PAWG

On Thursday 9th October a meeting was held for the Pastoral Area Working Group. I was in attendance and it was most enjoyable. There were representatives of all parishes within the PA and three priests. Father Grant chaired the meeting and his enthusiasm was as inspirational as ever, seeming to glue the whole thing together. Well he is pastoral leader.

I didn't say anything, I just listened intently. Father Grant introduced the agenda for the meeting and highlighted the possible areas of consideration for the committee. This opened up an interesting debate in which members of the committee gave their views on what needed to be focused upon. It became clear that there are many things that could be improved upon within the catholic church to make it more accessible to all ages. Today was not to discussed what was to be improved, it was more of a litmus test to see what would come up in the meeting.

One issue could be combined from many that were opined throughout the evening. The one being that we need to regain the attention of certain age groups after communion and confirmation. Young families were discussed, both the children and parents within them. Another group that a member picked up on was the late 20s to 40s age group. Why aren't there more like me who come back to the church at my age? I feel this is the age where you can gain a true understanding of the faith, fully appreciate and gain the maximum out of it.

The issue of the schools role in faith was another problem identified. That it appears to be excellent at teaching the theory of the faith, but not how to put it into practice. No particular schools were exemplified, it was just a general opinion that arose during the meeting.

The whole point of the Pastoral Area group is for all Parishes to put their faith into practice together, shedding the insular nature of Parishes past. The enthusiasm within this camp gives me great hope that we will be able to turn actions into words. There are people with a wide range of experiences ranging from teachers, to social workers, to web designers and civil servants (guess who that is). Young and old. Roll on November 27th, the next meeting.

Did You Miss Me?

It's been a good few weeks since my last post. There's been Lourdes and moving house in between that. I've taken loads of video footage and pics, enough for a whole Lourdes section.

The Video section is finally complete. The videos have been on Youtube for a month now and are finally accessible on the website itself. Here's some insight into how a video gets from my video camera to the website:

• Video is imported onto an application called iMovie, part of the iLife application package made by a wonderful company called Apple;

• Imported video is then edited using iMovie. Music, voiceovers and titles can be added as appropriate;

• Once finished, the movie can be uploaded straight on to youtube for the world to see. A movie title and description is added with keywords, so when a user puts a specific search phrase on youtube, our movie might just pop up;

• An icon is created for the video and placed in the appropriate video page;

• A separate video page is created that contains the video in question with title and description. There are also links to take you back to the associated video menus.

The "getting it on the website" part is probably the most tedious part of the process. It involves resizing images into the blue boxes that you can see throughout the site. It is worth it though, as it is a great user-friendly method of site navigation.

The best part is the editing. It's a lot of fun adding voice overs and picking the right music for a piece. Perhaps you'll disagree with my choices but I just picked what I know.

Video Section Continuation

Vidiblog

Thought it would be quicker to record a videoblog than type up a blog. I am still waiting for the vidiblog to be processed so I can put it on this page. May as well type up a couple of sentences whilst I am waiting. Sorry I didn't get round to getting the video section up and running as I intended.

It's been a busy week. Had a meningitis scare on Tuesday after noticing a rash on my arm that didn't fade using the glass test. Went to a walk-in centre, A&E (after being referred to by the walk-in) and my GP (the following morning for a third opinion) to have it checked out.

Thursday, had dinner with my Dad and we watched Sweeney Todd together. Friday, attended a wedding party of Sophie's Aunt's. Fantastic buffet at Aintree racecourse with a chocolate fountain.

Saturday, went to a concert in Leeds with a friend based in Stockport. Had a chat with the keyboard player of the band Frost* and he signed my CD. Very nice guy. The other band I went to see, Spock's Beard, were very good too.

The vidiblog has now been published so I can stop gabbing by text now. Goodnight.

Video-a-go-go

Made a significant amount of progress on getting the video section of the website ready.  Uploaded the video from my camera onto my Mac and have completed rough versions of the virtual tours of the 3 churches.  They are quite amateurish, I have to admit as I am still getting used to the software I am using.  I have heard bad things about iMovie 08 but I have to say I find it amazing how simple it makes everything.  My efforts so far are just scratching on the surface.  I've added some background music and voiceover to each tour.  It's not Christian music per se but is uplifting in its own way.  The Virtual Tours are on Youtube now but will eventually be accessible via the website itself. 

I will be putting more videos on there this week and hope to have the whole section up and running by the end of the week.  

