PowerTech BlogBeing a techie for God's Youth

As some of you may know by now, I am trying to blog about my experiences as a Tech Guy for our youth group, but also about learning Website development as well. All I can say sometimes is, “What did I get myself into?”

Okay, seriously, there is just so much to learn and do with web development that an entire year could be spent just learning the ins and outs of one particular program. My choice so far has been Joomla for the website stuff and WordPress for the blogs. This past week for Powerhouse I added in a whole new WordPress site and set up most of it for “Podcasting” in the future. For now though I am using it to stream or offer downloads of the sermons and special events of our youth pastor.

My first experience of using WordPress was great, but finding a plug-in that works well was the challenge. So I decided to go with the one made especially for sermons. Sermon Browser has been excellent right from the start for this new adventure. I had very little problems getting it up and running the way I wanted to. I was able to use my ftp file transfer program to transfer the sermon files onto my server using the recommend links. I even went so far as to make sure some of my files were “tagged” properly using the information I had available. WOW, it was really easy and everyone of the sermon .mp3 files I added worked without any problems. (I did have to add an audio player recommended by Sermon Browser.)

The podcast program I helped set up with our church’s website was not as easy and it is still having problems. Which is probably something we are going to have to change in the future. But as with all things, this is a learning experience and the more of it you do, the better and quicker you become at it.

So now that I have that process going, the next big thing coming up for me is the website developement of our School Website. I will let you know once that has been posted and it goes live. If you want to see the demo version, you may check it out at http://acslions.ashlandgbc.org This is just a play area for now until I can go live with the entire site. Hopefully that will be happening in the next 3 weeks. So keep your eyes posted and thanks for checking this site out.

By the way, I may not post very often, but I will keep posting some of my experiences and thoughts about Chruch Tech Media. I do have a few sites that I highly recommend. Check out the links on the side for some of them!

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This is not easy, that’s for sure. I have spent the past few days looking for a new template to use for our Website. I am using the Joomla 1.5.3 version to run the site, but trying to find a template that fits our needs is akin to finding a needle in a haystack.

One of the biggest problems with our youth is developing a site that they will want to come back to again and again. It should be simple, easy to use, and offer things that the students are most interested in. For example, a calendar that they can use, music that they like, and basic information that they can share with their friends. The site should be easy to navigate and utilize the themes that we are looking for. This blog will hopefully be something they can use as time goes on to communicate ideas and thoughts some of them would like to share. We could even get updates from others whom we support or reach out to.

Currently, our youth group reaches out to about 200 teens in our area, but not all of them attend on a regular basis. We are hoping that a system like this will allow us to reach more in our area and give them someplace safe to check us out with out feeling pressured from the adults or other students. We want to keep our information fresh and share upcoming events, like Momentum, or Beyond! These are two of our yearly highlights for the students in our church to attend.

So when you are developing a template complete with themes, colors, graphics, and other such things, what are you trying to convey about your church’s youth group? What message do you want the kids to get from visiting your website? As we continue looking for these things, hopefully we will satisfy some of their needs and desires to connect with each other, but most importantly, connecting with Jesus! After all, even websites should point out the obvious and give a clear presentation of the Gospel Message, the Good News of Jesus Christ.

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