Web Site Committee

For the 12 months ending on June 30, 2008 the Web Committee continued to make suggestions, correct typos, act as a sounding board, groan at the puns and rein in the wilder flights of fancy for our Web Master.

We had roughly 10,000 visits in the church year. As of June 30 2008 we had a total of 65,000+ visits since our site started on 17 April 1999. Our web site averaged just over 28 visits a day in 2007-2008, but 70% of them are misled by a search engine. The 30% who do want us usually stay for 8 to 12 minutes, on average, which is more than many web sites can boast.

We continue to offer a service to the (virtual) world with a page explaining how you can enlarge the text size even if an idiot web designer has used a fixed size, in violation of all that is reasonable, considerate and gracious. That particular page accounts for 5% of our visitors, on average. Another 5% are curious about Carson Kressley. About 30% of our visitors, intentional and accidental, come to one of our sermons, either a guest sermon or one by Rev. Grace.

Our web master, in turn:

• Updated Sermon Topics, Calendar and News, and Grace Notes every three weeks. Tracy Cramer, our Administrator, is extraordinarily faithful in seeing that the Web Master has an advance copy of the "In FocUUS" newsletter so he doesn't have to re-type.
  
  
• Added 10 of Rev. Grace's sermons and deleted 4 of them. Rev. Grace likes her sermons to be on-line for just two years, lest age wither or custom stale her infinite variety.
  
  
• Added 4 Guest sermons. Martin Zonglit is particularly conscientious in asking our guest speakers if they would like to post a copy of their talk on our web site. We gain valuable content, they gain immortality and a wide distribution of their works.
  
  
• For visual interest: began adding pictures of the authors to the Guest sermons. Replaced the almond blossom graphic with a much better one, with a sky so blue you could dye cloth in it and almond blossoms as crisp and white as a fresh-starched shirt. Put 5 portraits on the "About Us" page. Began rotating the portraits there and on "Home".
  
  
• Added the complete RE schedule to the RE page and added one calendar item for each meeting of each class to the Calendar page, twice; once in the fall, once in the spring.
  
  
• Validated all 180 pages against a web-based HTML checker.
  
  
• Broke some pages into two or more smaller ones, using a link that said "Read more" when applicable. Having a large number of small pages is supposed to be better than having a small number of large pages.
  
  
• Resisted the impulse to establish sub-directories. Our site is still wide and shallow in structure. (The content, by contrast, is deep, thought-provoking, incisive and often witty.)
• Maintained the UU Fellowship of Mendocino web site.