Faith and Web

Writing this blog changed me. It turned out that even though my main goal wasn’t blogging itself, nonetheless I loved it.

The thing was, I didn’t have enough time. Various life forces converged. In particular, my job kicked into high gear. But there was a part of me that pined away, wanting to blog.

Then came the Christmas holidays. Every year this is a time I reflect and try to come up with a goal for the new year — a goal that’s both challenging and realistic about my limitations. This holiday the thing that kept popping into my mind was blogging. Left brain: “You don’t have time.” Right brain: “Pout. But I want to.” Left brain: “That’s not good enough.” And so on.

Finally the big day came and I couldn’t come up with anything else that did it for me. Worse, I’m perceived as a blogger in the worlds I circulate in. People are even asking my advice about who should blog and how.

So, I took the leap, with one sensible caveat to myself. This new blog would not be about substantial posts. I gave myself permission to dash stuff off, make more typos, not dot every i, etc., etc. For subject matter, well…. In many ways it’s still the same as this blog, but it’s not particularly church-focused. Sometimes I blog about church and web. Sometimes I blog about work and web. And sometimes, gasp, I just blog about fun stuff like Mr. Web Diva climbing trees.

So here it is…. Enjoy…. The Happy Web Diva.

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Friday was a glorious day. As well having perfect autumn weather, a website I’ve been working on for months at last went live. It was a complete redesign for our local Rape & Sexual Center (RASAC).

At first glance I expect many of you won’t connect the dots between a church web diva and a local service agency like this. Nonetheless, the connections are deep and strong. I would never have known of this group if it hadn’t been for my church.

In the early 1990s, ours was one of the many churches torn asunder by allegations of clergy misconduct. Those of us struggling to do the right thing by our faith could find few if any good resources. Into this bleak terrain came RASAC’s counselors. While the congregation’s needs were many, their focus went right to the heart – to those most wounded – to the victims of misconduct. They stood by them and helped the church see what they needed most. They represented one of the few organizations that helped us turn a corner back into a healthy congregation.

More than that, through my church I have learned the importance of social justice. I’ve learned that social justice isn’t always marching in marches. Some of us do that well, while others become ministers or lawyers. Still others teach, inspiring our youth to justice work. And some of us create websites. We grease the wheels of communication – getting the word out to those who need it.

Creating websites is also, inevitably, a learning experience. As I catch my breath, the things I realize I’ve learned from this one are:

1. Be patient. Building even a small website takes time if you want to do a good job. In this case, I unintentionally created one of the longer logjams. The same forces that slowed down this blog also slowed the redesign. But the good people at RASAC were patient and understanding. I hope I was likewise with them.

2. Be appreciative. Their VP of Development & Marketing was the mastermind behind the site, pulling together the content and organizing the structure. She did the crucial work and she did an excellent job – and then sent flowers to me! This was after a small bumpy patch when stakeholders were trying to correct things like word spacing (being in a print paradigm and not realizing it).

3. Express compassion. One of RASAC’s Board counseled me to make the look-and-feel gentle and soothing, so a victim who came to the site wouldn’t be scared away. It’s such a grim subject, but he made me literally see things in a whole different way. And it brought to mind a battered woman whom I heard speak years ago. I’ll never forget her reading Psalm 55 – “Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest.” Hence the birds in the upper right corner.

May I help the people who need RASAC find their wings and find peace.

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As some of you have noticed, I haven’t updated Faith and Web in several weeks. What’s worse, I’ve barely kept up with other blogs. Worst of all, I haven’t even been to church. Put simply, there hasn’t been time. This morning, however, I was back in our gorgeous sanctuary. It’s a new day.

And what a service to return to…. The Wicked and the Good, featured the Rev. Gail Seavey, Marguerite Mills (Director of Religious Education), Jason Shelton (Director of Music), the children’s choir, the adult choir and many good-humored others, singing songs from the musical “Wicked” and parsing how we can tell who is doing good and who isn’t. “A hint: you can’t always tell by looking.” It was one of those services I’ll remember the rest of my life.

Now, a few hours later, I’m mostly recovered and delighted to also have time to blog. I’ll do the obvious, and reflect about my gap in posts as well as what it means for the future. One aside: at church I was comforted to learn that lately many of us have been busy in a way we aren’t used to. It’s good to know I’m not alone.

