October 2006
Blogs and Wikis - It's time you had a new website	Show Menu

By James Pasley

Earlier this year, the Church Music Committee re-launched its website. This represented a significant change in the way the committee uses the site. The circumstances which led to this will be familiar to many. Our experience with the latest technology for hosting web sites has been very positive and may be of use to any parish or choir that needs a website.

The committee had an existing website hosted on http://www.anglican.org/ which had served us well for a number of years. The layout was created by a professional designer. The content was edited using a tool called Dreamweaver and then uploaded to the website. At the time, this was state of the art. However, it did present a few difficulties; the main ones being that updating the site was effectively tied to a single computer and the use of the tools required some basic training. This meant that the task of updating the site inevitably fell to one person.

Technology has moved on providing us with the opportunity to create a site which facilitates a much more collaborative approach. We wanted the new site to provide a simple and intuitive layout for visitors to the site. It should also be easy to modify the content without the need for special tools or training. The goal was to create a site which any committee member could update.

The key to achieving this was something called a "wiki". A Wiki is any Web site which not only allows you to view the pages, but also to edit them directly within the Web browser itself. There are lots of such sites; one of the most successful is http://www.wikipedia.org/: an encyclopaedia where anyone can add a new definition or modify an existing one.

There are a number of companies that will help you create your own Wiki. We choose http://www.editme.com/. The costs are very low—just $10 a month. Creating a new website is simply a matter of filling in some online forms to enter details such as the name of the site. There are a number of example website designs to choose from, so you don't need any skills as a designer. Security settings allow you to control who can edit the site. Automatic backups ensure nothing is lost. When a committee member views our site, each page has an "edit page" link which turns the web browser into a simple word processor allowing changes to be made instantly. To everyone else, the pages appear as they would on a normal website.

Keeping the content of a web site up to date can be a real challenge – this is where moving to a Wiki really pays off. The ease of use means that we are always updating the site, particularly, the events page. So if you are running a musical event be sure and let us know and it can be publicised on the site.

If you run a choir and are looking for an even simpler way to keep everyone up to date with the latest information, consider creating a blog. A blog is a diary which is publicly available on the web. There are many web sites which will allow you to create one for free. A good place to start is http://www.blogger.com/, it's run by Google. Again, creating one is simply a matter of filling in an online form. After that you can add entries to your blog using another form. Google also provide online calendars, allowing you to view the months of the year and create entries for events such as choir practices and services.

Wikis, blogs and on-line calendars provide a very convenient way to share information on the web. They require nothing more than basic computer skills. If you can surf the web you're half way there. Anyone with a little time to experiment should be able to get started. So whether you do it yourself (as we did) or bring in the professionals, be sure and look for a solution that provides the convenience of editing your site inside a web browser. And when you do, send us the address and we'll publicise it on the Church Music Committee web site.

James Pasley is one of the organists in Lucan parish and a member of the Church Music Committee.

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