Case Study (Part 3) - kings-medway.co.uk

A lot can happen in the short space of a week. Since I wrote last time and showcased some of the websites that I liked and others that I didn’t, I have met with King’s Church Medway on two separate occasions and formulated the beginnings of a working plan. A plan, that by the time it is complete should see them sitting pretty with not one new website but potentially four!

Our first meeting last week was an introductory affair. I met my Uncle Matthew and Austin, a Deacon within the church who overseas the media department and built the current site. Alongside the two of them was a chap named Christian (ironically enough) who wants to help out and volunteered his services just as I had.

We spoke about some of the points that I had raised in my original blog post about the current site, we talked about their current working processes and chatted freely about what the new site should do and more importantly some of the things that it needed to contain. Christian also led us through some of his own thoughts, which were very similar to my own in that the new site should be powered by a Content Management System. Which will then enable Austin and his team to focus on supplying content rather than squeezing what they can into the confines of their current system.

The “oh shit” moment

What became clearly very evident during that first meeting was the scale and density of the project that I had invited myself into. The church itself is the place where people meet, worship and celebrate, but those people, in believing what they do have felt compelled to spread out, not just into Medway, but across the world in the form of ministry which is about helping those less fortunate than themselves.

As the conversation went on and each part of the church was explained to me and its daily impact on peoples lives I suddenly had a moment of “oh shit, this is actually a much, much bigger project than I thought!” I got home that night and had a rather sleepless time of it with ideas and thoughts running around my head as to how the new look like web site should work.

The four pronged attack

In thinking it through over a period of twenty-four hours, I made the decision that whatever happens, the project that we were now working on was not a one website affair. I mentally jotted it down and prepared something like this:

Church website

• - For people interested in Christianity and who want to find a local church
• - For congregation wanting to know what is happening and when
• - Church life and what being a member of a church is all about. Why King’s Church Medway? What sets them apart?

Caring Hands

• - What is Caring Hands and how is it helping change peoples lives?
• - Who is involved in the project and how can I get involved?

Project Future Vision

• - The church are currently in early stages of formulating a plan for the future which will have wide interest to the general public. This website will be an information guide for all.

Light the way

• - What is the church doing for impoverished communities?
• - What happens on one of these global missions? Where are you going and why?
• - Where have you been and how can I get involved?

Sharing and creating

Last night, I shared with Matthew and Austin my thoughts (without the “oh shit!” remark). Both were in agreement that this was the way forward. I also took with me a mocked up screenshot of the homepage for each site and we stuck all four of them to the wall of the church hall. From there, we dissected each site individually and created a rudimentary site map for each using post-it notes and stickers to indicate if the content was to updated frequently and/or hosted by an external site (i.e. You Tube, Facebook, other social media networks).



In final analysis, it was determined that most, if not all of the frequently updated content of the site could be hosted and added to third party sites. Videos could be sent to You Tube and pulled back via the You Tube API, Photos could be shared on Facebook or Flickr, whilst Twitter could be used to act as the church’s voice and tell people everything that is happening. Finally, a blogging platform could be used for anything else, event information perhaps to keep people up to date as and when things happen, as well as talking about it after the event has taken place.

Considering that we now have four separate, albeit linked websites, our original CMS specification then becomes, not redundant, but far harder to implement. None of the team, including myself have any hands on experience of setting up a CMS. I’ve had to use plenty whilst at work, but these have always already been set up ready for me to use and maintain - never to build from scratch. The idea then at the moment, is to build four websites, without a CMS that incorporates a social layer in which King’s Church branded content is hosted and integrated to the site, whilst research into a viable CMS continues until decided otherwise that it isn’t viable.

Next steps

With the Light the way team heading towards the Philippines in March, immediate focus is upon setting up tools to enable them to capture the experience as it unfolds. How are the team preparing? What are the factors that need to be considered before a trip? What is the itinerary when they are there? All valuable information for interested parties to read and keep up to date with as the mission unfolds.

The immediate need:

• - Creation of a blog to enable reporting as it happens
• - Look and feel of blog not important at the moment as it is the mechanism for capturing the story that we want to use and become familiar with.
• - Set up a Twitter feed for Light the Way so team can use platform for a) sharing short updates b) becoming familiar with the tool before the trip takes place, c) generating publicity.

Once Light the Way is ready and active, thoughts start to turn back again to the main church website and just how it might look - remember those post-it notes? Where do they fit in? Those three other sites, how do they marry in with the church and how does the design reflect that?

The challenge lies in wait!

PS: If anyone has any experience in installing and integrating a custom CMS, please email me at adamdbird@gmail.com.