Tag Archive for 'websites'

make a website

Published on July 20, 2010 in liturgy. 7 Comments Tags: blogging, facebook, free websites, simple websites, websites, wordpress.

Having a website, say for your parish or community, is no longer as difficult as it might look, or as you might think.

Rev. Andrew Hedge took the ideas I presented on how to make a free website simply and has produced a most admirable, attractive, and useful website, easy to keep up to date, and all basically free. The essence of my idea is taking the simple, powerful, free blogging platform, Wordpress, and with a little trick – making it the foundation of a website, not only a blog.

Here’s how you make a website
Here’s some more resources

Andrew has, for quite a while, been recording sermons which are accessible through iTunes (another option might be to investigate such free resources as Sound Cloud). Today there is a funeral that family members in America are unable to physically attend. These family members asked if the funeral could be broadcast so that they could be part of it via the internet. Andrew says, “It hasn’t taken much by way of addition to the setup in the church, just a secure internet connection and video camera really, and we’ve been able to broadcast this morning’s service as a test run.” (Here’s the link found on the site).

I received a significant number of requests for the link to live streaming, or at least a video recording of a recent episcopal ordination here – what our national church was not able to achieve, an ordinary parish church is not finding difficult. Our national church used to have a website with digital resources online such as “For all the saints”, daily reflections, readings, and prayers we could use and cut and paste into our worship. The site clearly needed refreshing, and we look forward very much to the flash new version. But, rather than leave the site up with those resources still accessible to all, it was just taken down a quarter of a year ago. We are a small church (we don’t keep statistics, but I’m guessing that maybe only 0.8% of the population was in an Anglican Church here on Sunday?) I wonder if we are unable to accept how small we actually are, and work fruitfully to produce simple, appropriate resources from that acceptance. Here’s a website I made in half an hour. It is free. Moral of the story? Keep it simple?

Rev. Peter Carrell on his site is reflecting on “Fresh Expressions“. He suggests, “Install a webcam and feed services live”. He is more cautious than I about this, and concludes, “Ignore the above. That is me trying to second guess (again!) what the Spirit is saying to the church. But do not ignore the Spirit.” Well, I understand what Peter is meaning, and I’m sure he knows me well enough to understand my preparedness to “second guess” the Spirit on this Waiting for the Spirit to indicate that your community needs a website is like waiting for the Spirit to indicate that you need a sign on the road, or a telephone. A website is as essential in the 21st century as a sign and a telephone were at the end of the last millennium. I’ve been told that research shows 80% of new visitors to a church check the website first – my unstatistical experience confirms this. No decent website, and…

Step 1: get a website
Step 2: get a facebook page

If you REALLY can’t bring yourself to follow my simple instructions: buy some pizzas and some coke and get some teenagers to do it for you. Win-win-win!

The website of St Andrews Anglican Church, Cambridge, New Zealand (Vicar: Rev. Andrew Hedge)

respectful commenting

Published on May 20, 2010 in liturgy. 7 Comments Tags: google, websites.

Having watched nasty, ad hominem, caustic comments become seriously destructive on websites and in some cases result in the site closing down, I was very wary about opening this site up for comments. But I was constantly urged to do so. And finally gave in, setting up a quite strong comment policy. In the event, I believe a wonderful culture has been developed by the community that meets around here. I recently received this email:

Having stumbled across your website/blog during Lent, I continue to enjoy your posts and the kind and respectful tone of commentators. I’m frequently moved, challenged and amused. Many thanks.

So – people who comment here: take a bow. Give yourselves a pat on the back. The worship wars can be some of the nastiest in our churches – so I hope the community around this site demonstrates that holding strong positions can be done without getting personal, and whilst continuing to listen to difference with respect. As I indicated recently, there may be a slight change in the comments policy, but the essential spirit and culture of comments will not change.

Whilst speaking of recently-received positive emails, here is one I just received:

Dear Fr. Bosco,

Thank you so much for this versatile website!

I use it as my web browser “Home Page”, making use of it often during the day, and I just did the night prayers right now. I do have the Liturgy of Hours, 4-vol., so this is a great addition to my prayer life when I’m being lazy about getting to my breviary!

Thank you so much & please keep this website!

Akismet, the spam filter, has automatically filtered out 18,785 comments! Compare that to 2,186 comments that have been approved. That’s a ratio of 9 spam comments to every actual comment!

