Is something missing, hard to find, or inaccurate? We welcome your comments. When you have the time, please take a few minutes to e-mail the web coordinators at hnjkmo@gmail.com.

A brief plan for developing a parish web site follows.

Developing a Parish Website

A parish website evolves according to available time, skill, and interest. Ours began with information from the parish "Welcome" booklet, with periodic additions since.  A typical plan for developing a parish site might include the following:

1. Find a volunteer with time and computer skills to maintain the site. The commitment depends on how fast the site is changing.  At first there is a lot of activity, but as the site stabilizes, it takes perhaps an hour a week to add new material.
   Regarding expertise, if you feel confident with a word processor, a browser, and a picture editor, you are, with a little training, a potential webmaster. You create and modify pages on your computer, verify them with your browser, then "upload" to the parish host site.
    
2. Get a host site and choose a domain name.  Ours, www.HolyName.ca, is hosted by "Doteasy.com" out of Burnaby. Doteasy provides free host service with no ads if the domain name is registered through them. Registration costs about $50/year.
   
3. Build a home page with basic information such as address, phone number, and Mass times.
   
4. Gradually add other pages like  directions, parish contacts, news, links etc.  This requires adding a menu or "navigation bar", which is a fancy name for the area containing hot-linked words such as Home, Contacts, News, Links, etc. Each link takes the viewer to an appropriate page.  Ideally the menu area looks the same on each page to limit confusion as viewers navigate.
   
5. Add Sunday bulletins and the parish calendar.  Dress up the site with colour, simple graphics and pictures, but limit the number of images to accommodate dial-up users. As information starts to grow, add a "Site Index" to help people search for documents containing specific words.
   
6. Seek feedback to improve the site.  It's good to have a feedback area on the web site itself, but in addition, tag a couple of "volunteers" to critique the site occasionally.  Some site reorganization is desirable every year or two.
   
7. Add information that can't conveniently appear in the bulletin.  For example, if the parish organizes a series of evenings on some topic, provide links to existing resources that help inform participants. Also, flyers posted near the church entrance could have on-line equivalents.
   
8. Add on-line forms.  For some parish events, parishioners are asked to register at the back of the church as participant or volunteer.  A corresponding form on the website might be more convenient for some registrants. Standard forms such as the one for new parishioners could be on-line. Information submitted via on-line forms is e-mailed automatically to someone appropriate, such as parish secretary or event convenor.
   
9. Depending on time and energy, add other items.  Some require significant effort. Wouldn't it be great to have a parish album, with photos over the years, dated, with captions?  Big jobs like this could be tackled in phases.  In contrast, it's relatively easy to add timely information for parish groups like youth groups, CWL, Knights, Music Ministry, etc.    

Our site is about halfway along the path outlined above.  You can help by offering suggestions or time. Please consider it.