Resolve to Get Your Copyright Right

Mark Alves SEM/SEO

While coming up with your new year’s resolutions and enjoying some bowl games, remember to update the copyright year on your site so you visitors will know your site is current.

If you’re running PHP, here’s a way to set it and forget it:

<?php echo date('Y'); ?>

For example, Copyright © 1999-<?php echo date(‘Y’); ?> will always display the current year. Stick it in a footer or other global-include file and you won’t have to worry about it in 2009.

Any other tips to kick off the new year?

Use Google Alerts to Keep Your Church Home Page Fresh

Mark Alves Content Ideas, Faith

Which would you rather hear?

“Hey, how did you know our pastor was going to be profiled in the paper?”

Or

“I’m surprised you didn’t link to that article about my ministry that was in the newspaper a few weeks ago.”

I don’t hear the second one anymore because I’ve been using Google alerts to find out immediately when my pastor, parish or website are mentioned in the media. The alerts are easy to set up. Once in place, you’ll get an email and a link whenever your topic of choice is in the news online.

My local Diocesan paper usually gets delivered on Thursdays or Fridays, but I receive the alerts on Wednesdays when my church is mentioned in an article there — sometimes before it can be found on the newspaper’s main page. I add a quick link and a blurb on my parish home page and now my visitors can have the latest news.

Here are some good topics to get alerts for:

  • Pastor’s name
  • Your church’s name (include variations if you don’t have a pithy name like St. Muffy’s) and city name
  • Your parish’s domain name
  • Church school; and major school programs that don’t already include your parish name, such as a homeless shelter
  • Other prominent staff or committee members

You may need to tweak yours at first, depending how common your pastor’s name is or if you are getting false positives on your church’s name. Once in a while I get a St. Charles Borromeo Seminiary (Pennsylvania) listing instead of St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church (Virginia). We’re located in Arlington County, but that doesn’t always help differentiate news results for seminarians from the much larger Diocese of Arlington. But those are the exceptions.

In part 2 we’ll look at other options for receiving alerts when your church is in the news. I’d love to hear what topics you think should be on your church webmaster alert list.

Nominate Your Church for Site of The Year

Mark Alves Church Marketing, Faith

Catholic webmasters — are you running a great website for your church? Nominate it for church site of the year through AmericanCatholic.org (St. Anthony Messenger Press and Franciscan Communications). You’re allowed, nay, exorted, to digg your own work so enter today. The deadline is September 1, 2007.

St. Anthony also reviews a site of the month, some of which have been reviewed here, and webmaster features for each liturgical season. Check out their new blog.

Formatting Your Church’s Paper Forms for the Web

Mark Alves Content Ideas

One of the finest perks I enjoy as a church webmaster is getting first dibs on new church forms. You may have guessed that it’s a volunteer position. But, when the religious education classes for children fill up as fast as they do at my church, having the responsibility to announce their availability online also gets you to the front of the line.

If you’re stuck with links to paper forms rather than an elegant online registration system then here are a few formatting tips I’ve picked up–along with some paper cuts–over the years.

  • Headers – Include a header with the name of form if it runs more than a single page.
  • Footers – Add a footer that displays the URL, page number and total number of pages just in case the paperwork gets separated. Include a version number or date since these documents tend to evolve over time. This makes it easy for you as a webmaster and for your users to confirm whether the latest version is at hand.sx
  • URLs – Use a short one if available or go for a shortcut alias, such as example.com/forms. Showing the exact URL is better for the user, but can be confusing for the creator if the PDF version starts as a Word document.
  • Formats – Don’t save your form in the latest version of Word. Go back a bit for those with older copies of the software. PDF or MS Word? If you have a number of fields to fill out, offer both. You’ll make it easier for users who want to type within Word (or PDF form fields) as well as for those who otherwise have to decipher the handwriting on incoming forms. And if you don’t need a wet signature then this approach makes email an option for sending in the form.
  • Structure – Search engine will often use the headlines of the document rather than the document meta tags. Structure your document properly so the titles and snippets show up clearly to search engine users and *then* add the meta tags to the document’s properties just in case.
  • Recurring forms – Pick a timeless name and location. Example: registration for adult education classes in the spring 2008 semester doesn’t need to go in classes/2008/somethingorother.doc. Go with /classes/registration.doc or .htm and upload the files there. Users can bookmark the page knowing that the latest version is always there. This approach also prevents your site from getting littered with archived versions in various locations. Normally I’m an archive advocate, but not at the risk of confusing users (and frustrating the form processors).

Bonus: Need to announce a price change, such as for class registration? Offer last year’s rate to early birds as an incentive to sign up early. Your higher price takes effect later.

What lessons do you have? Just fill out this PDF and…oh wait, you can leave a comment below.