Installing the widget

Click on Plugins and then Add new. Search for Executable PHP widget by Otto. Once installed go to the Widgets page. Drag and drop PHP code to the desired sidebar. Enter a title.

The Code

<p>This month we are praying for:<br/>
<?php
$prayermonth = date("m");

switch ($prayermonth)
{
case 1:
echo "January Streets";
break;
case 2:
echo "February Streets";
break;
default:
echo "everywhere";
}
?>
</p>

You don’t really need to see all the months to get the idea of what’s going on.

Editing month data

Look for the numbers that correspond with the month number and edit the text within the speech marks. Don’t delete the speech marks or the widget will display an error message. In fact it is a good idea to copy all the text in this box to a separate text editor (with my standard plug for Notepad++) and leave it there until you are sure everything is working.

When you have finished editing the streets, click on the Save button at the bottom of the widget. A small circle will appear while it is saving. This is the only sign that anything is happening. Before doing anything else, open another tab in your browser and check that it is working. If it is you can move on to something else. Otherwise copy and paste the text from the text editor back into widget box and start again (You did make that backup step didn’t you?)

How it works

This is about as simple as it gets with PHP and it’s a good example of how PHP and HTML work together. Remember that PHP is executed by the web server not the browser (in contrast to Javascript), so you won’t see any of the PHP code if you look at the source code of the home page. Here goes…

<p>This month we are praying for:<br/>
Well this is pretty straightforward. We start the paragraph, insert the text that never changes ending with a line break

<?php
This tells WordPress (and the web server) that some PHP is coming up

$prayermonth = date(“m”);
The creates a variable called prayermonth. The $ symbol marks this as a variable. Rather than give it a single value, we use the date function to give the current month number with “m”. Note the ; at the end of the line. As an aside, I’m assuming that month is a reserved word as that didn’t work.

switch ($prayermonth)
{
This is the clever bit. A switch statement is like an If … ElseIf… statement but a lot easier to work with when there are lots of variables; twelve in this case. It looks at $prayermonth and then does different things depending on what the variable contains. For example….

case 1:
echo “January Streets”;
break;
This is what happens if prayermonth contains 1. It prints January Streets into the widget. That’s what you’ll see in the web browser.The break command tells the server to skip to the end of the switch statement

default:
echo “All of Copthorne”;
A good idea to include, the default case is what is displayed if there is no matching case. That’s unlikely with this script but that’s no reason not to foster good habits.

}
?>
</p>
The { finishes the Switch statement. The ?> ends the PHP code and the </p> closes the paragraph

Databases for websites such as this one are something I regard as a means to an end rather than something I’m an expert in. The usual tool, phpMyadmin, is very powerful but not always the  most friendly to the newcomer. An alternative that works with a familiar program got me quite excited.

Installation is as simple as installing any other OpenOffice extension although you will need to do this from a different program in OpenOffice than Base, unless you are willing to create a database first.

After that, there’s an option for MySQL in the ‘Connect to an existing database’ menu. You can test the connection before finishing the wizard. A useful touch I’m always pleased to see as it avoids significant frustration in the event of typos.

You can find my day job review and the download link here.

OK, I probably shouldn’t get excited about such things, I’m only human.

For example, one attempts to solve the problem of two apparently contradictory statements in the Bible. Passages from the Old Testament score 1 point, New Testament 2 points, something Jesus actually said 3 points. Another offers advice on what people think about your prayers (5. Your wife or husband give you the “wrap it up” tap during your prayer = minus 2 points).

Collide Magazine
Collide is a good place to look if you are interested in using computers and technology in or around church. Sadly there is no print magazine in the UK but you can subscribe to the blog that includes regular round ups of internet news and videos.

LifeHacker
This isn’t a Christian website, but is still worth a mention. Lifehacker is a blog with advice on getting the most from your computer and the internet. The tips cover everything from new ways to use software such as Office, free stuff on line and new software that you might not have heard of before.

Magnatune
Magnatune.com is an online music shop that proudly announces “We are not evil”. They certainly don’t look that way from the customer’s point of view. You can listen to the music on the site and then choose exactly how much to spend on albums from £3 to £10. Delivery is by download only but CD quality versions are available at no extra cost. The range is somewhat eclectic but is worth the search as there are some real gems. I can strongly recommend the American Bach Soloists, or Drop Trio, if your tastes include jazz.

Internet Evangelism Day
Held on the 26 April every year, this day aims to get us talking about our faith online, be it on social networking sites like Facebook, or by giving local websites a brush up. There is a monthly newsletter that is full of interesting links and stories, some spiritual and others of a more technical bias. If you are thinking about reviewing your church website, there is a very useful questionaire and checklist.

First published on The Sheep Dip,  a Christian-run website offering quality material for church newsletter and magazine editors to use for a small fee.

The rationale behind the email version makes a lot of sense. Those of use who rely on email check it regulary so it will always get through. It makes a lot of sense with the idea I picked up at Spring Harvest about the 3 minute quiet time. Even at my busiest I should be able to take the time to read through a quick Bible study.

The mobile phone version is a good idea for taking advantage of quiet moments in the day when a computer may not be to hand. It is well thought out and split into sections to help keep data costs down. If you plan on using the service a lot with a mobile it would be wise to check how much your mobile phone company charges.

A cheaper (and faster) way to listen to the bible notes is to sign up to the Podcast via iTunes. Don’t worry if you don’t have an iPod (I don’t either) as you can find the downloaded podcasts in the folder iTunes creates in your My Music or Music folder for Windows XP and Vista respectively.