Speaking for me, most of the changes are evanescent. For example, we’re remodeling our home office. This has long been a dream of mine – to give the room that houses our computers more light, plus a view of our backyard. However, with the construction my beloved old eMac went offline.

A few of the changes, though, are large and of lasting consequence. In particular, my job responsibilities have expanded. I’ve been named a leader of the organization I work for. As you might imagine, I feel deeply honored and absolutely thrilled (even a little stunned). But more importantly, this signifies a shift in understanding of the Web – both what it is and what it means to my organization.

It’s not just a shift in understanding for the executives. It’s also a shift for me. I believe that this blog is part of it. Blogging has helped me look at my work in some new ways. It’s one thing to talk about and build Web 2.0. It’s a whole other thing to actually live it.

Today, as I catch my breath, I’m looking at my priorities. I realize they’ve changed. The priorities I understand look something like this:

1. Love my family and dearest friends. In the end they are what matters most.

2. Do the best job at work I possibly can. I must live up to the trust in web leadership that has been invested in me.

3. Love my church. Unlike many people, I am blessed to be a part of an amazingly vibrant, yet truthful, congregation. Over and over, it helps me discover a better self. As they sang this morning:

“We are led to those who help us most to grow
If we let them and we help them in return.
Well, I don’t know if I believe that’s true
But I know I’m who I am today
Because I knew you:
I have been changed for good.”

Looking at this list, I’m also aware that there are some missing priorities. In particular, I don’t know where blogging fits. Is it priority number four? Or is it woven into two and three? I suspect the latter, but have a confession to make.

When I began this blog, my real goal was to consider writing a book about building excellent church websites. Specifically I planned to blog until the New Year and then regroup. If still interested, I was going to spend my down time during the last week of the year exploring publishers. That decision is now made — at least for the foreseeable future.

However, it turns out I love blogging in and of itself. So I wonder if there is a way I can write meaningful but short and occasional blog entries? Many of the blogs I read do this very well. While that’s not been my style, perhaps I can figure out a way to do this? Or perhaps I will have more days like today where time unexpectedly opens up and I can again write something more substantial.

I don’t know what my blogging tempo will be in days to come, but I do know that it’s a wonderful adventure, that I have much to say, and that church websites are well worth loving too.

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We’re back from 12 glorious days in Britain. It’s been years since I’ve been abroad and I wasn’t sure what to expect on returning. Would I be overjoyed to see my trusty computers again? Or sad to return to the grind?

Like many geeks, I’m an introvert. My ideal day consists of puttering with code, punctuated by reading and a solitary walk. To my amazement, however, my main reaction to the end of this lovely holiday is delight in reuniting with friends, particularly church friends – be it via email, web, phone or (best of all) in person.

The Nerd Herd Dines

As luck would have it, my first day back ended with a meeting over dinner of the church’s Technology Committee (AKA the Nerd Herd). Granted, I’m a bit dewy-eyed at the moment, but for some time I’ve considered this august body to be a major asset to our church. Today I decided to analyze precisely why.

As you might have guessed, the Nerd Herd came into being to address a crisis. About two years ago, the staff computers were in shambles. The Board was willing to use some of our then scarce funds to replace of all the equipment. But a few of us stomped our feet and said (more or less): “Don’t you dare. It’s not the equipment that’s the problem. That’s a symptom. It’s a lack of infrastructure.”

Fortunately, the Board listened to us. And then a very dedicated, as well as talented, geek stepped up to the plate, saying he’d be happy to chair a technology group.

When we first met, we identified what the problems really were, and then we set out to fix them. We recommended replacing much of the hardware, and while this might look like we were back to Plan A, really we weren’t. We made sure systems were much more secure, we were organized, and we set up ways to keep track of licenses, etc. – gathering documentation in a couple of central places (including a wiki).

There are now eight of us, with a strong presence of large males and beer drinkers. But really it wouldn’t matter if we were twelve drummers drumming, as long as it works. And it does. Here’s why.

