Websters

UU Websters

The Websters mailing list is designed to allow webmasters to ask and answer questions about building and maintaining websites for their congregation and/or district.

UUA Resources

• Where can I join the Websters mailing list?
• Which are the largest congregations in the UUA?

Other UU-related Resources

• What other useful web sites or pages have information that might be useful in designing, building, and maintaining a UU-related web site?

Policy Issues

• What online privacy issues should I pay attention to?

Design Issues

• What basic information should be included on our website?
• Where can I find good examples of UU church web sites?
• How can I avoid common mistakes
• What should be included as part of my Web Style Guide
• How can I make my site accessible to users with disabilities?
  • Best practice: Use the W3 HTML Validator for conformance to W3 standards.
    • Alternate validators include CSE HTML Validator and NetMechanic
  • Best practice: Use Tools to test Accessibility.
  • Give users the power to adjust the font size on your site.
• Suggestions for Menu-Navigation bars
• Icon Support to support icons specific to your site in different browsers.

Content Management

• What Content Management System (CMS) can help manage a web site?
• Graphics-related questions
  • How can I add a UUA online banner to my website?
  • How can I add a Beacon Press banner to my website?
  • Where can I get chalice images for our site?
• What Calendar Software can help manage events information?
• What are my options for Putting sermons online?
• What Image Editing Software can I use to prepare images for the site?

Newsletters

• Online newsletters

Site Management

• How can I add a Search feature to our site?
• How can I track website visitors?
• What are effective anti-spam strategies?
• Identify possible DNS problems by running the diagnostic tool at http://www.dnsreport.com

Search Engine Optimization

• Since Google will be one of your major sources of traffic, you'll want to ensure that your site is listed in Google and follows the Google webmaster guidelines.

Site Syndication

• What is site syndication?
• Why would I want to syndicate my site?
  • One classic example would be to provide a "feed" of information on your Sunday services. That way, as soon as you put new information up on your web site, anyone who watched the feed would get the up-to-date information.
• What's the difference between RSS/ATOM/XML/RDF?
• Which UU churches have syndicated site feeds?
• What are some popular news aggregators people use to read syndication feeds?

Certificates for secure web sites

• Where can I get a certificate to secure my web site traffic with SSL?
  • You can make your own
  • CAcert.org is an interesting free option, though your users will still need to install the root cert in their browser since they aren't preinstalled in the major browsers yet

Parking Lot Questions

aka wiki-pages waiting for someone to create.

• What web security issues should I pay attention to?
• How do I allow private and secure connections to my web site (SSL/TLS) and make my own certificate?
• How do I create an intranet and/or "private area" which restricts access to just our members?
• What are effective stewardship practices for our website?
• What are the pros/cons of joining affiliate programs like Amazon.com?
• Copyright Policy : Who owns the sermons : the minister or the congregation?
• My Finance Committee wants to use PayPal : what should I tell them?
  • See the discussion in UU-Money.
• How can I get listservs (as in multiple) up and running ? What are my options??