WordLive is an excellent alternative to traditional Bible note books. It won’t suit everyone but should certainly be given a try if you are looking for a new start in personal devotional times.

If you do use WordLive and find it helpful, it might be a good thing to help support Scripture Union with the costs of producing this material. I discovered the service via an appeal leaflet so it only seems fair to mention this. You can donate online or by filling out a form to post.

First published on The Sheep Dip,  a Christian-run website offering quality material for church newsletter and magazine editors to use for a small fee.

It is possible to find photos on the internet, but it no easy task, even with photo sharing websites like Flickr. The reason for this is that a composition that looks good in the photo album does not necessarily make a good background image as they need to be relatively unobtrusive.

ReelWorship has a large collection of over 800 images that can be downloaded and used at no cost. This is an impressive number, given that there are many sites that want payment for fewer images.

Getting Started

Reelworship is more than a simple photo sharing website having been created with the Ning Social Networking software. Any registered user can add photos to the site as well as create their own page that can be used as a blog or place to chat. At the time of writing there were 1580 members. More public discussions are possible on the site forum including advice on several different worship programs.

Choosing pictures

You can pick pictures from the various albums that the different contributors have submitted either using tags or view them in albums. These abulms include the main seasons of the church, essential given teh number of images on the site.

One benefits of the free registration is the ability to download collections of images. This is a good way to start working out which images will work best in different situations. There is a good mix of images suitable for general use as well as specific seasons.

Beyond pictures

It’s not just pictures that can be used in church services; some of the presentation software can use videos as well. If anything suitable videos are even harder to find so this collection of over seventy videos is very useful.

Conclusion

Given the difficulty of finding food images using Google or Flickr, ReelWorship is worth registration for the zip collections alone. Frankly I wish I had known about this website before Christmas as the images would have been ideal. As it is, the non seasonal images are likely to become a regular fixture behind song words.

First published on The Sheep Dip,  a Christian-run website offering quality material for church newsletter and magazine editors to use for a small fee.

Well I’ve been helping out moving the church website I used to administer over to a new design and platform. Joomla was just too capable for the parish and was putting people off. Myself included, trying to sort out both sections and categories for a relatively simple site became quite a headache.

Anyway, given the current situation a static website seemed the best plan with Dreamweaver the editor in use. I use Microsoft Expression Web myself so I sorted out the template first and then had a go at transferring it over.

To my delight it worked very well. The template file, .dwt, was opened without any comment and we got started creating pages very quickly.

Dreamweaver was pretty impressive just in some basic editing over a couple of hours, hence I considered the change. It’s a shame there’s no crossgrade path from Expression Web, £400 is just too much to make it a possible buy.

• Welcome to Adobe! You are now chatting with ‘Perkins’
• Perkins: Hello, how can I help you?
• you: hi, are there upgrades for dreamweaver from competiting products?
  specifically ms expression web?
• Perkins: I’d be glad to help you with that information.
• Perkins: Do you have any previous version of Dreamweaver?
• you: no
• you: I’m using ms expression web and would like to move to dreamweaver
• Perkins: Are you there with me in chatting?
• Perkins: As we are from Adobe Retail Sales Chat, I recommend you to
  buy Adobe Dreamweaver, which is a good competitor for all other Web
  Design products.
• Perkins: Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 is a web development tool that lets
  users design, develop, and maintain websites using visual editor or by
  coding directly.
• Perkins: You can create and maintain basic websites to dynamic,
  advanced applications that support best practices and the latest web
  standards and technologies.
• Perkins: We recommend the purchase of Adobe software on our web site.
• Perkins: Because, there are many advantages of buying the software on Adobe.com
• Perkins: Most importantly, you can be sure that you’re getting
  authorized software from us.
• you: yes, but is ms expression web a qualifying upgrade / crossgrade product?
• Perkins: No, from MS Expression Web there is not upgrade path.
• Perkins: What kinds of tasks would you like the software to help you
  accomplish?

I can’t say that this makes the thought of parting with over £400 any more attractive, even after my good experiences with Dreamweaver last night.

Church Relevance has a regular chart of well designed church web sites and this provides a useful counter balance to my desire to get as much content on the front page, often at the expense of visual eye candy. Hopefully the new homepage will do this much better than the current one.

Even so it’s hard to know what sort of information should take pride of place on the web site and this goes to the root of what the web site is for. It is an advertisement for the church to the world, but it can also provide huge benefits for existing members.

I read a great article tonight on the subject at digital.leadnet.org, ‘Does your church website serve two masters?‘. For a long time the majority of our traffic has been from new visitors. Some new traffic is good but this suggests that it’s not really a community site. I’d also love to see the site used by more people but that doesn’t seem to happen. But that’s a good reminder for me that many people do not use the web and computers like I do. So I think for the moment we should concentrate on bringing people in on the main website, and maybe set up a subdomain for all the internal stuff. 

I think I shall add have added the author’s blog, healyourchurchwebsite.com to my blogroll.

Now I need is approval and sign off….

Composition was never my strong point at school when I did music, so I’ve been trying to brush up on these skills. There’s plenty of stuff to keep me occupied for a while.

Those wanting some suggestions will find the Bible Version Selection Tool most helpful. The basic version offers serveral different aims from private study to public reading. The detailed options offer a lot more control, such as whether cultural references are translated.

You can view the records for each Bible too, which is a useful way of getting some background on unfamiliar translations, as I was with the Message.