Key Ingredients for Successful Church Tech Support

1. An excellent leader. Our chair (shepherd?) is supportive of all members, and very hands on with the staff. We know we’re very lucky, and we’re grateful for his able leadership.
2. Gratitude and respect. The appreciation of our chair extends in other directions. He sets the tone, and we are respectful of each other – laced with a boatload of crazy jokes and laughter. Respect doesn’t have to equate with fear.
3. A clear understanding of our mission. We are there to support the technology needs of leadership, particularly staff. We are reactive, not proactive. When there’s a need, we listen and take care of it.
4. An easy procedure for staff-in-need. Early on, we set up an email address that forwards to all members of the committee. When staff members have a tech problem, they simply email this one address. If email is down, then there’s a prioritized list of phone numbers. To get this going, we sent a marvelously succinct (7 lines, to be precise) memo to staff. It went: “FUUN Tech Help. If your church computer doesn’t work, the church’s Internet access is lost, etc., here is what to do – in priority order….” The remaining lines listed the tech committee email address, followed by phone numbers.
5. Infrequent meetings. We don’t often gather physically – just once or twice a year. Initially we had to meet more to get things sorted out, but that was then. We get it that just because we’re a committee doesn’t mean we have to meet a lot. Some committees (e.g. Nominating) do, but not us. On the other hand, it’s good we meet occasionally. Several people noted over dinner that our meeting is an important part of their church experience. It’s one of the best ways to be in community – breaking bread (and more) with those who share a similar worldview – in our case, a perspective shaped by zeros and ones.
6. Clear and easy procedures, particularly around documentation. The procedures are informal, but they work. Specifically, we have a notebook to gather all of those rabbit-like software CDs and a wiki where any of us can add or update general documentation.
7. Recognition of differing areas of expertise. One of the realities of church life is that once you are perceived as a geek, the average congregant and staff member assumes you can do anything with a computer. Of course this is nuts. But that doesn’t mean people get it. They may in a hazy kind of way, but that’s it. From their perspective, something is wrong and you’re more likely to be able to fix it than them. In fact, that’s true, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay. It’s a classic set-up for burnout. Keep asking people to fix things they don’t know that much about, and guess what. Not only will they stop doing it, they’ll probably stop coming to church. We have overlapping but diverse areas of expertise and respect that. We’re very fortunate to have a network/security expert on our team. Other areas of expertise include email, desktop support, hardware setup, hardware maintenance, programming and web.
8. Great boundaries. We actually keep a very low profile. We don’t want church members to get the idea that we are there to help them individually. Thus, for example, you won’t find us listed in the church directory with the other committees. Also we don’t initiate work. We simply respond when appropriate people ask us to.

If technology at your church is a mess like ours was, I’d heartily recommend looking at the infrastructure and setting up a team like ours. Just be sure to find a great shepherd.

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I’d been intending to post this past week, but between a couple of major projects, illness in my family, and the heat, haven’t had the time. Now I have another big project, so it will be two to three weeks before I have a chance to blog again.

Meanwhile, I’ll be thinking of you, gathering stories, and praying for rain in this part of the world.

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The other day I got an email from a church webmaster who was embarrassed about the site he manages. I can’t tell you how often this happens, and I’ve been there too. Typically the site in question is out-of-date, both in content and look, or it’s missing critical information. But almost without exception, there’s no need to take on the added burden of remorse.

In fact, I can only think of one exception, and that was a long time ago. Back around 1999, I had to pick up the pieces left by a webmaster who had promised the moon and delivered next-to-nothing. He was inexperienced, so that in itself wasn’t so bad. What made me want to go into scolding mother mode was that he locked the site down, wouldn’t share the password and made it impossible for others to help. Of course, he wasn’t embarrassed at all.

But that’s not the norm. Your average church webmaster is conscientious and doing the best he or she can. Many have been saddled with a site that barely works and looks woefully out-of-date. Often they don’t have a lot of background, but are plucky enough to be willing to do what it takes to improve the site.

So what are the keys to overcoming being self-conscious about a site you manage?

1. Understand to your core that the website is the responsibility of the whole church, not just you. I really can’t say this enough, and chances are you too are going to have to spread this message to others. Church leadership is especially accountable for the site, and often they don’t realize it. This is most obvious when they aren’t getting their content to you, but it’s true in other ways too. For example, the minister of my church is great to work with. While as best I can tell she doesn’t have a tech bone in her, nonetheless she’s appreciative and willing to manage staff on the rare occasions there’s a need for that.
2. Do the best you can. There are always things about the site that need work, so just get organized, set reasonable goals, and get going.
3. Enjoy. Celebrate what you’ve accomplished with others who have helped. It’s a joy to see a new technology you’ve installed work or to overhear a visitor say, “I found your church on the web.”

