“404 Page Not Found†errors are one of those curses of the web. Left to its own devices, your web server software will spit back a stark message that’s bound to at least annoy, if not downright discourage, your users. Some say it even affects your search engine rankings, though that doesn’t make much sense to me.
Certainly 404s can undermine users’ trust in your site. If visitors can’t find what they are looking for, they won’t link to it, and that could in a roundabout way affect your rankings. In the end, though, setting up a user-friendly 404 page is simply the right thing to do.
How you trigger your own customized 404 depends on your web host or server. For most of us this means checking the host’s documentation. In my experience, they all have it spelled out somewhere. Just search “404″ in their help section. What exactly you have to do will vary quite a bit. Some are as simple as entering a page to point to from the host’s control panel. Others will have you do a few kart-wheels such as setting up an “.htaccess†file. If you can’t find precisely what’s needed, contact your host.
Once you know how to set up your 404 page, the next question is what do you include on it? Opinions vary. Mine is that there are three absolute requirements:
If your site is over a certain size, include a search box. For many church sites, this will be overkill. If your site is only ten pages, don’t have a search box; just list your ten pages. If your site is 500+ pages, then a search box is a must.
One tip: if you add the following meta tag in the <head> section, search engines won’t end up accidentally indexing your 404 page:
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”>
Also, in case an example might help, here’s my church’s 404.
For more in depth 404 information, inspiration and even amusement, there’s no better place than the 404 Research Lab. Even if you don’t need 404 help, the lab is worth a quick visit for any serious web geek or diva.
Once upon a time (around 2000), I quit as the webmaster for my church. For a while the site was fine, but then the new webmaster began to neglect things. About a year later, the minister and a couple of other people more or less begged me to return. I said yes mostly because I had to clench my teeth before I could stomach looking at the site.
As soon as I’d tidied it up, I immediately found someone to replace me. We worked together for about a year, with me ostensibly training him. Then one day it dawned on me that I didn’t want to quit again – that it was a whole different experience than it had been in the past.
The big difference, from my worms-eye perspective, was that I was happy. This morning I asked myself, why? What makes it so I enjoy it now? Here, as best I can tell, in priority order are the reasons it’s now a good experience.
I wonder. Is this the way it is for other church webmasters? And when congregations provide a great environment for their webmasters, is it more likely you will have good sites? Or will you just have fatcat webmasters?
For a while I’ve been toying with the idea of using the del.icio.us experimental blog posting feature, and yesterday I did the deed. So a little after midnight, when I was fast asleep, the bookmarks I’d made yesterday were posted on this blog.
In theory, from henceforth this should happen every day when I link in del.icio.us. For what it’s worth, I don’t link that often, being a moderately picky bookmarker. Typically sites I choose are utilitarian and related to constructing websites.
I expect most of you already know about del.icio.us, but in case you don’t, it’s a “social bookmarking website†– meaning that registered users get to share their lists of web favorites. It’s a great example of the extreme potential of databases. Take some simple information from many sources, get a critical mass of it, develop a few tools for it, and you can serve it up in an amazing variety of ways.
If there really is a Web 2.0 (something I question, given all the hype about it), then del.icio.us is my favorite example.
ChurchBeauty, a blog-like gallery of great church websites, has recently relaunched. How cool is that to have an RSS feed of inspiring church website designs?
Are you looking for an easy way to improve your congregation’s website? Look no further than the bottom of the page – at the footer. I just randomly checked five church websites, and none had it right. Yikes! It’s time for a quick intervention.
Convention has become that a web page footer is where your church’s name, address, phone number and a copyright statement will be. In other words, that’s where a lot of people who are in a hurry, not to mention search engines, will look for such critical information. Do you want to do well with Google Local? Then have your phone number with the area code in the footer.
While there are many things that need a bit of, um, sprucing up at my church’s site, this is one thing we do right. So take a look at the bottom of the home page for an example of a decent footer.
There seems to be more concern than usual lately about the ratio of men to women in various arenas. Zeldman is blogging about its reality in web design leadership, and then Church Marketing Sucks (coincidentally, I assume) started down the same path.
