ELCA Web and Multimedia Development Blog

A couple of new items have been implemented today. We are now highlighting the five latest posts from your blogs at http://blogs.elca.org. Have a look! The more you post, the more homepage face time you get! (MU developers: this was done using the sitewide recent posts plugin.)

Secondly, in addition to Akismet comment spam killer, I have installed some more protection. This should kill a lot of spam before it makes its way to you to have to approve or deny it. It also adds CAPTCHA to the comment field. You’ll notice the “churchy” words I picked if you take a look. (MU Developers: I used the Farms comment spam pack to accomplish this.)

Happy blogging!

Special thanks to @andrea_r for her help!

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I am starting a new category of posts that I hope will help our growing number of Bloggers. In case you did not know, the ELCA has a new platform for our blogs. WordPress is very versatile and has already proven to be an upgrade from our previous solution.

We are also rolling out a custom ELCA theme for congregations and synods to create small- to medium-sized Web sites with the church’s branding and useful features. WordPress is not only a great blog platform but an excellent Content Management System.

This category of posts will automatically update into the Dashboard of our in-house blogs, and primarily be geared towards helping our churchwide office users and admins use and maintain their new blogs. But it is also my hope that these posts help those outside of the churchwide offices to gain a better understanding of how to use and implement WordPress in their setting as well.

If you haven’t subscribed to this blog yet, please take the time to do so. And please tell others who are interested in Web Development to sign up also, won’t you?

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I’m sure you’re familiar with the little red book Augsburg Fortress puts out called the, well, Little Red Book. A pocket daytimer, the LRB is for those who like to keep it “old school” and write down their appointments. Around the office here, we have come to affectionately refer to it as a “redBerry.”

Well, a friend of mine, Andy Arnold (@adnyla), has made me aware that there is now a downloadable version of the LRB. He has written some instructions to sync the LRB to Google Calendar. Take a look!

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This weekend, we took the leap. We heard the bloggers’ cries for a better platform and finally upgraded to WordPress. You, as a reader, will benefit as well, from a much more enjoyable and interactive blog to read.

With this upgrade came the need to switch servers. After migrating all blogs with their hundreds of posts and comments, to the new server, we now wait for the Web site addresses to settle down and begin pointing you in the right direction. This should happen soon enough, but in case you still haven’t found what you’re looking for, check the “Welcome” page for some temporary links to the blogs. Remember these addresses are only temporary. They will be going back to their original addresses, so don’t go changing your bookmarks.

Thanks again for your patience– the new blogs are gonna be great!

Len

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Let’s say you have a Web site, but have no real way to place videos on that site. What do you do? You could host your videos on a site like YouTube or Blip.tv and just link to those videos. But why lead people away from your site when most of these video sites allow you to embed a player, with your video, on your own site?

Embedding a video is as easy as opening an account on any one of the popular video sites, and uploading your videos. When that is completed, simply copy the embed code that the sites provide and paste it into your site, wherever you would like the video player to be.

Here are my top five tips is searching for the embedded player that is right for you.

1. Does the player look nice? Is it unobtrusive and does it take away from the look of your site? Some video sites let you customize the color of the player.
2. Does the player offer your all the sharing links? You want others to be able to easily share your video to promote traffic.
3. Are there ads? If so, is there a way to turn them off, or opt out of them showing?
4. When the video is done playing, does the player recommend other videos that are not your own?
5. How is the quality of your video after you upload it? While I have not seen a video site mangle a video, some sites are definitely better than others in this area.

If you have and questions or comments, please feel free to post them.

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I just read an article at TechCrunch about a newcomer to the Live Streaming area, who is trying to level the playing field by offering something the competition doesn’t: cheap live streaming services. If you have ever tried to live stream a meeting or are looking into it, you have probably noticed how expensive it is to stream live video at an acceptable quality rate.

Stickam is offering there services in a generic version called StreamAPI. They offer their services with no contract and no minimum use. You pay only for what you use. How much is that? Well, one level of service they offer comes out to just 45 cents per Gig.

Check them out and see if it is something you might be able to use!

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I want to thank you all who bore with me the extemporaneous posts that were really just notes from the workshops. I hope that these will be more of a reference to you in the future as you dive in to create your own Web sites.

Toward the end of the Expo, the workshops became more of a hands-on type, which made it hard to blog about. But please know that this expo was everything that it was advertised as being.

If you are at any level of competency, in any area from developer to administrator, there is something at the CMS expo for you.

So here are my main points I came away with.

1. Static Web sites are dead. The days of using Web editing software to update static Web pages are gone. If your content is not in a database, being managed by a Content Management System, you are not serving your visitors like they should be served. Interactivity is lacking. Up-to-date content is missing. And you may be losing page views.
2. Web Developers need to know CMS Development. If you are a developer or are responsible for the Web site for your church or synod, it would behoove you to know how to put some sort of CMS base Web site together. Now is the time to learn CMS development because the time is soon coming, if not here now, that your skill set may not be enough.
3. Open Source is the future. Joomla! and other Open Source Content Management Systems are more stable and robust than ever. There is a huge userbase for many of these OS CMSes that ensure their longevity. Many “logo” companies our opening keynote speaker Matt Asay said, are lookng to Open Source. And this downturn in economy has only boostered that switch. Come for the price, stay for the features!
4. I choose Joomla! as my OpenSource CMS. I say that because I know you want me to make a choice! But I must say that if you have a small site and don’t need something so “enterprisey” WordPress is a fine solution. (I know it is a blog application, but it can be so much more! Look for my posts from the upcoming WordPress Camp in Chicago.) Joomla! has a huge user base. There are over 4,500 extensions that users have created to extend the features of Joomla! The forums and support groups are numerous.

“So what do I do now?”

This year, the churchwide office will be working on an ELCA template that you can easily import into your Joomla! site. If you do not have a site yet, or are not familiar with Joomla!, I recommend finding a class or user group in your area. If you are the “online learner” type, I would highly recommend the courses at Lynda.com. Joomla! 1.5 Essential Training is a great one. If you like to learn from a book, the CMS expo recommended Joomla! A User’s Guide: Building a Successful Joomla! Powered Website.

One last thing. If you are able, I would highly recommend seeing you at the next CMS Expo, wherever it may be. Bookmark the Expo’s site, and plan to attend the next one, whatever your job description or level of expertise may be.

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Establish a site purpose statement and goals.
Organize content correctly first.
Create a good site map.
Planning the Joomla structure.

Creating a dynamic site relies on content. In the old days of static sites, you could build out the site and menu, and just have the menu link to nothing and come back and link it later.

But that doesn’t work with dynamic sites. You canbuild the structure of the site and what the menus might look like graphically, but the content must be there to generate the menu.

The rest of this workshop is hands on and handouts.

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This workshop focused on getting your computer set up for local development. These notes may not make a lot of sense right now for you, but it may be a good resource for you in the future.

The speaker, Stephen Pignatro, suggested using the IDE from Aptana.

An IDE is a program that helps you develop and write code. A good IDE

• Projects
• Debugging
• Code Intelligence
• Class View
• Supports Multiple Languages
• Source Code Control
• FTP/SFTP Integration
• Database Navigation
• Integrated Web Browser

He recommended an SVN repository called BeanStalk. There is a free plan.

JImports is a library of Joomla code that is very helpful.

A great tutorial on docs.joomla.org explains a lot of this in more detail.

It gets very technical from here, so I think I’ll end this post!

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