You may be interested in some of the comments that it filters out:

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for the press release on General Synod – with a link to fish tanks

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on the media release for General Synod day 1 with a link to handbags

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in response to my hoping to see General Synod online

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on presiding and preaching with a link to a solicitor’s office

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in response to Christ’s death – with a link to coffee

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liturgy site in list of top Christian blogs

Published on May 10, 2010 in liturgy. 4 Comments Tags: blogging, spirituality, websites, worship.

I have just been informed that this site has been listed with 97 others on christiancounselingdegree.org (OK – mine is number 98, I hope they aren’t listed in order of usefulness, LOL. They don’t appear to be). That American site has as a strapline, “using biblical values to help others.” That site intends to bring together a biblical approach and tertiary counselling qualifications.

I have no idea how this site found mine. It describes this site as, “Rev. Bosco Peters, a priest for the Anglican Church and the chaplain at an Anglican secondary school for boys in New Zealand, regularly updates the Liturgy Blog with resources and reflections for liturgy, spirituality, and worship for individuals and communities.”

I recognise many of the sites on the list, but there are some new ones that I didn’t know about that I have appreciated finding through this list.

a million visitors

Published on April 11, 2010 in liturgy. 8 Comments Tags: facebook, liturgy, new zealand, spirituality, twitter, visitors, websites, worship.

The webcounter (at the bottom of each page) has just clicked over the 1,000,000th visitor to this site! (The millionth visitor was from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, United States). Four years ago I had the digital version of my book Celebrating Eucharist which I thought I could make more accessible by purchasing a domain and placing it on there. I had just been asked to give a lecture on worship developments since the publication of the NZ Prayer Book, and, in researching for this, had been horrified at some of what I discovered. Placing the book online was a small step, I hoped, to improve things.

I was very surprised when what I thought then were a lot of people started coming to the site. So I started adding a few more resources. And more people came. After a while I had built up a significant website – but I had done it without really knowing what I was doing. Here is an image of the first page recorded by the internet archive a couple of months after starting the site. After a while the site was growing so much and interest also growing, that I realised I had made a complete messy tangle. I bought new software and took six months to rebuild the site from scratch. Then people started suggesting I add a blog to the website, which I did. But I feared adding a comments facility because I have seen so many sites with fights – including a really good site which in the end closed down because the host could not take the ongoing nastiness. Nearly a couple of years ago I cautiously opened comments. I have been thrilled by the positive culture and community that has built around the site (the spam filter has filtered out 15,737 spam comments in that time!)

The number of visitors continues to grow: 61,330 in the first year 13 April 2006- 13 April 2007. 168,855 in the second year. 270,355 in the third year. 499,460 in this fourth year. I remember discussing visits with internet experts who were enthused when I was heading towards a hundred visits a day. That, they thought, was a good maximum to aim for – there just, they thought, wouldn’t be more interest than that on the internet for this “niche”. Well now there are days with around 4,000 visits.

Associated with this site there is an RSS feed, an occasional email newsletter (see bottom right of that linked page), a facebook page, and a twitter. This website is the most visited Christian site served from New Zealand. And the twitter is the second most followed twitter located in New Zealand. There is clearly a strong interest in worship, liturgy, and spirituality.

I produce all this in my “spare” time and thank you all who visit here for your support and encouragement. Let us continue to pray for each other, and all who visit here.

Another way to look at the interest:

ps. I could see that the counter was going to turn in the middle of the (NZ) night, so I called on some help through twitter and facebook to encourage some more visitors and waited up for it to turn a million. Thanks everyone for your help. And sorry to those whose advice to go to bed I ignored

liturgical & church passwords

Published on March 21, 2010 in liturgy. 14 Comments Tags: humor, humour, websites.

Are you looking for a new password for your church website? I recently cracked the pope’s login for the Vatican website, it is EtCumSpiri220 (for security reasons I won’t reveal his username). One online password-strength checker suggests it is “strong” which must be why it took me quite a while to crack it. Below there are certain other passwords I have cracked. In the comments you can suggest whom they are used by. And also add any others you can think of or have cracked.

bcp1662 – weak
acanzp1992 – medium
anzpbhkmoa1989 – medium
cw2000 – weak
filioque1054 – medium
VocatusAtqueNonVocatusDeusAderit1961 – best

Taonga website upgrade

Published on March 10, 2010 in liturgy. 0 Comments Tags: anglicans, blogging, new zealand, websites.

