Archive for September, 2003
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The Practical Stuff: CSBS website redesign Part Two
Wednesday, September 10th, 2003
Sorry for the break in posts. I have been upgrading all of my applications through the seminary, and can now FINALLY say that I’m up and running completely on OS X.
This, of course, thrills me because it’s so cool…and also because I’ve been missing some of the open-source apps that made me fall in love with OS X in the first place. I’m actually using one of them right now. It’s a desktop weblog editor called Kung-Log, and it’s the best I’ve seen of it’s type. Lots of customized settings, and lots of helpful tools built in.
Okay…back to the website
Well…we’re in kind of a limbo stage at the moment, though things are moving forward. It’s been a pickle because the library site isn’t working, and we have to appeal to our an earlier post, which tried to define our users and how and why they would use our site.
I’ve tried to first identify who some of our users would be and why they would want to visit the site. Answering these questions will help us figure out what we should offer visitors. Here are some of the ideas I’ve come up with so far.
Prospective students
Our prospective students are coming from a range of places, usually quite a distance away. We have a few students who come from Calgary (about 20 miles away), but the majority are from either another province entirely…or another country!
In order for these students to get an idea of what the school is like, we will have to offer not only photos of the campus, but some sort of interactive tour in order to give them a good look at where they will be living for the next three years. This tour would include not only the seminary campus, but the towns, cities, and attractions surrounding it.
In addition to a virtual tour, students will need lots of practical information about immigration (a great deal of the students are from the U.S. — kind of like me); about TOEFL and any other international learning equivalencies; about costs and working regulations in Canada; not to mention eventually getting to online registration, where students won’t have to come to Alberta until they actually show up for class. In addition, the seminary has an aggressive plan to implement online education into it’s curriculum, and we’ll need to plan for that as well.
Current students
Current students will need just as many resources on the site.
First and foremost, we want to provide current students with the latest news and events at the seminary, which will go further in helping them feel connected to the school. This would include message boards to talk about class assignments and readings (in which the professors could participate); class pages to keep up with assignments and notes; student “bulletin boards” where we would post ministry opportunities and events and the like.
In addition, we need to be able to provide students with a place to go to check on their student accounts, register online (eventually), and use the library when doing research.
Visitors, missionaries, and friends
I kind of lumped this last group together because they represent a diverse group of people. At the seminary, we have an influx of visitors each summer who are either working with the seminary on construction, missions efforts or other ministries; friends of the seminary (donors and the like) who visit the seminary often as a retreat time; summer missionaries from colleges and such that do short-term work in the area and the like.
Many of these people are looking to find out what’s going on, how things are going, what the needs of the seminary are to date and other such information. As such, we will feature a front page of news, featuring the latest events on the seminary campus; headlines and outboxes that will lead to a various array of news and information about the seminary, Canada, and the Canadian Convention of Southern Baptists’ vision to plant 1,000 churches in the country by 2020.
All the news and information will point to the church planting vision, and we will begin the process of identifying the messages vital to the seminary’s positioning in the marketplace and it’s obedience to God’s vision for Canada.
In addition, we will feature interactive presentations which highlight the need in Canada, answering frequently asked questions about the vision, answering questions about supporting the seminary, and taking online donations (probably through PayPal or something similar).
Alumni
I’m saving alumni for last mainly because I wanted to make sure I got them in there.
One of the things I’m hoping this seminary will better is getting in touch and being a resource to its graduates. As such, we want to provide alumni information such as where our graduates are pastoring and the latest news on them; ministry helps they’ve learned over the years, which may help others; news and events about alumni meetings and continuing education and seminars and other such information that would be useful to them.
I don’t think I’ve left out anyone in those groups. I’m sure I’ll think of more later.
In the meantime, however, we can start thinking about a layout that would accommodate some of these groups, and steer them around the page in a sensible manner.