It is quite easy to despair at the state of parish websites. They almost always seem to be an afterthought and so often seem to be stuck a decade behind in web design. As fond of tradition as we Catholics are, this does not apply to outdated web design with a geo cities look. In my own diocese I haven’t found one parish website that is even close to acceptable and actually seeing a current bulletin is very hit and miss.
We can appreciate those dear souls who are usually the ones that volunteered their time to create and update a parish site in the first place. Parishes have so many demands on them that actually paying for someone to design/maintain a parish website is understandably low on the list. Though unless somebody with some degree of web design professionalism volunteers your pretty much get what you pay for when it comes to free.
Diocesan websites are normally much better, but like all things can range in quality/functionality.
This is why I love to see things like this initiative front the Archdiocese of Boston on creating “Creating Excellent Parish Websites.”
They have a 2 hour discussion on this topic along with links to the handouts they used. The Archdiocese of Boston is a positive example of a diocese that has focused on using media including new media to communicate.
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Just FYI, I’m currently working on a ‘baseline’ parish website distribution that I’ve slowly been building up over the past few years while building websites like http://www.straphaelarchangel.org/ and http://www.cureofarsparish.org/
I’m hoping to build things in a way that enables parishes to have great websites with minimal effort—and without having to pay someone tons of money to get a parish-based CMS.
I don’t know where it will go (and I still have most of the code on my local machine/servers, and not in a public repository), but at least it will cut down the time it takes me to build out a new parish website from about 10-12 hours to 30 min or so 🙂
…and the link to that distribution is http://openparishwebsite.com/
Dear Jeff,
When I started reading this post, I was smiling a little and then after listening to about 20 minutes of the film, I was chuckling thinking that if a church was to write as a heading, “Come on back home you Catholics” that really might not be accepted to reach certain age groups.
I hear ya! Coming from someone who is closing down his blog? Come on Victor, there is such a thing as being too honest! Right? Especially in Bean Town! 🙂
Please continue to pray for this poor sick sinner.
Peace
My husband and I did a “create a parish website for free” workshop at our diocese’s ministry days. It was packed. All these pastors and secretaries and pastoral associates had no clue, and we were simply showing easy peasy Blogger and WordPress samples.
I mean NO CLUE.
When I’m teaching technology, it’s a messed up world.
Jeff’s on to something. It makes little sense for every single parish in a diocese to have to incur the expense of creating and maintaining their own website. Why do there need to be so many variations? Each diocese has the resources to create parish website and parishes can be trained how to upload infomation on their website that changes. Standardizing parish websites across a diocese makes a lot of sense in navigating one’s way through it for essential information.
The BIG problem is that it is SO BLANKETY BLANK HARD to get actual information on something as simple as Mass times, especially during the week or on Holy days!! The problem, IMHO< is the techno-phobia of most "professional" Catholics running parishes these days.
@Bill: http://www.masstimes.org
My number one peeve about parish sites is having to search through the tabs for the Mass times. I don’t care about the mission statement. I don’t care about the vibrancy of the parishoners, I don’t care about the school. I just want to know what time is Mass. If I can’t tell that at a glance it’s a bad site.