I'm a web developer. Been doing it (as for some reason I always like to say) since before
Coca-Cola (or anybody else) had a public website; the first sites I worked on were internal corporate ones. The company policy manual online, for instance - and then signing up for yearly benefits, or changing or adjusting them. That was big-time back then - very advanced stuff. We coded in Notepad in those days! And we liked it! (Well, actually, we didn't; it was a total pain in the you-know-what....)
The organization I first worked for was divided into groups according to specialty: back-end coders; front-end coders (that's me); graphic artists; UI experts (that stands for "user interface"); writers (AKA "content specialists"); salespeople; etc. I'm still mostly front-end, although have absorbed skills from all of the above specialities. I'm the person who actually puts all the other stuff together and presents it to the user; I've found, over time, BTW, that this skill set requires your right brain and your left brain to have about the same amount of influence.
I'm working on a church website now; this particular parish uses a particular church-database software and I have to work within certain constraints. One of these is that content is organized in "channels"; the church purchases so-many-channels for such-and-such a price. "Channels" are sort of "landing pages" - pages that act as central hubs to link to other information. At first I thought this was not such a great thing; I'm used to total freedom in organizing content, and to the "section" concept, with sub-menus and sub-sub-menus, and etc. One of the important things I've learned about websites is that people feel much, much happier when they can locate themselves easily within the site - and find other content easily, too. So I tend to use - over-use, maybe - lots of menus and headers and breadcrumbs, so that people understand right away how the site is organized and so that it will make cognitive sense to them - and not lead to them feeling lost or wondering how to find things.
I was worried about "Channels." You can't really do the sub-menu and sub-sub-menu thing with Channels; Channels point to "articles," which are mostly stand-alone bits of information. (Well, you
can do sub-menus - but you mostly have to do it by hand; not so much fun, really, these days. And most people aren't going to bother; the other point of the software is that it's designed so that total non-techies can use it. Most people simply won't have the time and/or patience to be making menus by hand, and cutting and pasting them into the pages. So 1996, anyway, that.) And, of course, having only
so many channels meant that I had to be efficient, and make a lot happen with much less freedom than I'm used to.
What I found was interesting, though; it turns out that "Channels" may actually be a stroke of genius - and may more accurately reflect what the church is actually about. A "Channel" allows you to organize content by "topic" - but it also allows to you link to stuff that may seem to belong to other "Channels" - and it turns out, amazingly, that life in the church really
is like this. Everything points to everything else; church life is an
integrated experience. I think
integration may be its main purpose, in fact.
An example: you may have a "Kids" channel, and a "Worship" channel, and a "Music" channel - as well as an "Events" channel and an "Education" channel. Well, you'll certainly want to point to "Music" from the "Kids" channel; you'll want parents to know about the great things that being part of the choir can do for their children. Likewise, you'll want to point to "Music" from the "Events" channel -
and from the Worship channel, when you want people to know about All Saints' Evensong. Stuff that gets categorized as "Education" can also be located under "Worship" - and vice-versa. You'll want the "I'm New" channel to have links to articles in the "Service" channel and the "Education" channel and the "Events" channel and the "Groups" channel; people who are new often get hooked in by joining small groups or service groups.
If you're posting the daily prayers - well, you'll need to point to the Feast Day information, too. One thing completes the other; one thing is incomplete
without the other.
I was surprised to find, as I worked, that there's practically nothing in the life of the church that
doesn't point to something else. One thing flows very naturally into another; there really
aren't any "sections" in the life of the church (even though you
do have to organize your content somehow!).
And that, it seems to me, is the whole point of the thing:
integration.Take it from a web developer.
