Websters: Difference between revisions

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?
What policy should a congregation's webmaster follow?

Choosing a Web Hosting Service

What is web hosting?
What services are UU churches using, what do they cost, and what quality can I expect from these services?

Design Issues

What basic information resource is available specifically for UU sites? (Word doc)
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.
Web Site Usability A list of questions. How user-friendly is your web site?
- Google Traps: What they are, how to avoid them.
- To Blue or Not to Blue: Pros and Cons of having all text links blue and underlined.

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?

News & Newsletters

Online newsletters and methods of news distribution.

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.

Link placement is important to help getting your sites hits. See: Link Placement Suggestions

Site Syndication

What is site syndication? What's the difference between RSS/ATOM/XML/RDF?
- See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format)
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.
Which UU churches or people have syndicated site feeds?
- See Guide to UU blogs from Philocrites
Check out news aggregators for the software people use to read syndication feeds.
How can we view all these current UU headlines if all we have is a browser?
- See http://uupdates.net/sites.php

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??

@@ Line 23: / Line 23: @@
 *What [[basic information]] resource is available specifically for UU sites? ([http://www.baltwashuus.org/SPREAD-THE-FLAME.doc Word doc])
 *Where can I find [[Good Web Site Examples|good examples of UU church web sites]]?
-*How can I avoid [http://tonymorgan.typepad.com/tony_morgan_one_of_the_si/2005/05/10_easy_ways_to.html common mistakes]
+*How can I avoid [http://tonymorganlive.com/2005/05/14/10-easy-ways-to-keep-me-from-visiting-your-church-because-i-visited-your-website/ common mistakes]
 *What should be included as part of my [http://www.webstyleguide.com/ Web Style Guide]
 *How can I make my site accessible to users with disabilities?