Audio Sermons

Last couple of days I have been working on a system whereby Father Vin will be able to upload sermons from his dictaphone onto the website.  These will be similar to the sermons he delivers at Mass and will not only be useful for members of our Parish who are unable to attend Mass, but also for anyone around the world who is interested on what Priests say during the Homily part of the Mass.  

The sermons are in Windows Media Audio, not the universally-used MP3 I would have preferred, it is the only format that Father's dictaphone records with.  This format is playable on Windows Media Player for PCs and if you have a Mac like myself, you can download the Flip4Mac plug-in that enables you to play WMA files on your browser. 

Last night I got as far as uploading audio files onto the webserver (where the website is stored) successfully.  The problem I was having was enabling users to download the stored file off a webpage. Once I worked that out earlier this evening, the only problem I had was making the date display correctly so users would be able to tell which sermon corresponds to which mass week. All the file information is stored on a database so each sermon is listed tidily on the Audio Sermon section.  This includes the date that the sermon was submitted.  In order for the date to be printed correctly on the webpage, the date on the database had to be converted into something that the programming language that displayed information liked.   Once I worked out how to do that I was quids in and it was sorted.

If you go on the website now you may be wondering why it isn't up yet.  The section will not be live until there are some genuine sermons uploaded.  Once Father gets round to doing that the section will go live.  What's the point in having a blank page on there?

I've added another banner to the website as requested by Father.  He asked me weeks ago to put a link on the website about the Lourdes Grotto and how you can visit it online by using the webcam section of the Lourdes website.  There is now a Banner that will take you straight through to that webcam section for you to check out.  It is part of a random banner generator that loads up a different banner everytime you open up the home page.  If it doesn't come up first time you will have to press your refresh button  (See above picture for what a refresh button looks like) until it does come up.   

The 21st Post

I would have put in my last post that it was my 20th. But seeing as I forgot to make an issue out of it a 21st will have to suffice, which does have its own significance in human years.

We got some new pictures in the Events Gallery. 3 new events have been posted. My favourite being the Rock 'N Roll night, most likely because out of the three, it was the one I was present. Not that it was solely good because I was there. The music was brilliant by Elvis Priestley and Alive and Kicking. But it was also great to see a lot of our Parish turn up to enjoy the evening with one another and support the Pilgrims going to Lourdes. It's fun taking pictures of all the happenings but I am now starting to think that pictures are not enough to fully portray the shenanigans of an event. I really do need to get that Video section sorted. Watch this space. And the website of course.

The other two events are significant in their own way. A milestone moment was documented with Father Vin preparing Primary School children for their first confession. We all need to think about what we have done wrong sometimes (not all the time or you will never live) and then go about putting it right, with the help of our Lord and his redemption.

Holywell and Pentasaph looks like a beautiful place and somewhere I would like to go on a pilgrimage to one day. The person who took the photos was rushed into hospital the week before the pilgrimage. He's come out fit as a fiddle and taken some great pictures for the website. Never underestimate the power of prayer and the love of God. It never ceases to hold me in wonder at what can be achieved. Thanks very much for the pics, Matt, and glad to hear you are better.

History in the making

Please excuse the pretentious title. It seemed to fit like a glove, as Jim Carrey/Ace Ventura would say.

This evening has been a fairly productive web session. The Parish History has now been completed, with both pics and text accessible to visitors. Hopefully the distinct lack of photos (I had to add some from my childhood to make up the numbers a bit more) will inspire my fellow parishioners to send me a deluge of photographic memories. Here's hoping.

I have displayed the pics in a different way compared to pics in the Gallery section. I have attempted to gauge the popularity of this new technique via a poll which is at the bottom of the homepage. Please let me know what you think of the new method. It uses Picasa's own slideshow that can be embedded (put) on any webpage to show off pics. They come in different sizes but the next size up appears to interefere with the design of the site. You can easily traipse your way through the pictures and look at larger versions of the pictures by clicking on them. All is explained in the History Pics section itself.

Don't forget to send me your Parish pics and textual anecdotes so we can make history together.

Photos

After watching Holland stroll to another victory in Euro 2008, I have found the time to do a bit of web work, including this blog.  

I have been experimenting with a new way to present the pictures in the gallery.  I can say the test was successful and I now need to find a way to overhaul the section with the minimum of time expenditure.  I have the workings of it in mind already.  Check out the gallery section soon to survey the imminent changes.  

