It is not to much of a surprise (outside of the actual look) that Cornerstone is about to launch a new website. I had the privilege of working with Brad Ruggles, a website/graphics designer and creative developer, on the launch of this new site. Two of my three earthly passions are faith, technology, and photography, which means I was pretty much able to combine all three into one project.
This project was something that took a few months to put together, and was the collaborative effort of every staff member at Cornerstone, but it was something I have wanted to work on for many years now. Not just a new website, but a new mindset into what potential the Internet has in the Church body.
Tools like Twitter, Facebook, rss feeds, podcasts, videos, and all the things that make up the Internet today can be utilized for kingdom purposes, and done in a professional way. This isn’t a new subject for me personally (see The Church’s New Drug of Choice // Part 1, Does a Church Really Need a Website?, The Church Body and the Internet, Part 1, The Church Body and the Internet, Part 2, to name a few past posts), I have been on a quiet campaign for relavant church websites for the better part of 10-15 years.
This is (to me) what people expect out of their church today, and especially those Believers and visitors in the 19-29 age range. It is a connected world, a connected society, and they don’t want or expect to walk into a church today and see 20th century technology. We don’t need to or have to spruce up Jesus. The Salvation message has remained the same for 2,000 years, but each church in the Church body reaches different people according to its purpose, and a website is a great place to start.
I say start because a website, a well designed, relavant, media based website, is where you can start to bring people to the Church and where they can learn and connect with others that have a love for Christ. It is no longer about displaying something static that shows the worship times and directions, it is about how do we connect with each other and grow in the Body. I can’t wait for the new site to go live. I think this is exactly what Cornerstone is to me and my wife when we arrived about a year ago and I was thrilled to have some part in putting it together.
I know there are a few other Church IT people that read my blog so I will be writing some additional posts on how it went together and how to even get started. What to look out for when choosing a website design company, and what you should be able to expect from your developer. I think we chose one of the best in Ruggles but throughout the course of the project I did meet several other companies, some good, and some very bad, and hope to share that with you in the upcoming months. Hope you enjoy the new site, it should be live some time this weekend.
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One of the things I probably dis-like the most about blogs is having to clean house, but, this weekend I went through the tedious process of implementing a new design, updating all the categories for each post, and changing some previous posts to display the full size images this design will accommodate. I really think that much of the details in photography is lost in viewing small images, so, for those still on dial-up, I apologize now. From this point forward I will be displaying my images on up to 900px wide in some cases, like the image below of Lake City lake in Colorado (although I will try to keep the file size as small as possible).
The image above was taken in August of 2005 in Lake City Colorado. There is an overlook on the forest road where you can stop and hike up the side of the mountain. Image data: Camera, Nikon D2X, ISO-100, Focal length 35mm @ f/16
This is one of those scenes that has probably been photographed a million times but is still so beautiful that you just have to stop and take a shot. This particular shot I did do a bit of hiking off the main road. I climbed up to the top of the ridge overlooking the lake and the most gorgeous colors appeared.
I rarely think the best shot is in the foot pegs of the tripod that just left (or where everyone else tends to take the same shot), and in this case I was greatly rewarded. The drive from Creede to Lake City is one of the most wonderful drives found in the country, so if you ever have a chance, take the road right out of Creede and take a slow drive over several passes until you drop down into Lake City.
Happy Labor Day to everyone.
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I neglected by blog posts this weekend and instead opted for a new design, look, or fell, or whatever. I was trying to consolidate some older pages, and make it a little easier to get around the information I have posted already. I am still putting the finishing touches on some of the graphics but you get the idea now. I would love to hear what you think about the new design, what can be improved or changed. This is a busy week coming up, our new study over at the Damascus blog is starting in Romans and will be posted on Tuesday.
Learning to Use a Stylesheet and PHP
Over time I have had to learn how to use a CSS or Stylesheet and some basic PHP. As I have leaned more and more code I have found a bit of freedom to be able to change and adjust things to be exactly the way I want them to be, and in the process be able to mess things up as well. I would really recommend learning as much code as you possibly can, over time, it will be invalueble to you since everything runs on code.