Having said this, it cuts both ways. When the day comes that your church site is fabulous, you can’t puff and preen and take all the credit. Be prepared to share the glory. In any event, it turns out that’s more satisfying. What better feeling is there than to crow with others who have helped? And what more likely way is there to ensure that the site will continue to be first-rate?

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Yesterday I got a frantic phone call about our church’s website. It was a staff member wanting to know if our new alcohol policy was on the site. There was about to be an event on church property and she needed to let the people running it know our rules. She was delighted to hear it was, and I was delighted she’d called. I had always known having our policies on the web would be useful, and here was a great example.

I suspect it may be peculiar to my faith, or perhaps even to my church, but we are awash in policies and procedures. Give us a good challenge, and we answer it with a policy. Not that I think this a bad thing. To the contrary. I even enjoyed reading Robert’s Rules of Order. Seriously. When difficulties arise, and there’s a relevant policy, things typically calm down more quickly.

However, policies don’t do much good if you can’t get your hands on them. For many years our bylaws said they would be available in the church office. However, few of us had easy access to the office. Then even if we did, 80% of the time it was hard to find the needed document – and that’s assuming you knew it existed at all.

Enter the web. About four years ago, I started one of my major nag campaigns. “We need the policies and procedures on the web,” was my constant refrain. Gradually we started to get few on the site. And then, as luck would have it, I got put on a committee that was making recommendations about minor changes to our bylaws. I bet you can guess where that took us.

Our Bylaws Section 8.1.3 now reads: “A current and complete copy of the Policy and Procedures Manual shall be available from the church office and on the church website for reference by the general membership.”

Of course, as anyone who has been around the block a few times might guess, just having this in the bylaws still didn’t guarantee success. It just gave the web diva more leverage. And now, I’m happy to say, we have a fairly comprehensive set of Policies and Procedures on our site.

We also have developed a good process for getting policies on the web. The Board has a designated person (a past president of our congregation) who vets all policies, reformats them and gets them to me. I then take the original Word documents and keep them in a private folder on the web, while also posting a PDF version.

While even I will never argue that having policies on the web is easy to organize, let alone cool, nonetheless I think it’s one of the best uses of your time. If information is power, then this is a simple and effective way to share the power and promote a healthy congregation.

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“Where is God in the Web?” I asked the Rev. Luminous the other day. He’s a brilliant minister, who happens to have a good-sized geek-streak that he mostly ignores. He’s got other things to do – including constantly inspiring me. Not that he spends a lot of time on that directly. It just sort of happens when I go to church.

I could see him flinch. (”Sorry,” I thought.) Of course, I’d caught him unawares. But I wasn’t looking for a carefully crafted answer – just a bit of help.

His first response was to speak of the power imbalance in blogging. He’s been burned by this. For me this issue speaks right to my Collection Development Librarian heart. In my constructs, he’s talking about the paucity of editorial control, where anyone can be a self-proclaimed expert. The way I have it figured, the savvy web user has worked out new ways to determine authority and worthiness. It’s fascinating that he instantly thought of blogging, which for me is just one small part of the Web, albeit astonishingly rich.

Then he gave me a more academic answer, mentioning a book we’d had a sermon on a few years ago: Small Pieces Loosely Joined by David Weinberger. Although I’d read the book back then, I’d forgotten about it. I don’t recall Weinberger talking about God, but the way he holds up the Web is indeed part of my search.

And then Rev. Luminous really hit it for me. He mentioned the theory that (as I understand it) God is what happens between you and me. While Martin Buber’s I and Thou is somewhere between difficult and impossible for me to grasp, nonetheless this helps. The Thou of the Web. It’s stupendous.

And it was such a delightful moment in time. The Rev. Luminous: comfortable with God, but reacting to the word Web. Me: comfortable with the Web, but reacting to the word God.

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Sooner or later, any aspiring webmaster worth her salt is going to come into contact with the .htaccess file. The best response to this is to say, “On Guard!” It’s one tricky rascal of a file to deal with, particularly if you are on a Mac.

You’ll read that it’s powerful. True. And you’ll read that it’s easy. Also true. But that’s only in a limited sense. Among other things it’s easy to hose your whole site with it. I should know. I’ve done it twice in the brief life of this blog. The first time I knew instantly, and probably none of you saw it. The second time was Saturday, and for 18 hours it slipped under my radar. Horrors!

