Church Guidelines/Policies for Ward/Stake CUSTOM Websites

Use this forum to discuss issues that are not found in any of the other clerk and stake technology specialist forums.
TravisGraham
New Member
Posts: 20
Joined: Thu Feb 09, 2012 4:41 pm
Location: Portland, OR

Church Guidelines/Policies for Ward/Stake CUSTOM Websites

#1

Post by TravisGraham »

Hello,
I am the Stake Technology Specialist for my stake. I have been asked to create a Stake Website that would have content for a few different things. One of them being for Emergency Preparedness.

Are there any guidelines or church policies for creating such sites that someone can direct me to?

Thank you in advance.

Travis
User avatar
johnshaw
Senior Member
Posts: 2273
Joined: Fri Jan 19, 2007 1:55 pm
Location: Syracuse, UT

#2

Post by johnshaw »

I imagine the only real place to do this within the rules is to use the Newsletter application. You could create a special category for it.
russellhltn
Community Administrator
Posts: 34417
Joined: Sat Jan 20, 2007 2:53 pm
Location: U.S.

#3

Post by russellhltn »

You may want to read Handbook 2 21.1.22. While you can create a website for personal use in your calling, I think the moment you say a "stake website" the following applies:

"Stake and ward Web sites may be created only by using the official Church Internet resources. Stakes and wards are not authorized to create other Web sites or blogs or otherwise have a Church-sponsored presence on the Internet."
Have you searched the Help Center? Try doing a Google search and adding "site:churchofjesuschrist.org/help" to the search criteria.

So we can better help you, please edit your Profile to include your general location.
allenjpl
Member
Posts: 341
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2009 9:26 am
Location: Las Vegas, NV, USA

#4

Post by allenjpl »

travisgraham wrote:Hello,
I am the Stake Technology Specialist for my stake. I have been asked to create a Stake Website that would have content for a few different things. One of them being for Emergency Preparedness.

Are there any guidelines or church policies for creating such sites that someone can direct me to?

Thank you in advance.

Travis

I think the Code of Conduct prohibits us from posting any methods to circumvent Church policies. Let's say that you bring the clear directive of Handbook 2 to the stake president's attention, and he agrees that the stake should not have a web presence. Then, purely hypothetically, and for the sake of discussion, if he asks you (as a friend, and definitely not as the STS) to come up with a site that all 3000 of his friends that he sees in church frequently can use to share ideas about emergency preparation, I might suggest searching Facebook for "stake church." Because everyone has read the counsel regarding stake websites or Church-sponsored presence, I am certain that you won't find many stake-sponsored pages containing exactly the sort of information your friend has asked to you make available to his thousands of other friends.
kisaac
Community Moderators
Posts: 1184
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:04 am
Location: Utah, united states

#5

Post by kisaac »

JohnShaw wrote:I imagine the only real place to do this within the rules is to use the Newsletter application. You could create a special category for it.
I think JohnShaw may have suggested a workable solution to contain and convey "other" information needed by stake members. The newsletter app, which eventually will reside next to the directory and the calendar and the other tools on LDS.org, of course, is currently still in Beta testing. However, it may be a "very near" future solution. Anyone can look at the Beta now to see if it would do what they need:
Thread : Beta Newsletter Now Available

and try it here:

https://beta.lds.org/member-news

With help page found here:
https://tech.lds.org/wiki/Newsletter
pbaclawski
New Member
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun May 13, 2012 3:07 pm

Conundrum

#6

Post by pbaclawski »

So here is my conundrum. As a member of a Stake presidency, we are precluded from organizing or developing a stake sponsored website to provide information and resouces to stake members, specifically, and to the communuty as a whole. At the same time, a stake Family History Center Director, or a stake YM leader, or the director of a stake Christmas activity may develop and maintain seperate websites to assist them with their callings (with appropriate disclaimers about being Not An Official Church Website), yet there is no place to develop a stake site that can link to all of those sites (such links are not allowed from the "official" lds.org site). We intend to hew to the strict letter of the handbook, but we are hopeful that it will evolve over time to provide this additional oversight and functionallity to us. I would be interested how others have dealt with this situation and what might be under development to help with this.

Thanks in advance for your help and responses.
kisaac
Community Moderators
Posts: 1184
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:04 am
Location: Utah, united states

#7

Post by kisaac »

I believe the newsletter app, addressed earlier, may help, once it goes online, and people begin to use it.
lajackson
Community Moderators
Posts: 11460
Joined: Mon Mar 17, 2008 10:27 pm
Location: US

#8

Post by lajackson »

pbaclawski wrote:So here is my conundrum. As a member of a Stake presidency, we are precluded from organizing or developing a stake sponsored website to provide information and resouces to stake members, specifically, and to the communuty as a whole.

In my opinion, this would be an excellent topic of discussion at the next Coordinating Council your stake president attends.
zframpt
New Member
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu May 17, 2012 9:08 pm

#9

Post by zframpt »

I'm curious how something like Facebook would fall. I am in a singles ward and it is easy to reach everyone with announcements on Facebook. We have had very limited success with the calendar on lds.org to communicate events.
Would Facebook be considered a church sponsored internet presence?
User avatar
aebrown
Community Administrator
Posts: 15153
Joined: Tue Nov 27, 2007 8:48 pm
Location: Draper, Utah

#10

Post by aebrown »

zframpt wrote:Would Facebook be considered a church sponsored internet presence?

If it's sponsored by the unit (sponsored here would mean that the unit leadership directs that the site be created and specifies the content or calls people to maintain the content), then it seems to me that it is pretty clearly a Church-sponsored Internet presence. But the final call would be made by the bishop, his stake president, and his file leaders.
Questions that can benefit the larger community should be asked in a public forum, not a private message.
Post Reply

Return to “General Clerk Discussions”