Finished scanning the images for the Parish History.  There aren't as many as I had hoped as some of the pics have bad distortion on them that ruin the photo completely.  I am going to have to do the rounds at the masses to try and get more photos for the history section.  We also need to beef up the text part.  Anyone with any particularly significant recollections associated with the parish that aren't in the history, drop me a mail on webmaster@vianneyhalewood.co.uk.  Maybe you have an amusing anecdotes about any of the priests that have graced this parish or you feel there is something we have missed out.  You'll be seeing me around about it anyway.

Uploaded some pictures onto my beautiful iMac and now just need to get them on Picasa.  I will do that later this week as I am going to bed in a minute.  Need my eight hours or I turn into the webzombie, no mastery involved whatsoever when that state falls upon me.   

A couple of potentially sharp objects

The above title is more of a metaphor than the severity of what I am about to type before you.  It of course refers to a couple of POINTS I am going to make about what I have said before. 

You may have wondered what is going on with my 11 point plan.  That then decreased to an 8 point plan as objectives were accomplished.  It was quite foolish for me to come up with one cast-iron plan as there are always things that can be added to the site to make it better and more varied.  It could be applicable to say that the website should only stop growing when its subject matter dies.  The parish of St. John Vianney is never going to die (although it may shift shape over time) because God won't, so whomsoever continues this website when I kick the bucket (or emigrate) will always have plenty of material to work with. 

From now on, no more point plans.  That was a bad idea to take off David Moyes.   I'll just let you know what IS happening to the site and will occasionally state my intentions but not in a numbered list.  The funny thing is, I am going on about this point plan and I didn't even tell you what was on it, just thought I'd make the sharp object anyway.  

The second point I wanted to make before I am off out is about the Parish History section.  I have built that section of the website so it can be updated to document the salient events of the Parish as it grows and develops.  Any section of the history can now easily be added to.  If someone thinks we are not saying enough about any particular priest or event that happened, email me, father, or Carolyn and we will update it if Father agrees it should be in here.  He is the big cheese and cares about how we are represented electronically as a Parish, he should have the final say.  

    

 

History

It's been a fairly productive last couple of days after a big change in my working environment.  That being the purchasing, configuring and finally using a brand new iMac for my web development needs.  It is truly amazing.  It has solved a lot of problems that I'd had with my previous, dated kit.  I had to get all the necessary files off my old Mac and transfer it onto the new one.  This didn't take too long as most of the necessary files were online as I reuse a lot of code for various purposes.  

Once my iMac was ready for action, I got started on the Parish History.  Finished it this evening.  It is not in its perfect form but at least it can now finally be read by all.  I need to finish scanning the pictures I have for the history section, then I will be able to give you lucky visitors two options:  either read the history, or see it in picture form through various photos taken throughout the parish's development.  My plan is to use Picasa to present the pictures of the history section.  It hasn't let me down thus far so why start looking elsewhere now.  It's so quick for me to get pictures on there in a nice, presentable format.  

Another plus for my new, beautiful iMac is that I now have enough processing power to edit the Virtual tours of all the churches and social clubs.  The Video section will soon be born, I promise.  HAHAHAHA.  

One dilemma I did encounter whilst using my new Mac is that I didn't have a decent image-editing software app like Photoshop to create graphics for the website.  I did some research whilst at work (without breaking work's Electronic Media Policy of course) into cheaper alternatives and found a great alternative called Pixelmator.  It was only £40 (as opposed to Photoshop's thousands) and does all I need.  Absolute bargain and will be a worthy assistant in the site's development.  

I am curious about what is everyone's favourite way to navigate the site.  Whether you are a regular visitor to the site or not, please take the time to vote on the poll at the bottom of the homepage.  If there are enough votes for the Drop Down Menu, then I will come up with something different for the homepage.  Don't worry you Icon lovers, they will always be there in some capacity.  

  

Finally, I uploaded another set of pictures to the Events Gallery.  Check out everyone having a good time at the Halewood Lourdes Association Evening.  

Remember Me?

Uploaded some more pics to the gallery this evening.  They are from the thanksgiving devoted to our two lovely pastoral assistants, Sr. Clarissa and Sr. Ideojima (apologies if I misspelt).  It was a lovely way to spend the morning and early afternoon.  It was also a rare opportunity to get up early on a Saturday.  Doesn't happen very often at all.  

