blurb is posted somewhere on the web (including my small little blog) doesn’t mean that it is going to be seen by the world and everyone in the targeted audience of the web site.

There needs to be multiple levels of getting info out. Just posting it once on a website gets the job done. The content also needs to be useful for people. By living in this world we are surrounded by stimuli and tons of it. When we seek out information, it needs to be functional and useful. Visitors to the site need to be stimulated in thought or actions. Thought provoking content encourages the visitor to engage and either express opinions in favor or against. Open the dialog. Action content provides opportunities to get involved, contact info, the opportunity to make a decision right then and there.

Isn’t Easter an important enough of a day to celebrate and put some planning and forethought into? Especially with mail blast capabilities (like MailChimp) messages can be scheduled in advance for a timed release. That way no one has to be bothered with sending a last minute e-mail to the church’s e-mail system 12 hours before the sunrise service even begins because there is concern that people have forgotten when it is. Better yet, send multiple campiagns marketing the upcoming Easter Sunrise Gathering at 6AM including important information like directions, who to contact before the event with questions, a little blurb about what someone can expect the experience to be like.

May next year be planned a little more in advance to give people to invite friends, neighbors to these amazing Easter Sunrise services to experience Christ rising from the dead in a new way.

Hilarious spin on Twitter. Is there programs in church that could be revised?