Sacrament Tools

[AdrianLP-p40]

So a few years back I wrote a PHP/MySQL site that allowed a branch president to manage his sacrament meetings. He could record who would speak, their topics, who gave prayers, business, announcements, etc. Then he could view reports of the last date members spoke, gave prayers, when hymns were sung. And of course the site has different access levels. Pianists/choristers/music leaders can see the sacrament theme, and view and/or edit the hymns, the bulletin coordinator can see enough that they can create a bulletin, etc. Naturally only branch presidencies can view past/future business, assign prayers/speakers, and the like. Nobody can see information they shoud not have. On Sundays a Printer Friendly page allows branch presidencies to print off the meeting, carry it into church with them, and they have their bulletin containing all they need right in front of them.

Over the years this tool has been adopted by my district.

I think an official tool like this would be a wonderful idea. The branch presidents in my district seem to love it.

[aebrown]

So a few years back I wrote a PHP/MySQL site that allowed a branch president to manage his sacrament meetings. . . . Over the years this tool has been adopted by my district.

I think an official tool like this would be a wonderful idea. The branch presidents in my district seem to love it.

Although this sounds like it could indeed be helpful if it were an official tool, it sounds to me like a clear violation of the prohibition on the creation of web sites other than the official stake/ward web sites hosted on lds.org. If there's a way to host such a site that is within policy, I'd love to hear how to do it.

[AdrianLP-p40]

Although this sounds like it could indeed be helpful if it were an official tool, it sounds to me like a clear violation of the prohibition on the creation of web sites other than the official stake/ward web sites hosted on lds.org. If there's a way to host such a site that is within policy, I'd love to hear how to do it.

I host it on a private server at the discretion of the district president.

The prohibition of website is that we should not have public websites, this does not fit that case. Having read the wording regarding websites, I think they are more concerned with incorrent and unofficial information being passed to the public.

[gawing]

Any chance of getting a copy of the script to try for ourselves?

[AdrianLP-p40]

Any chance of getting a copy of the script to try for ourselves?

I'd happily share it. Just waiting to see the admins reply regarding what church policy says.

[mkmurray]

I'd happily share it. Just waiting to see the admins reply regarding what church policy says.

Here's one response that may also apply to your situation: http://tech.lds.org/forum/showthread.php?p=8924

[AdrianLP-p40]

Here's one response that may also apply to your situation: http://tech.lds.org/forum/showthread.php?p=8924

I'm not sure that it does. Again they are referring to a publicly available site, one offering services that lds.org offers besides.

My site does *not* represent the church to the public.

[WelchTC]

The only guidance that has been delivered by the Church is guidance you have already read. At some level local leadership has to make the call whether they are violating policy or not. Where we tend to draw a firmer line is when we see people asking members of the ward to use a website, especially to store confidential or personal information.

Tom

[AdrianLP-p40]

The only guidance that has been delivered by the Church is guidance you have already read. At some level local leadership has to make the call whether they are violating policy or not. Where we tend to draw a firmer line is when we see people asking members of the ward to use a website, especially to store confidential or personal information.

Right. But this is only used by branch presidencies and a few select leadership members they assign. The public doesn't / can't use this site. The only data that is stored is names (as manually typed by branch/ward presidencies), dates, and hymn names. We're not storing or using record numbers or anything of that nature. Although I had toyed with the idea of hashing a record number with branch name to generate a unique key for each individual. In this way we're still not storing the record number, or anything that can be reverse engineered to such.

[webmired-p40]

oh i'd like to get a crack at that too, if you don't mind.