I've also been messing about with a new toy.  I bought Father a dictaphone for him to record an audio message for the website.  I have tested it thoroughly this evening and it works a treat.  I have also tried putting some recorded files online to see how they sound and how slow they download.  It passed with flying colours so I will be passing the dictaphone to father for him to start recording his messages.  By the time I get the section online there should be plenty of audio morsels for you to devour. 

Another thing I have been experimenting with tonight is a music player that can play MP3s on a website.  This venture has been the least successful aspect of this evening.  I can get the player to display online, but it won't play the music file on there.  All in an evenings work for your webmaster and you, my readers, will be first to know when my experiment has been deemed successful.  

For now, tatty filarious!!!

Another point in my plan bites the dust

Yes, I know the above title doesn't fit very well into the classic Queen song.  I tend to be an absurd humourist at times.  

I can say without a hint of uncertainty that the title is true.  One point was successfully implemented in what is now an 8 point plan.  

Can you guess what it is, yet?  (Rolf Harris Accent, of course)

I have now made Father's message easily updateable by any human being.  Not only that, I have worked out how the database preserves punctuation like new paragraphs, so the text isn't printed on the screen like one, big, ugly blob.  A bit like that thing in the film. From the 80s.  That killed a lot of people.  What was it called again...?

There's something poetic about PHP and MySQL.  You invoke things from a database using the SQL language and store the items into variables that can be called onto the screen using PHP, giving you complete control over how you manipulate the content stored in the database.  For a geek like me, it's a beautiful thing.  

8 to go in THE PLAN and the only way for you to track how things are going is to keep coming back here and to the parish website.  We have not yet reached the technological capability whereby we will be able to surf the net with our minds, so I'm afraid you will have to use the now prehistoric means of Personal Computer. Give it a few years, I'm sure it will happen one day.  

  

Back On The Wagon

After finally conquering the redesign and displaying its defeated head on a stick at Times Square (it finally did my bidding), I had a few days break to catch up on my sleep and relax.

It didn't take too long for me to get back into the web frame of mind.  I always thought there was something of the Spiderman about me.  I took some pics of the Pastoral Area Youth Mass on Sunday, which was a very enjoyable service.  I wouldn't have made it to that Mass if it wasn't for my beautiful Girlfriend, Sophie,  who drove me to Everton's last game of the season at Goodison and then picked me up and drove me to Mass.  If I had gone in my own car I would have been stuck in aeons of traffic trying to get out of Walton.  Sophie met me in Tuebrook, where the traffic dissipates and I ran like a maniac in the stormy rain to the car.  The combination of Everton winning and doing something for God spurred me on.  It was rather serendipitous that I dried in time for Mass on the journey there.      

At the eleventh hour, I was commissioned with the responsibility of coming up with bidding prayers again, which I composed on my iPhone in the car on the way to Mass.  I wouldn't recommend it, although I had been thinking about them all weekend and what they should be devoted to (I was told I may be needed), so it wasn't a complete rush job.  

Last night, I fine-tuned a couple more pages to compensate for the new design.  I need to do something with the pastoral area section.  It does the job but it is a bit of a boring list.  Watch this space on that one.  

David Moyes has come up with another 4-year plan for the future development of EFC.  Similarly, I have devised an 11-point plan to get the website in optimum shape.  I shan't divulge this yet.  However, I have completed 2 of them tonight.  One was to upload the new pictures of the Pastoral Area Youth Mass and Holy Communion 2008 and the other was to amend the Gallery section appropriately to fit more galleries in the events section.  As you can see it is mission accomplished.  

9 more points and I will be much happier with this site when they are done.  I shall elaborate more on what they are when I am making progress with them.  I like to keep you all on tenterhooks.  

Redesigning the redesign

It's not as drastic as it sounds.  Now I can tell you about my two-pronged attack...  Well... What are you waiting for???? Move your eyes to the next paragraph and assimilate the following tidbits of information!!!!

My first point of attack was to deal with the dropdown menu issue.  On lower resolutions (even 1024x768) the dropdown menu ended up being broken down into two rows, making all the pages on the site substantially bigger and rather unsightly.  I used one of my original attempts and shrunk it so it would fit properly.  Not only does it fit properly now on 1024x768 (the most common screen size in use and the size that most commercial website base their designs upon) but it looks even sexier (as much as a dropdown menu can) on my higher resolution monitor.  

