Subject: Re: St. John in the Wilderness website
From: "Lucy Eldridge"
Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 09:18:17 -0500
To: "Charley Musselman"

Charley,
Many, many thanks for getting this up and running so soon!  I really like your photos! It is great to see the parishioners Barbara Morgan, Walt Zelley, as well as the exterior and interior of the church.   I am so glad that we have our website in the works, and look forward to what will be developed by the end of Feb .  "Ballinamore" is Elen Freeston!  Could you please change title of church as The Church of St. John in the Wilderness? (fine to keep rest of the title as you have it)...Have a nice weekend!
Hi to Marian.
Best,
Lucy


----- Original Message ----- From: "Charley Musselman" <[email protected]>
To: "Lucy Eldridge"
Sent: Friday, February 01, 2008 8:19 AM
Subject: St. John in the Wilderness website


Lucy --

Good for you to copy Hank, Jim, and Mibs!  (I don't recognize
ballinamore.)  Thanks, guys, for your willingness to comment on our St
John of the Wilderness website development.

Our immediate requirement is to publish the parish profile.  An
attractive website will help us put our best face forward during the
search process.  I have the parish description and facts you sent.

I buy hosting services from 1and1.com, much more than I can use.  I can
maintain our site there indefinitely.  Someday a church institution
ought to take over from the individual.

I have registered the domain http://stjohnw.org, and set up mailboxes,
[email protected] and [email protected].  I have also claimed space
at [email protected] and [email protected].  These two provide
potentially valuable web services: calendars, mail lists, photo albums,
blogs, shared documents, and others to be invented.

An ultimate website would reflect best current practice: database backed
design, CSS, XML, making effective use of sound and video, easily
updated by the writers of sermons, The Messenger, convention reports,
etc.  I'd like a calendar that several persons can edit.

I don't know how to do all this.  Maybe I'll learn, but a week of study
had not made me very expert.  Maybe there is more expertise available in
the parish or the diocese.  So our first efforts will be simple, even as
our patron lived simply.  We can junk prototypes if we don't have too
much invested in them and gradually move toward our ideal.

Lucy referred me to four sample websites.  I'll add these (and yours) to
my favorites and catalog their features.  Then we can decide which we
wish to incorporate.

I would think we should have something we can use of by the end of February.  Meanwhile, here's a start:

http://stjohnw.org/index.html
St. John of the Wilderness, the Episcopal Church in Copake Falls, NY

I am pleased to work on this.  I have long wanted a reason to learn how to do it.

Please email or phone me with comments or suggestions.

Lucy Eldridge wrote:
Dear Charley,
As promised, here is the parish description and also some facts on St. John's.  Please let me know if I can be of help on this.  I have had a chance to look at some Episcopal Church websites, and some are the following:
Christ Church Hudson
St. Andrew's Episcopal, Albany
St. Boniface, Siesta Key, Florida
St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Metuchen
Elen Freeston said she thought she has a copy of the Church logo and will send it on to you.  We have photos available and know that you take them as well.  Just let me know what else we can help you with.
Many thanks for taking this on!
Regards,
Lucy

----- Original Message ----- From: "Charley Musselman" <[email protected]>
To: "Lucy Eldridge"
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2008 8:33 PM
Subject: Re: St. John in the Wilderness activities


Lucy --

I am very happy to be asked to help!  I understand that we would like to publish the Parish Profile for the benefit of candidate rectors.  I'm happy to put up an interim website, understanding that ultimately we wish a community website, the result of a community process.

Meanwhile, let's include 2 or 3 others in our correspondence for the benefit of oversight.  Please copy me when you forward this message to them and I will have their email addresses.

For the time being, I propose we publish a St. John of the Wilderness website on space I buy from 1and1 hosting service.  There is lots of empty space!  When the time comes, we can transfer the domain to an ongoing church institution.

Please send me the draft of a parish description.  Meanwhile, I'll come up with some ideas for process, criteria, and content.

Charley

Lucy Eldridge wrote:
Dear Charles,
I am head of the search committee now and we have begun in earnest on the search for a new rector.  As part of that search, we realize that we very much need a website...I know that you mentioned that perhaps you might be interested in working on one in the recent self study sent to the parish members, and I wonder if you would  be able to do it at this time?  We have a draft of a parish description and that would work well on the website I think. We will use the parish description with photographs for the initial material going out to prospective candidates and a website will also be of great use in describing St. John's.  People have also told me that you have taken lots of pictures of us as well! I hope you will consider this request...it would be great to have you work on it.
Thanks in advance and best regards,
Lucy Eldridge

-- 
Charley Musselman
43 Kent Street
Somerville, MA  02143
617-718-9722