You Too Could Reach A Million People

About 41% of the Anglican dioceses worldwide have some form of web page. This means that the other 59% do not. Perhaps a quarter of the existing web pages were professionally made; the others produced by volunteers. There is not a lot of consistency, commonality of language or appearance, or cross-referencing. Our liturgical and literary heritage is steeped in tradition, but our web pages are very young. These are the early years of the church in cyberspace; we are setting traditions here. Let us set great ones.

Church web-sites differ from purely evangelistic web-sites because they are usually primarily informational – a virtual noticeboard. Nevertheless, they offer enormous evangelistic opportunities because many non-Christians will still look to a local church for spiritual help and support.

Jakob's Law of the Web User Experience: users spend most of their time on other sites, so that's where they form their expectations for how the Web works.

We are doing a Web Page for our church, which is a member of the Anglican Community, so AnglicansOnline is the logical place where we want our site to be listed - later. It is sensible to follow their advice, so first study their pages 'Make your web site', 'About web sites', 'Content and form', 'Design tips', 'Diocesan pages', 'Parish pages', and 'Common mistakes' The original set is found at anglican.org/domain/index and the pages are now hidden in the Archives, which is a pity.
The individual page links go to copies on my site.

Imitation is a learning skill

Anglicans online provides links to every Anglican site they are told about, listed under Provinces and Dioceses.
Kevin Keep lists Australian Churches, and Examples of Good and Bad Church Websites by Sunday Software highlight examples of bad church website design in the hope that Christian webmasters will learn from them and be inspired to create a good website for their church.

Hall of fame

Looking further afield

Label helpful sites

Grammar and punctuation guide.
The full version is at www.gospelcom.net's page on webstyle.

So Where Do I Start?

Begin with your local library. In Australia and England they have computers available for us to book an hour. The librarians will show you how to get started, both with an Email address, and with 'surfing the Web', a fancy way of saying you are looking at different web addresses.

To do it at home, get a computer - almost any one will do, but the more powerful the better - with a modem, and hook up to a telephone line. Then contact an 'access provider' which serves your area - these have different costs, so you'll need to figure out how often you use the 'Net. Dialix, for example, operates from all Oz capital cities, and once you pay a small start-up fee (I think it's $25, and $15 for an easy-to-understand manual), they charge only 1c per minute, plus a small fee for storing your files. Apana costs about $140 a year, with no further charges. Ozemail costs $25 registration, $8/hour or $5/hour off-peak.

Any computer shop will guide you. Read Ed Krol's The Whole Internet: User's Guide and Catalogue, or the shorter 10 Minute Guide to the Internet by Peter Kent.

If you want a few hours of free access to the Net, phone Ozemail or Compuserve and ask! Or join an adult education class: they're now offered everywhere.

Some Hints

• Pray about your motives for using the 'Net'. Computer users tend to have a basic urge to control the world through their keyboard.
• Look over someone else's shoulder as they 'surf' the 'Net', learn all you can before committing yourself.
• Spend a few months familiarizing yourself with the 'ethos' of the various groups on the 'Net'. Read newsgroups specially created for 'newbies'. Read the FAQ's (Frequently Asked Questions) for the groups that interest you. There's help everywhere, once you know where to look for it.
• As a 'missionary' be sensitive to the Net's sometimes strange culture/s. You'll learn some new languages (eg. HTML, or a bit of Unix). Net groups and mailing-lists have their own protocols. It's called 'netiquette' (for example, it's not good form to use CAPITALS - that's shouting)!
• Don't get turned off by weirdness or profanity: U.S. college students enjoy shocking wowsers! Some will parade their erudition ('this debate got hijacked by a solipsist'). Others ('Single mum college student...') ask for money. Because of the anarchistic nature of the 'Net you can't easily remove the 'village idiot'. Be tolerant, loving - and humourous! Remember Jesus related well to all sorts...!
• If you post something to a newsgroup or mailing-list, be brief, well-researched, accurate (particularly if you quote an author - it's amazing how many non-Christians have read CSLewis and Josh McDowell), and conversational. Be prepared to have all your views challenged, by some very clever people. If you put a personal testimony or preachy gospel message on alt.atheism for example, they'll chew you up and spit you out, fast! By the way, children's access to the 'Net ought to be carefully monitored: the most popular newsgroup of all is apparently 'alt.binaries. pictures.erotica'.