The second problem that my stratagem would have to rectify to bring about a resounding victory was the scrollbars in the News, Archive, View Prayers, Links, Mass Times and individual Saints sections.  I didn't stand on ceremony and got rid of all the scrollbars on these pages.  To prevent the pages from being as long as the Great Wall of China, I have added some code that divides the content into separate pages to make it more digestible.  I was thinking of doing the same for the Mass Times but decided against it.  I thought as opposed to clicking from one part of the mass times to the next, it would be better to use the scrollbar that God (i.e. insert your browser here) gave you to look at the other days of the week.  The better the resolution you have, the more you will see on the one page.  

The tackling of both these issues should prevent any further viewing problems.  Therefore, if I ever do another website presentation in front of the Parish Council I won't have anywhere near as much egg on my face.  Hazaa!!!

And so ends another intriguing episode of Webmaster's Blog.  Goodnite! 

Pics Galore

Decided I needed a break from any design problems for the evening and indulged in more simple pleasures of uploading new pictures onto the site.  It didn't take too long at all to get the picture from my camera to my Mac, resize them to a less hefty size and then upload them to Picasa using the special Mac client.  All I then needed to do was cut and paste code from Picasa onto the Gallery Events page file to bring up links on the website for the individual galleries. 

I was going to have a News in Pictures section with pictures and captions portraying recent news, but after a think about it, the Event gallery will serve that purpose.  One thing I will have to work on in the future is to create more pages for this section so we can have unlimited number of events in the section without putting it all on one page, like it is at the moment.  But that is for another day.  

Got a nice little surprise once downloading the pictures from my camera to my Mac.  There are a couple of hilarious videos on there from Friday's Australia night that I will be able to put on the Youtube Parish Channel.  And thus, the Video section of the St John Vianney Website will be born very soon methinks. 

Tomorrow I will be having a really big crack at fixing the redesign.  I will elaborate tomorrow evening on my plan once it has been successful.  I will tease you by saying that it will be a two-pronged attack to assassinate the bugs.  No doubt another late night ensues but I will having a decent night's kip tonight so no worries.    

Long time, no shee

After putting in the small hours to get the redesign online last Monday/Tuesday Morning,  I presented it to the Parish Council on Tuesday.  Unfortunately, the site did not display correctly on the projector and it threw me a bit.  Not the best presentation I have ever done.  See more about that problem later.  

I was engaged with familial obligations for the rest of the week.  It was my cousin's wedding and we had family get-togethers book-ending the occasion.  Not much time for either webdev or blogging all weekend.  

However,  I did make some time to attend all 5 masses within our parish to speak about the website.  Father Vin asked me to do this seeing as it was Communications Sunday that weekend.  I felt a bit awkward at first as there was already someone doing a talk about missionaries instead of the usual sermon and didn't want to deflect attention away from that message or overload the congregation with information.  I kept it short but sweet as requested and added a further dimension to the talk by bringing my set of bongos that my Uncle bought me one Christmas and performing a little song to promote the website.  I got some great feedback off parishioners and would like to thank all who attended those 5 masses for putting up with me.  That goes for Father Owen Grant as well who spoke about the Mill Hill Missionaries and must have thought I was stalking him.  

It will be interesting to see if the talks had any effect on the web stats.

At Sunday 11am mass I took more pictures of the lovely Mary Nichols who was 100 on Friday.  I also managed to get a few shots of the Pro-Life sale that was taking place after that Mass, which was well attended.  I will be uploading these pictures and others this week, further beefing up the gallery section.    

Today (Bank Holiday Monday), I set some time aside to work on the aforementioned problem with the redesign which means there are big white spaces on certain pages.  It is a combination of a problem with the dropdown menu and the different sizes of everyone's PC monitors.  It can and will be remedied.  Today was one of those experimental days that will help me decide the best course of action to take on this.

  

Another Brick In the Wall

The above subject heading should not be interpreted the same way as Roger Waters originally intended. I have finished the redesign. Hazaa!!! What I mean by the above metaphor is that this is another piece of the puzzle to a site that I hope to get bigger and bigger, to give you more reasons to come back.

Any problems with any part of the site, don't be afraid to let me know. Don't suffer in silence. I want to make this site as good as it can possibly be.

There is still loads of sections to go on there. We've got the groups section to come up, with all the necessary contacts; The parish history; Parish Profiles (If I get more than the 2 I already have); rotas for each ministry (depending on the willingness of others to maintain them). The possibilties are endless and are only limited by the time I have on this Planet Earth (Bidding prayer reference that I thought some of you might enjoy).

