• MQ web committee meeting 1/15/12
  
  Members present: John Mitchell, Ed Shuman, Jim Frtiz, Jennifer Muzyka, Joe Groves.
  
  Talking about issues on website that Jim brought to our attention - broken links and stuff that doesn't go anywhere. John fixed as many of them as he could.
  
  We dropped plans to have a presence on Facebook.
  
  John shared a story about a woman who is participating in classes and will be baptized at the Easter Vigil. She said she and her fiancée had checked out the websites for the Catholic churches in Lexington and discovered that Mary Queen seemed to have a lot of important activities going on and that she wanted to be part of the community.
  
  Faith in our Future website. Ed says he thinks they are finished. Joe does too. He was waiting until the web committee was meeting for final approval and then getting the site live and connected to the rest of the website. Joe will email the URL to John, and John will get the page actively linked to the stewardship page.
  
  One major improvement to the website would be to include a section in Spanish. Having a member of the Hispanic community on the web committee would be a big improvement.
  
  The school website has a totally different look than the church website. The formation section is also very different, as is the Faith in our Future. Father Jeff has started a page for the youth group, and it also has a very different appearance. Jim says the school site seems to be more graphically based instead of text based. John points out that the church website has more content. Do we need that detail? Jim thinks it's appropriate for the information to be shared. It can be frustrating to try to get information from a website and then not be able to find the sought after information. John wonders if a pleasing and easy to use design more important or is the information more important? Ed says they are really separate issues. Ed asked if there are style sheet recommendations. Ed notices that there is a variety of different fonts and different colors on the page, which can make it seemed cluttered. It's usually advisable to limit the number of fonts and colors on the page. John asked if Ed would be willing to develop a style sheet for use. Joe points out that it might be nice for the pages to match.
  
  It would be good for us to have some goals for the website, and this one sounds like it would be a nice one. Goals are things that we want to accomplish. Objectives are how we choose to achieve goals. One thing to consider might be a different appearance for the background.
  
  John wants to back up and talk about why we have a website and what we want the website to do. Generally other committees are being asked to work within the parish mission statement. Jim points out that there are many mission opportunities available at Mary Queen and we want to help people be able to learn about them.
  
  Parish currently working on goals and mission statement. How can web committee work toward these goals? It seems that goal 4 about embracing diversity might be a good focus for the web committee.
  
  GOAL: The web committee wants parish members to know about the diversity of opportunities in our parish as well as the diversity of individuals in our community.
  
  A new group is forming that's trying to increase vocations to the priesthood. Each month we'll feature one of our seminarians. Bill Rood talked about women religious and brothers at the 4:00 service. It would be good to point out the other vocations and not limit it to the priesthood.
  
  Ed pointed out that over half of the links in the main part of the home page sends people off the Mary Queen website. John suggests that maybe the daily readings are not necessary. But Ed points out that some people might use that link on a daily basis.
  
  Another GOAL: Disseminate information about the website more widely on parish documents to improve awareness of parish activities.
  
  Perhaps we should include copies of the slides from the electronic bulletin board in the church gathering area. Sometimes there's something interesting on the screen and then the slides changes before you have a chance to read it. We average about three changes during the week.
  
  Jim suggests making use of the test website to try out new ideas before we implement them. John asked Ed if he would be willing to make a test site. Ed is going to work on site and Joe is going to help.
  
  Ed suggests acquiring the mqhr.org domain name. It would cost $10-11 per year. John will talk to Walter about it.
  
  Next meeting: Sunday Feb 12, 7:30 pm.
  

  last updated 02/17/2014 tk