I've set up our stake website, and my ward's website, and in a couple of days will be giving training to the bishops in our stake about how to get started. I'll be showing some screenshots of the site, then working through the document I've pasted in below.
I've had a good read through this part of the forums, and enjoyed the 'tips and tricks' thread (while it stayed on topic ) But I wanted to see if anyone had advice specifically for those starting with a brand new clean slate.
Particularly:
1) Is there anything I should add/change in my document below?
2) What do you wish your Leaders had understood at the start? (lessons learnt the hard way.)
3) What do you wish had been done when the site was started? (That was hard to get going later on.)
4) Any information about how your Calendar and Resources are maintained?
The websites themselves seem fairly straightforward, so its probably more about how things are administered and what people are told to expect.
(On preview: Sorry about the weird double-bullets, it lost some of the info in pasting from Word. I've attached the doc in case you'd rather read that - it also includes the email we were sent from Church HQ to be given to all admins, that might not be available to some of you older websites.)
==============================================
www.lds.org/units
(That’s the only thing to memorise tonight.)
To create an LDS Account you need:
- ·Membership number (from temple recommend)
- ·Confirmation date (lookup on ward or stake computer, or IOS)
- ·To choose a username and password
Stake Admin:
NameAndEmailGoesHere (Can also email directly from the website)
Church Tech Forum about LUWS:
http://tech.lds.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=20 (Good place for admin to ask questions)
Church Wiki pages about LUWS:
https://tech.lds.org/wiki/index.php/Local_Unit_Website
https://tech.lds.org/wiki/index.php/LUW ... uggestions
Next version of LUWS has started development as an open-source project (using Java)
Bishop(ric)'s first actions:
- ·Register LDS Account (new in last 2 months - different from existing missionary logins)
- ·Explore site
- ·Think about how it can help your ward, then decide what policies/goals you want to set
- [font="]o[/font]E.g: bring unity to my ward, keep members involved, and sustain the ward leaders in their callings.
- [font="]o[/font]Stop/reduce printed phonelists, calendars, Bulletin Announcements (Stake may stop printing individual newsletters.)
- [font="]o[/font]Introduce at fireside or 5th Sunday PH/RS lesson or some other presentation
- [font="]o[/font]Events not official until on website calendar
- ·Assign or call website administrators (only one receives notice of news/calendar submissions)
- [font="]o[/font]Criteria to consider:
- §Checks emails daily or more (submissions to be approved/denied within 24hrs)
- §Trusted to approve/deny appropriately and know when to ask Bishop(ric)
- §At ward council
- §Should include historian
- [font="]o[/font]Example:
- §Asst clerk as main administrator (approves submissions from members)
- §Historian (to submit news info)
- §Exec sec (to submit/update calendar)
- §RS Counsellor (to maintain missionary meal roster)
- [font="]o[/font]Email Stake admin so first ward admin can be added (can be done before they sign up, they can then add the other Ward Admin’s.)
- [font="]o[/font]Criteria to consider:
- ·Decide on Resource-Booking Calendars to add. Ideas:
- [font="]o[/font]Chapel areas (Stake will continue to maintain for multi-ward chapels)
- [font="]o[/font]Missionary meals
- [font="]o[/font]Youth Calendar or YW Calendar and YM Calendar
- [font="]o[/font](Submissions are approved by separate admin to news/calendar)
- ·Decide whether to update all members preferred names
- [font="]o[/font]Members can change own preferred name (not family), but Admin’s can change all
- [font="]o[/font]Would take 2-3 hours, could be one-off assignment to someone else, preferred names can be exported from MLS via custom reports.
- ·Think of initial news items you want added
Admin’s first actions (allow a couple of hours)
- ·Explore site
- ·Update Homepage info (image, phone, meeting times, main heading & message, additional links)
- ·Update Sunday school lessons
- ·Update missionary info
- ·Add News items, including ideas for members submissions (copy from Te Awamutu’s News)
- ·Update calendar
- ·Add resources
- ·Add other administrators
- ·Update leadership directory
- ·Update all members preferred names (optional)
Some things to bear in mind:
- ·Is an official church website (so be careful with doctrinal statements, no commercial or political use, etc.)
- ·Homepage is public on internet, so no personal information or time/date of activities on homepage.
- ·Event emails are sent when the event is created (so may be better to enter or re-enter some events closer to the day.)
- ·New version being developed (open source, year(s) away)
- ·Members should be removed from membership directory quickly on request, or if they’ve requested it in the past.
- ·Recurring events limited (can't change single event in series)
- ·Photo/Attachment limits:
- [font="]o[/font]Photos: 100Kb
- [font="]o[/font]Attachments: 1Mb (filetypes must be doc, pdf or xls)
- [font="]o[/font]Can’t be uploaded by member, must be emailed to Admin to attach.
- ·Reading on tech.lds.org forums about USA wards:
- [font="]o[/font]Biggest challenges are:
-
- Apathy from leaders
- Apathy from members
- [font="]o[/font]Registered members typically = about 1/3 of sacrament attendance.
- ·Network effect applies (e.g. 1 fax in a network is useless, the more you have the greater use for each. Phone, email, facebook, etc)