I will be doing a little talk at all masses this weekend as it is communication Sunday. What a fitting day to plug the website and stir up interest.

I'm going to bed now, I am zoinked (tired).

Goodnight.

Almost there...

Today, I have worked from 11am til 2am.  I have had the odd break for eating but apart from that I have been concentrating solely on the site.  I've managed to complete all the intended new content for this upgrade apart from the dreaded dropdown menu, which is still not working on IE6.  I will be trying a different one tomorrow.    

What remains for me to do is to reconfigure all the existing site to the new design.  A process that involves a lot of repetitive and time-consuming cutting and pasting, amending etc.  It will be worth it when it is all done.  

Football was fun yesterday, although I am still aching as a result.  First touch I had on the ball, I slipped and fell on my bottom.  That got a big laugh and I couldn't help but laugh myself.  I hadn't played 11-a-side football on grass since secondary school (at least 12 years ago) and I was starting to feel fatigued after 5 minutes of match time on the pitch.  I kept going for the rest of the game but my passing and control was awful for the most part.  Practice makes perfect as they say.  

Cheerio-io for now, ladies and gents.  I will post again at some point this weekend but not tomorrow as I am going to see an excellent Finnish band called Sonata Arctica.  

A late one...

Got a fair bit of work done this evening.  The layouts for the new pages appear to be falling into place more, so a lot of the time consumed fine-tuning is finally beginning to pay off.  But this is just for the menu pages.  It will be a little more challenging structuring the bios of the saints, a combination of text and pictures which must be positioned in an interesting yet simultaneously easy-to-read way.  

Still having problems with the drop-down menu on Internet Explorer 6.  I am hoping to put them to rest at work today.  

Received some edits for the site off Father Vin, most of which I have done.  One will be a little more demanding of my time, adding mass times for all churches in our pastoral area.  That will be catered for post-launch-of-the-blessed-redesign. 

  

After work, I will be playing in a football match for the first time in 6 years.  I'm fitter than I was back then but whether I can kick a ball in a straight line or not is another thing altogether.  I shall give you a quick report tomorrow. 

I have the pleasure of being able to devote the whole of thursday to the website due to the strike at work and I am relishing putting in a mammoth effort to get the next stage of the site complete.  Stay tuned, folks ;)  

Monday Funday!

I returned to my full-time job after my week off working on the website.  I managed to get a bit of work on the site done whilst I was there.  The joys of being able to edit online anywhere using the webhost's built in FTP (File Transfer Protocol) facility, where you can edit files whilst they are on the web server. 

Whilst checking out the redesign on my work PC, I noticed the drop-down menu had gone completely west (wrong) on Internet Explorer 6.  It is quite a common browser so it needs to be corrected.  I have meticulously gone through the text this evening and corrected a fair few errors so hopefully I will go to work tomorrow and it will be sorted.  

I fixed the problem to do with the positioning of elements on the page, so I can now press on with new pages for the site.  I will complete the new pages before I integrate the redesign into the existing site.  I don't see the point in redesigning the site and not adding new pages.  Gotta give people reasons to keep coming back.  I have the following pages to complete:

• About Us Menu
• Community Menu
• Media Menu
• Change News section to News and Events
• Change Weekly Mass Times to what's happening this week
• Links section
• Prayers and Intentions page
• Page for each Saint and Holy Family

Once these pages are complete the redesign will be up and running.  I don't want to put a timescale on things but it would be fan-dabby-dozy if I could get it all done by end of play thursday, including the already completed Post-A-Prayer.

A little bit about the links section before I go.  Bearing in mind this is a parish community website, I thought it would be a good idea to eventually allow users to come onto the links section and suggest websites for us all to check out.  Another way for parishioners to make their own mark on the site.  It will start off as me doing the links but I will add the user functionality in the future.    

Now it's goodnight from me, and it's goodnight from me.  Goodnight!

Nice weekend

Saturday morning I was looking forward to putting the finishing touches to the website upgrade when a critical problem arose.  The test window I had been using to show my redesign was not maximized and when it was, the page went all over the place.  I had to redesign the redesign to make sure everything stayed in the right position no matter the window size.  I was not able to work on it as much as I would have liked as I had to pop to Holy Family to get a newsletter so I could update the existing website's news and mass times section.  Once I finished the update I was off to a friend's on the Wirral to hang out at their place while his parents were away.  