The New Zealand Anglican news website, Taonga, has, without much fanfare, rolled out a significant upgrade. In a country clearly on the cutting edge of technology, Anglicans have tended to look like technophobes totally out-of-step with the surrounding culture. Taonga now provides a more user-friendly experience, and, more significantly, has entered the world of web 2.0 in allowing reader comments. Registration takes only a moment. Join in. Alongside the recent ordination of our first blogging bishop, Taonga brings some movement into mission and ministry in cyberspace. Well done and congratulations Taonga! Let us pray for all involved.

Start your own website – within an hour or two you, or your community, have a website to be proud of.

My God’s Facebook

Published on March 10, 2010 in liturgy. 1 Comment Tags: facebook, websites.

A new site called My God’s Facebook is growing rapidly with a membership of over 25,000 already after increasing publicity from February this year. It follows a Facebook-style format and possibilities as a “meeting place for those who believe, and those who do not, and the curious.” I am enthusiastic about all the new ventures of making connections between the Christian Good News and contemporary internet – and this looks like a fascinating and useful addition to the available options. In the comments, those who have participated there might like to comment, others might even add other resources you know of. Let us also pray for these types of sites. Such sites can also become praying virtual communities.

50K followers on Twitter

Published on February 9, 2010 in liturgy. 2 Comments Tags: facebook, spirituality, twitter, websites.

Today, Bill Warner became the 50,000th follower of Liturgy on Twitter. And if you understand how twitter works: @Liturgy is included in nearly a thousand lists!

I don’t know if there is a “typical” follower of @Liturgy, Bill has had nearly four decades of experience in the computer industry, with the last two decades as a CEO. His service to the community include board directorships in the Association for Corporate Growth, Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Cooperación Ortopédica Americano Nicaragüense and the Triangle Community Foundation’s Entrepreneurial Partnership. Liturgy, this site and blog, the twitter site, and the facebook page, are all about making connections between positive, healthy, intelligent spirituality and the various ordinary and extra-ordinary lives we all lead. I was moved and encouraged by a recent comment in the good discussion on the value of the NRSV:

I enjoy your blog immensely. I only started reading it a few months ago, but it has become one of those blogs where every article is a must-read. For a non-liturgical Protestant seeking more liturgical worship, your blog has been a wonderful find. Thank you for providing this excellent resource.

Thanks to all of you for your support and encouragement.

Is this NZ’s most visited Christian site?

Internet depression & other issues

Published on February 4, 2010 in liturgy and spirituality. 5 Comments Tags: facebook, twitter, websites.

The dark side of the internet

As with any powerful gift (eg. money, sex, power), the internet can be used for great good and for great evil. From time to time I receive stories of marriage failures attributed to the internet, cyber-bullying, cyber-stalking. The internet can be a tragic time-waster. Anonymous trolls can make comments online that they would never dare to make if their identity was known, or face to face – as they roam around the web solely to start fights. The internet can be damagingly addictive. It is an easy place for intellectual property theft. The list can go on.

A new study by UK psychologists has confirmed what probably most of us realise – there is a link between internet abuse and depression. It is unclear whether internet abuse leads to depression, or whether depressed people are more likely to misuse the internet.

What are your suggestions for keeping your internet use healthy, accountable, ethical? What do you see as significant negative issues in the use of the internet? I know many will appreciate collective wisdom, some guidelines, even suggested rules for oneself.

pope urges priests to blog

Published on January 26, 2010 in liturgy. 8 Comments Tags: Anglican, blogging, facebook, iphone, new zealand, roman catholic, twitter, vatican, websites, wordpress.

The pope has issued a proclamation challenging priests “to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, websites) which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization and catechesis.”

Internationally there are some Anglican blogging bishops (I try to keep up with these in the links section). Of the 31 bishops in our province, not one blogs as far as I know (the bishop-elect of Dunedin blogs – we shall see if that continues). Of the more than one and a half thousand Anglican priests in this province I’m aware of a couple that blog, and a few more on twitter. The official website of the province has not been updated in more than a year. Maybe there are Roman Catholic blogging bishops and priests in New Zealand. I am not aware of them. There are still parishes and ministry units without even a website – in spite of web-hosting and production being free and easy now, with advice and help provided on this site. Every parish can have a facebook page (and a twitter). Blogging has never been easier using wordpress or blogger. Such things are not, as those in the church often make them appear to be, things that require great planning and debate. These things take less than 10 minutes to set up. Nothing manifests the yawning gap between average young people and average churchgoers more than the unwillingness of most churchgoers to embrace late 20th century communication technology. The church can be so last millennium!