I knew I’d altered the .htacess file and I knew I was playing with fire, but I also double-checked and thought all was well. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The home page was fine. Everything else disappeared, while I blithely went to a wonderful oh-so-Nashville concert and got a good night’s sleep. Yesterday I awoke to an email from a dear friend politely inquiring about the state of my blog. I knew in a trice what the problem was. The dreaded .htaccess file. Fortunately, I was also able to fix it in a trice.

I’ll tell you why I was monkeying with the .htaccess file in an upcoming post, but before that, I think a very brief discussion of what it is, why it matters and why it’s such a slippery beast is in order.

What The Heck Is An .htacess File?

First off, it’s an Apache thing. Most of you (whether you realize it or not) probably are using servers running Apache. If your server uses some other software (the most likely alternative being Microsoft’s IIS), you may happily ignore this post.

Second, even if it is Apache, depending on how the sysadmin (system administrator) has configured your server, you may or may not be able to use it. Usually you can, but in highly secured environments you can’t.

Sysadmins can control the things you do with Apache in other ways, which are more efficient and safe than .htaccess. However, most sysadmins aren’t at the beck and call of your average webmaster. If you are using an inexpensive host (a likelihood for most church sites), then you won’t have easy access to the sysadmins, but chances are they will let you use .htaccess.

So now, with those caveats aside, the .htaccess is a text file that controls the configuration of all the files in its directory and child directories, unless the child, as growing children are wont to do, sprouts its own .htaccess file with a countermanding directive.

Most often, I alter an .htaccess to route users to a more friendly page-not-found message than the standard, bleak 404. I also have altered it to control password access to a portion of a website and to speed up response time.

Sample .htaccess Commands

Now for some examples of the commands you can add to your .htaccess file. These snippets of code take up one line each of the file. All you have to alter are the strings in italics (and be sure not to use the quotation marks).

To Disable Directory Browsing (a good thing to do)
“Options All -Indexes”

Change the Default Page
“DirectoryIndex myhome.htm index.htm index.php”

Redirect to a New Page
“Redirect oldpage.html http://www.domain.org/newpage.html”

Redirect to a New Directory
“Redirect /olddir http://www.domain.org/newdir/”

Redirect to a Customized Error Page (another good thing to do)
“ErrorDocument 404 /notfound.html”

Pretty cool to be able to do all of those things, huh? But….

Why .htaccess Is So Crazy Making, Especially On a Mac

First notice that this file name is in fact only a file extension. Nothing precedes the period – and the period is crucial. Upload a file named “htaccess” (instead of “.htaccess”) and it won’t do a thing.

On a Mac, this means you normally won’t be able to even see the file, much less create it. One way Apple protects its machines from user error is to hide system files, including ones that begin with a period. I usually get around this by using either TinkerTool or the “File / Open Hidden” command in BBEdit. Oddly enough, Dreamweaver can see the .htaccess file locally on my machine, but not remotely on the server. For that I use Cyberduck.

However, not only is the .htaccess file hard to find for many of us, it’s hazardous. It turns out you can do much worse things than I have done, such as set up infinite loops. Read some of the official documentation for Apache 1.3 if you’d like a sobering experience.

Also, unbeknownst to you, programs you use like WordPress may be altering your .htaccess file. If you overwrite them, your site will stop working. That’s what I did Saturday. I accidentally overwrote a WordPress directive.

Precautionary Measures

To avoid the pitfalls, there are four things to do.

First, on your server find the .htacess file in the appropriate directory of your site, download it and back it up before you alter a thing.

Second, be clear on your environment. Know not just if you are running Apache, but what version. And be sure to track down your host’s documentation about .htaccess. It can be a goldmine. See, for example, my host’s documentation.

Third, read up on a particular command before you upload a change to the .htaccess. It’s kind of like getting a second opinion for an illness.

Finally, don’t just double check after you upload an altered .htaccess file. Triple check. Try it in another browser and test several pages in different subdirectories.

While I don’t mean to frighten you unduly with talk of illness and hazard, precaution is the key. Using .htaccess wisely can do many great things for your site that you wouldn’t be able to do otherwise, so get to know it and handle with care.

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