As I have touched upon in a previous post, CSS is a very powerful tool when it comes to structuring pages.  It can also be very unpredictable.  You can assign a position for an element on a page, an element being something like a paragraph of text or an image, and it affects the rest of the elements that are already on the page.  A delicate balancing act as I'm sure you can work out.  I am new to this aspect of CSS and have rapidly become accustomed to all its pitfalls this weekend. 

I have managed to get everything on the home page in order and most things staying in the right place when you change the size of the window.  I should be able to push on more tomorrow (sadly missing St Mark's Quiz night but needs must) and hope to get the redesign fully online by wednesday.  

On an unrelated note, Sunday's Youth Mass went really well.  Jane did brilliantly with her projector work,  Mark with his keyboard prowess, Brother James on guitar, the 2 Sophies singing, Mike the usual rock behind the scenes and all the youth that took part in the eucharistic, offertory/collecting and reading ministries.  A special mention must also go to Father Grant for stepping into the fray whilst Father Vin was away.  It was the first mass I've been to said by him and hope to see more in the future.   

I helped out by writing the bidding prayers that I wish I had spent a bit more time doing as although the intention was right, the implementation was slightly misplaced.  Mark commented on them being inspired by Star Wars.  I think I need to add a bit more pacing to the next ones so I can have a chance to pause for breath when I am reading them out.  I am guilty as charged when it comes to long-winded sentences sometimes.  Simplifying my diction might help as well.

Tune in tomorrow for the next chapter of Webmaster's Blog. 

Homepage Finished

I start this post at 1:48am Saturday morning.  After getting up at a decent time to do work every other day of the week, I fell below standard Fri morning.  Got up a little before 12pm and didn't get starting work 'til about 1:30pm after brunch.  Despite this hiccup it has been a very productive day.  

I started off working more on the homepage.  In doing so, I have enhanced my technique of laying out the page.  I had been using a method known as Cascading Style Sheets mainly for font colours and sizes.  CSS is a lot more powerful than that and can enable absolute precision for the whole layout of a page.  So, a lot of the afternoon was spent working out the coordinates of each individual aspect of the page to ensure everything was spaced out properly in an asethetically pleasing way.  

Another part which took a fair portion of my time was a drop-down menu for all pages on the site.  Once you put your mouse over this part, all the sub-sections will roll down for you to access instantly, as opposed to the icons that I have at the centre of most pages.  I will keep both navigation methods for now to give you a choice.  

After cooking a nice chicken Satay for myself and my girlfriend (and watching a couple of episodes of Battlestar Galactica with her of course) I got back to work and created some banners for use on all pages.  There is some code with the banners that makes random ones come up each time you go on a new page.  There are only 7 at the moment, but as the site gets bigger there will be more banners.  Using banners brings with it the possibility of sponsorship from companies, another avenue of revenue for the parish.  

Unfortunately, it is now 1:58am and there is so much more I want to do but best that I get a good night's sleep after finishing this post.  I hope to get some more done later today (it is technically the morning) but will probably not make another blog post 'til the Sunday as I will be staying at a friend's Sat night.  

Goodnight.

Mary and the posting of prayers

This morning, I met a charming lady named Mary.  She is 100 on 4th May.  I was asked by the Eucharistic minister, another Mary, if I would like to take some pictures for the website.  I gladly obliged.  I sat in on Mary administering the eucharist to Mary 100 and had a nice chat afterwards.  I have taken some really nice pictures for the News In Pictures section to put up around the time of her birthday. 

After that meeting, I assisted Father Vin on how to send emails with attachments, over the phone.  He picked up the procedure very quickly and so will be able to send me the newsletter for me to update the website in good time for the weekend's masses.  That is until I have got my plan in action to create the paper newsletter automatically online by feeding content from the website onto an online layout.  I will definitely get cracking on that one over the next couple of weeks.  

I have finished the system for the Post-A-Prayer section.  It's all in working order.  I just need to get the rest of the prayers and intentions section complete and the homepage redesign finished and then it will be online for all.  No silly errors today, any code problems I identified pretty quickly to get things running smoothly again.  The power of experience, huh?  And the Lord, of course.  He's always around to help for inspiration.  

Prayer-Posting Antics

The majority of this working day (now technically yesterday) was spent on the Post-A-Prayer section of the website, which ended up being a combination of productivity and stupidity.  Allow me to explain...