The pope is on youtube (his videos do not appear to be able to be embedded), and has an iPhone and facebook app, pope2you. Let’s urge him to take his own advice and start blogging. If he is reading this: “I’m very happy to swap links with you”. Some suggestions for the name of the papal blog? “Mass communication”? Maybe not “Papal Bull”. (Definitely not “Red Shoe Diaries”!)

Is this NZ’s most visited Christian site?

Published on January 19, 2010 in liturgy. 7 Comments Tags: websites.

I have only recently discovered Matt and Madeleine Flannagan’s site where they track the top New Zealand Christian Blogs. They use a very complicated algorithm including incoming links, posts per week, comments per post, etc. When I examine the actual visitor numbers of these top sites, however, I’m interested that unique visitors is in the 200-400 per day range. In the period they are analysing, my Liturgy site had an average of 1,524 visitors a day. I’m beginning to wonder: is this site New Zealand’s most visited Christian site?

Social media church 2.0

Published on September 25, 2009 in liturgy. 2 Comments Tags: facebook, spirituality, twitter, websites.

This is a follow-up to my previous post: social media church
If this is the new world in which we live, how then might church change? How does this affect spirituality?

h/t to my e-friend Lori Deschene who writes:

“It’s easier than ever to reach a large audience, but harder than ever to connect with it.”

Of course it’s hard to connect with an audience that’s consuming so much media on a day-to-day basis.

A few other numbers I found:

At the rate we’re producing digital content, about 99.93% of it will not be read or used by anyone.

Jonathan Spira, Chief analyst at business research firm Basex estimates that lost productivity due to multitasking (emails, websites, etc) costs the US economy roughly $650 billion annually.

According to an IDC survey, people now spend 32.7 hours per week online–equivalent to half the time they spend on all media (70.6 hours). That’s 10 hours a day on average.

In a study of 18,000 people, Dave N. Greenfield of The Center for Internet Behavior–in conjunction with ABC News–found that 29% of respondents go online to “alter their mood or escape on a regular basis.”

Reid Goldsborough of Information Today suggests we’ve entered a state of “continuous partial attention” in response to information overload. He further explains that as the level of information input increases, our capacity to process and retain that information decreases.

Technological innovation is changing the way people behave – how are we responding? How could we participate and respond?

popularity of liturgy & worship?

Published on September 24, 2009 in liturgy. 5 Comments Tags: facebook, google, liturgy, twitter, visitors, webmaster, websites, worship.

The search for the term “liturgy” on Google (top line) in the last six years has approximately halved. Online news about “liturgy” (bottom line) has grown a little in the same period:

searches for liturgy

The search for the term “worship” on Google (top line) in the last six years has approximately halved. Online news about “worship” (bottom line) has grown a significantly in the same period:

searches for worship

Use this free online tool to compare other search terms – put a comma between terms you seek to compare. Any ideas why such changes in the search for “liturgy” and “worship”?

Visitor numbers to this site have been increasing or steady. I think that is also due to the site expanding onto twitter and facebook:

pageviews & visitors to Liturgy site 2006-2009

Your thoughts?

computer issues?

Published on August 28, 2009 in liturgy. 3 Comments Tags: facebook, humor, humour, twitter, websites.

This site regularly connects spirituality and technology. For those struggling with their computer technology, here is a helpful flow-diagram, courtesy of xkcd

The church & the internet

Published on June 30, 2009 in liturgy. 1 Comment Tags: Anglican, blogging, humor, humour, liturgy, new zealand, sacrament, second life, virtual world, websites.

Two days ago I put up a post on whether or not we should have sacraments in and through the virtual world of the internet (click to read Virtual Eucharist). Seldom have I seen such strong interest in a particular issue on my site. About 200 people an hour are reading this article – over seven thousand have read it so far!

One thing we know is clear. Church 0.5 is rapidly losing ground in our 2.0 world. This is not about Second Life (SL) being a replacement for First Life (FL). This is exploring the possibilities of SL enhancing FL. Churches, sadly, still tend to run web 1.0 websites in our 2.0 world. I am not sure that we have a single blogging bishop in New Zealand. We do have a few blogging clergy and some other blogging Christians.

If you want to check out when a church website was last updated – you know what to do:

Open the website in your web browser

Then paste the following code in the address bar and hit the enter key:

javascript:alert(document.lastModified)

Try it with the official website of the largest denomination in New Zealand according to the census.

Finally, for a bit of a laugh – but posted (as with so much humour) to make a serious point – a clip of earlier Christians coping with new technology. If that made you laugh – here is more humour.