The broad trends that have been measured are:
What does this mean? I asked Mr. Web Diva. Ever the pragmatist, he said, there must not be many church webmasters.
But does it matter? My first reaction was, in truth, so what? But then my blood started to boil as I reflected on the possibilities that (1) women might want to be in web design or IT and are being held back, and (2) church doesn’t meet men’s needs.
I don’t know about the second possibility (though I remember that in Zen there were significantly more men than women). For the first, in my experience there is an ugly truth that the pundits seem to be tiptoeing around. That’s misogyny. In many of the IT worlds I’ve inhabited, it’s alive and well. Maybe it’s just an anomaly, but I doubt it, given what other women tell me. More likely, it’s hard to measure or I’ve just missed that part of the measurements.
Of course, it’s not omnipresent. I think, for example, of my church’s “Nerd Herd.†It’s six men and me, and I don’t detect the tiniest smidgen of sexism. But what woman or girl in her right mind, having heard the snide remarks that are so common among IT staff, would want to make a career of this? As far as I’m concerned, it’s the strongest argument for Web production being in Communications or Marketing and not in IT.
But back to the pragmatic: if Mr. Web Diva is right, it’s bad news for churches. The writing is on the wall: churches need good websites. That means we need good webmasters. Who cares what their gender is? What I care about is that we are all happy and fulfilled.
I happened upon a few great plug-ins, thanks to Daily Blog Tips, and just couldn’t resist the temptation. The two that have me the most excited are:
Tony Miles, a “Media Chaplain†(love that title) in the UK, reports in Mayb2day on some provocative ideas of Andrew Graystone, the new Director of the Churches’ Media Council:
“Many church leaders are blissfully unaware that there is a revolution underway that’s every bit as radical as the invention of the printing press. Five years from now we will either have learnt to minister in a digital environment, or we will be its victims. Analogue churches won’t survive in a digital age.
“For a church, going digital means … learning to use contemporary communications tools like email and podcasting, rather than photocopying the weekly newssheet. It means developing a language and a mindset – even a theology – that embraces digital culture.”
I agree – up to a point. Five years seems a bit extreme to me. I suppose it depends on your definition. For faiths like mine, dominated by the well educated and well off – yes, he’s absolutely right. I wonder, though, about poorer communities, where faith can manifest in different ways. My hope is to talk to friends in churches and communities unlike mine, and report on my findings. How long can an analog church survive may be my first question.
And what do you, the blogoscenti, think? Do you know of churches still in the digital dark ages – that don’t even use email? If so, how long do you think they can remain that way?
I love Seth Godin’s blog. Mostly I love it for the unexpected places it takes me, but today I love it because of his Memo to the very small.
I often wonder about websites for very small mosques. Actually I think about small synagogues, temples, and Buddhist centers too. My bet is their needs aren’t that different from my church’s, as long as they are in the first world. So what is he doing? Reading my mind?
His solution is TypePad, which he uses and knows well. From what I’ve heard, it generally has a good reputation.
Next time a small organization asks my advice, I will suggest they experiment with a TypePad 30-day trial and let me know how it goes. And if you are part of a small organization hoping to build or improve your website, why not give it a try?
When I began this site, I didn’t think there were any blogs about building church websites — unless you count Church Marketing Sucks. After a bit of poking around on Technorati, though, I found a smattering. Two of the best are from the UK.
Living Open Source is a collection of “ramblings on faith, life, music and all manner of computer wizardry†by the Rev. Tim Hyde from St Helens Baptist Church, St Helens in Merseyside. As he puts it: “there is something very gospel about the whole concept of open source.†Before becoming a full-time minister, he was in IT for ten years. Lately he has a great series on “Blogging your church with WordPress.â€
Churchblogger: Church Website and Blog Ideas is by David of the Whyteleafe Free Church, who “found there was a lack of practical advice for church website managers and church blogs specifically,†and set about to fill that void. He too is a WordPress user.
And so, come to think of it, am I. A WordPress user that is. We don’t use it quite as extensively on our church site, but nonetheless have been very happy with it for announcements.