Today was one of those days that every coder has.  Literally nothing works straight away.  You think you have typed everything correctly and then another error pops up, and another, and another.  At least I can say with my head held high that it wasn't due to a semi-colon being in the wrong place (learnt from that mistake ages ago).  My mistake this time was to assign variables the same name, so the web server started thinking, "What are you doing there, you're not supposed to be here.  I'm all confused" And didn't do what I wanted it to do.  I did eventually identify the error and the system should be completed tomorrow.  

One thing I am pleased about today is that I have worked out how to send an automatic email to parishioners, informing them that their prayer is online and where they will find it.  Saves having to cut and paste text like my original idea.  Thanks to my webhost, Streamline.net for showing me how to do that through one of their support tutorials. 

Further regarding saving time, Father has been discussing with me the need to create a newsletter without having to enter the same information on the website and the paper version.  I think I have worked out a way to do it without sacrificing the current dynamic layout and will put that theory to the test next week.  My priorities this week are to get the Post-A-Prayer section running smoothly for Parish use and the Home Page redesign.  It'll be a Brucie bonus if I can get a couple more sections up too by the end of the week.  

Ta ta for now,

Webmaster G

  

And so say we all!!!

I couldn't start my second post without quoting the greatest TV show of all time - Battlestar Galactica - the last season of which is now being broadcasted on Sky One and I watched at my Dad's. Awesome stuff.  

Now down to business.  I started work on the Post-A-Prayer section today.  The prayers need to be moderated so no untoward content can be submitted onto the site.  To do that there needs to be an admin section in place for a moderator (myself) to check and then the user needs to be informed that their prayer has been put online.  At the same time, there is the potential to be a lot of prayers submitted and users could have trouble finding theirs on the list.  So, on the Post-A-Prayer form, I have asked for users to put their Name and Email Address so I can contact them and say hello properly using their name and not just a generic salutation.  I can give them a prayer number and then they can search for it on the list.  I didn't get as much done as I would have liked due to some hosting problems that were preventing me from accessing the database until late noon.  At least I got started on the coding and also preoccupied myself with other tasks. 

Jane Norris gave me a disposable camera to develop, which contained pictures for the Gallery section of the website.  I went round to Max Spielmann's on Allerton Road and they had it developed onto a CD in 30 minutes.  I was well impressed until I got home and saw the quality of the pics.  Well, it was a disposable camera.  There are now (slightly grainy at times) pics of the last quiz in the Gallery section, replete with captions, of course.    

Parishioner's pets section is now up as well, located also in the Gallery section.  I'm hoping to receive a lot of photos of cute pets to aaaah and laugh at.  Currently, there are plenty of pictures of Father Vin's Cocoa, my dog Ben and one of Jane's cat Minnie.  Anyone with any other ideas for sections within the gallery, be them religious or not, drop me a mail at webmaster@vianneyhalewood.co.uk.

I've been trying to set stats up for the website in order to determine how many visitors we get to the site a day and which are the most popular sections.  The (free) technique I am currently using isn't registering anyone and I know people are visiting due to the lovely messages being entered into the Guestbook.  I'll hopefully get that sorted this week.  

Bye bye for now,

Webmaster

Yesterday's Work

Hello Everyone and welcome to my first webmaster blog.  I have set this up to give you an idea of the work that is going into your Parish website and the kind of effort required to design a website.

This week, I have taken a week off work to add several brand new features to the website.  I also intend to redesign the home page and general aesthetics of the site to maximise the space on your screens.

Here is what I got up to yesterday:

• Made a start on the new homepage and site redesign.  The couple of changes I have made are already making more space available for me to work with.
• Carried out research on using existing data on database to dynamically create a printable newsletter.  Result:  Technology is there but is too expensive.
• Researched religious clip art.  Result: Not impressed with what I have seen thus far, rather amateur, but will try and find something better.   
• Created icons for Parishioners Pets (cute picture of Cocoa) and new Community section that will house Parish Profiles, Post-A-Prayer and much more
• Filmed virtual tour of St Mark's Social Club.
• Uploaded all virtual tours onto my Mac for editing. 
• Contacted Mary McCormick about meeting with one of the parishioners she visits for a photo opportunity.  That's all I'm saying about that one for now.  

That's all for now folks.  I will post again later this evening to inform you of today's activities.