Fork In The Road Music » websites

Before You Create Your Webpage

Russell Martin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:24:05 +0000

“Do you want people to spend time visiting your church website or visiting your church?” This is the question a wise person asked me when I was talking about upgrading our church website. The question caused me to rethink some of the things I was planning for our site. I am not arguing against having a quality website, however I think there are some questions to be asked, and things to seriously be considered when you are starting a website for your church or non profit organization. Here is a list of questions I came up with:

1. What is your goal? You need to decide what your website will provide. Maybe it will have basic information like dates, times and forms. What ever your reason make sure that you are using the appropriate tool, or site, for the job.

2. How much are you going to spend- You can easily spend $2500 or more to have a beautiful website designed for your group or church. You need to ask yourself whether that money should be spent on your web presence or if it could be put to use in your organization in a better way.

3. What do you need to get your message across? Wait.. first figure out what your message is. Then what do you need to get that message out. Will flash slideshow with pictures be the best format? Would video updates be effective? Do you need to be able to create podcasts?

4. Who is your audience and how do they like to be reached? Don’t just think about who you are communicating with but also consider what ways they communicate. I recently had a member of our church tell me she does not go to our website. When I asked why, she said that she gets our email updates and facebook messages and they all came to her phone. She has no idea what the website looks like, how many hours I spent choosing the right photo or how much money we spent designing it. She gets the information she wants in the best format for her. That’s what’s important.

5. Consider other forms of communication- In this artcile by Fred Zimny he proposes that with services like facebook and twitter, that websites are becoming less important and are being forced to change:

“Over the next few years, we’re going to see official institutional websites become less important. They will cease functioning as the only point of web interaction between businesses and customers and will become merely the official storefront. The main “conversion goal” of these retooled portal sites will be to drive interactions onto the third-party social networking sites.”

It used to be that your goal was to get people to come to your website for interaction with your company. It seems more and more that websites are directing their visitors to their presence on social networking sites like facebook and twitter. Consider the thought that a website cannot be the only online presence your organization has.

6. Will your web presence be mobile?- Look at the number of iphones, blackberry’s, droids and other smartphones that are out there. More and more we access the web on the go. Are you considering how your site will be accessed by these devices?

What questions do you think should be considered before starting a website for your organization?

The Blogs I’m Reading- Part 2

Russell Martin — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:18:59 +0000

Last week I shared the first part of my list of blogs that come across my feed reader. All of these are websites that I read on a regular basis for inspiration, contemplation, devotion, randomness and humor. Here is the part two of my list.

Life in Student Ministry

Milestone Worship

Observations and Devotions

Pastor Shawn

Pro Blogger

Ragamuffin Soul

Rich Kirkpatrick’s Weblog

Seeing Gray

Flickr- Shared Worship Background Graphics

Steve’s Stuff

What blogs are you reading that I should add to my list?

The Blogs I’m Reading- Part 1

Russell Martin — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:51:03 +0000

Every day words of wisdom, words of inspiration, words of humor, words of instruction and some really random things come across my computer screen. I have some blogs in my blog roll but I thought I would share with you some of the ones you don’t see. Enjoy

A child of God educating other children.

A Ragamuffin’s Reflections

All About Worship And Life by Wisdom Moon

Church Marketing Sucks

churchrelevance.com

Consuming Worship

Contemplations, Adaptations, and Revelations

CreativeMYK Gallery

E-zekiel News Feed

element worship

Fork In The Road Music

FredMcKinnon.Com

Gen-X Missional Wesleyan

Houston Astros News

Julie Reid-Worship Leader

Kem Meyer on Less Clutter & Noise

So what blogs are you reading?

How Does Your Church Communicate?

Russell Martin — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 05:31:04 +0000

Since the beginning of the year our church has moved to doing a monthly full color newsletter instead of the weekly black and white one we used to use. This has proved to be effective however we still have many members who would like to receive something in the mail weekly.

Last year we began sending out E-news, a weekly email with church information. In august we moved it from an email list to a blog and now members can subscribe via email or by rss feed.

All this to say we are still searching for the best way to communicate with our members. Part of our congregation is very much a paper generation wanting newsletters, and bullitens, part of them are a computer generation with websites and emails and a growing part are a cell phone/Pda generation using things like text messages and twitter.

To find out we did a small survey to try to see what people used the most so far. We sent this out by email so the results so far only reflect the answers of those who use the computer and receive email or visit the website. The question was “How would you like the church to communicate with you?” They could check as many as applied to them.

