Virtual Bulletin Board for LUWS

[dmaynes]

I don't know if this is a good idea or not, so I thought I would see what others might think.

Our ward, like every other ward in the church, receives lots of flyers to sort through and post on the ward bulletin board. Would it be possible to receive those flyers electronically and have them queued up for review on the LUWS by the website administrator? The administrator could then accept or reject the flyers that should be posted to a "virtual bulletin board" on the LUWS.

I wouldn't want these flyers cluttering up the News and Information Page on the LUWS, but it would be handy if they showed up on another page. Let's call it the Bulletin Board for want of a better name.

If the flyers were distributed with automatic expiration dates, the website administrator wouldn't have to remember to "tear them down."

I know that not everyone is connected and has access to the LUWS, but if the flyers were distributed electronically, the ward could actually print hard copies of the flyers that needed to be posted on the physical bulletin board. This could save the church some expense in the printing and distribution of so many flyers.

Thanks,
Dennis

[calebpusey]

I think it's a great idea! If you haven't visited it, check this site out and post the suggestion.

[dmaynes]

I think it's a great idea! If you haven't visited it, check this site out and post the suggestion.

Thanks for the encouragement. I didn't want to post it to the Wiki until a few others had chimed in. (And, I haven't posted suggestions to the Wiki before.)

I first started thinking about this idea when I started copying down some of the information manually from the flyers outside our bishop's office. It seemed so wasteful and error prone. And, we can be more effective in getting the information to our ward members if it's in electronic form than in hard-copy format, because we can put the information more easily into newsletters, bulletins, and emails.

It seems the flyers could be stored as HTML pages on a church server. The page should have a downloadable PDF version of the page suitable for high quality printing. You would only need one copy of each flyer with all the wards linking to that page. This could really help with updates and other issues.

Our physical bulletin board is often out dated. And, people don't even look at it. But, there is a need for some hard copy on the ward bulletin board. I don't know, but I assume that our bishop throws away a lot of flyers each week. We could avoid that waste because only the flyers that will be posted will be printed.

Thanks,
Dennis

[russellhltn]

I'm not sure as I understand the difference in concept from the "News and Information" section. As for a suggestion to LUWS 2, perhaps N&I could be dressed up a bit to allow a flyer to directly appear on the page rather then having to download a PDF to view it and generally make the interface less clunky. Perhaps even make it part of the "home page".

[dmaynes]

I'm not sure as I understand the difference in concept from the "News and Information" section. As for a suggestion to LUWS 2, perhaps N&I could be dressed up a bit to allow a flyer to directly appear on the page rather then having to download a PDF to view it and generally make the interface less clunky. Perhaps even make it part of the "home page".

If you follow the physical bulletin board metaphor, you could have a section on the board for flyers and information from the church and you might have a section on the board for your local news. So, from that perspective there is no difference.

I am actively managing the "local news" items. I don't just tear them down. Instead, I add to them. For example, I have an item that is titled "News from the Scouts." It currently contains three news, one for the past three months. I like having a bit of history connected to the news items. I don't like to expire these news items. I find value in their continuity and historical context (I'm also our ward history specialist).

One big distinction between the items I currently post on the News and Information page is that the content is all manually entered. We don't create HTML pages for each item. The idea of the flyers is that the information is really made available to the website through a link and not by actually placing content on the website pages.

I favor segregation because our ward's News and Information page is already really full. There are more than 25 items on the page. I need help with organizing and navigating through all this content. Our ward's bulletin board currently has about 15 flyers.

So, my primary distinctions are:
1- Source - local ward/stake or external
2- Editability - I would only link to the external sources while I edit and modify the local information
3- Immediacy - The local news and information has more immediacy and relevance than the information about sports camps or upcoming CES broadcasts
4- Expiration - Most of the items coming from external sources are event-driven and have natural expirations. Many of the items - like congratulating a member on a baptism, or listing upcoming birthdays do not have natural expiration dates.

Thanks,
Dennis

[mkmurray]

You might want to take a look at this proposed page for the updated News & Information for LUWS 2.0:

https://tech.lds.org/wiki/index.php/Loc ... tion_Pages

It doesn't have near all of the ideas you've given, but it looks to be heading in that direction more than the current version of the News and Information functionality.

[dmaynes]

You might want to take a look at this proposed page for the updated News & Information for LUWS 2.0:

https://tech.lds.org/wiki/index.php/Loc ... tion_Pages

It doesn't have near all of the ideas you've given, but it looks to be heading in that direction more than the current version of the News and Information functionality.

I will look at the page. But, as long as I am putting out ideas how I think this might work, let me keep "expounding."

I have tried to tap into information sources that are relevant to our ward members. These are sources that do not usually send flyers to the ward through the weekly bishop's mail. Two examples of these sources are: (1) The local cannery has specific times when members are able to can for their own storage and, (2) the local employment resources center offers training and seminars. I have signed up for these organizations' mailing lists. Then, when the e-mail arrives, I extract out portions (I can't make professional presentations of this content and readily post them to the LUWS).

If these organizations were able to upload or link pages and documents of their current schedule and initiatives to a church server, and if the ward or stake could indicate which information feeds should be forwarded to the LUWS, this could become a powerful mechanism for distributing some of these hard-to-gather information sources which, in some ways, have more direct relevance to members of the ward than flyers from church pageants or church-sponsored universities that are very far away.

Thanks,
Dennis