84% – Email
49%- Monthly Newsletter
29%- Website
28%- Mailed Weekly News
21%- Facebook Group
18%- Church Bulliten
13%- Text Message
12%- RSS Feed
7%- Twitter

My question is how does your church communicate? What means do you use to get information to your members? What do you use to get information to your visitors?

A List of Free Worship Resources

Russell Martin — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 14:14:58 +0000

When I began this blog one thing I wanted to do was to provide worship leaders and churches with free resources to use in their services. Over the past year I have shared mp3 files of songs, PDF Chord sheets, powerpoint background files and photos free for such use. My hope is that this will grow into a place for many different people to share resources and materials. Recently I moved my from blogspot to my new home on wordpress ad when I did this not everything made it over in transition. So I have created a resource page. It contains a list of each resource I have offered so far.

You are free and encouraged to use any of the resources on this page. You may also share them freely with others. I just ask that you do not sell them or use them for commercial use. For more information check out the Creative Commons.

You are also free and encouraged to submit your resources for others to use. You can do this either directly or indirectly. First you can directly, send your file to me, I will host it, post it and share it. You will get a link to your blog or website and a huge thanks. Second you can indirectly send me a link to your blog page where you have your resource hosted. I will write a post linking to your blog or website and again you will get a huge thanks.

What am I looking for? Whatever you use that would be helpful for others. This could include but is not limited to photos, powerpoint files, songs, chord sheets, websites, drama plays, skits, and videos.

Resources: Where to Find Music

Russell Martin — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 21:47:00 +0000

There are plenty of free sites out there that offer you chord sheets for your favorite worship songs. Finding them is as easy as searching for the name of the song, and tabs. The result will be a variety of sites, with a variety of results. There are also some sites that cost a little but give you a lot. Two sites that I have landed on recently that I am tending to use more and more for my worship song resources.

Praise Charts- www.praisecharts.com – Praise charts is a collection of Worship songs from many of the top worship publishers on the scene today. Artists like Lincoln Brewster, Hillsongs, Tommy Walker, Mercy Me, Passion and David Crowder. Options for most songs include Orchestration, Piano, Rythm, and sometimes Finale files and chord charts. The songs are based on a credit system. You sign up and pay for 25-50 credits and use them over a one year period.

Recommendation- If your group is small and just plays mostly by tabs then this might not be the resource for you. However if you either have or are planning on any brass, winds or chorus then these arrangements are great and have it all done for you.

Song Select- www.songselect.com – Song select is a service of CCLI and provides a collection of arrangements for most of the worship songs covered by CCLI. Songs like “Mighty to Save”, “How Great is Our God”, “Blessed Be Your Name” and tons of others used in worship services everywhere. Song Select provides lyrics which are downloadable and formatted for Media Shout, Power Point etc, an audio clip, Chord Sheets, Lead Sheets and Hymn Sheets (4 part harmony arrangements). Most of the arrangements are good. I don’t particuarly care for the Hymn harmonies but I can be picky. The service over all is a set fee and you can download as much as you like. The thing I really like is that all the songs are transposable and you can print them in any key.

I listed these two paid sites because they offer consistent results and cover a multitude of songs. I know there are a ton of free websites that offer chords and tabs along with lyrics. What sites do you use when you or your worship team is looking for chord sheets?

Media: Where to Find Graphics

Russell Martin — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:08:00 +0000

I remember 10 years ago going to a mid winter camp for our conference and the worship leader was leading music and the words were on transparencies being “projected” onto a sheet. A few years later I was at the same event where the white words were projected onto a black background. It seems today though that a slide isn’t a slide without countless number of background graphics. While I sometimes wonder if we may have gone overboard, putting a different picture with every slide, not staying with a theme etc, I do realize the value of a well chosen graphic to go behind the words that we are singing, or for a sermon, announcements and other uses.
There are several websites where you can go to find free graphics for you to use. Here are some of my favorites:

Stock Exchange- http://www.sxc.hu/ – This is a photo exchange where thousands of photos exist for your use. All the photos are huge, big enough to print, but can be easily compressed down for use on screens. Most of them are covered under the normal licenses which allows you to use the photo for free unless you are using it to make money by selling it in a design set or something like that. Some photos require you to notify the artist when you use the photo in public.

Creative MYK- http://www.creativemyk.com/ Creative MYK adds a different twist on the traditional photo site. It allows people to upload not only photos but also Adobe InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator Files. Most of them upload in layers so if you see something you like you can edit it for your uses. I actually have a gallery here with a few photos.

There are a ton of other sites out there. These are the ones I use the most.
Where do you find your graphics?