How does your ICMDA member organisation build and maintain its website. How many hours of work go into its creation and revision? And is there a better way to do it?
Each member nation of ICMDA is wonderfully unique, blessed with varieties of talents and challenges in the part of God’s world in which they are placed. It's good to both promote variety and independence of the expression of God’s love and also enable collaboration between member nations in our common goals in the service of Christ. So how does this work in the area of website building and maintaining?
Substantial effort is currently made by each member nation independently building information technology infrastructure and websites for the purpose of communication to individual members. Whilst this is important work, it consumes precious resources and slows the development of other ministries. Much of this work is tailored to the specific need of each member nation, but that also there is a great deal of duplication of effort and function.
We want to develop a project which offers member nations access to sound models of information technology infrastructure and website functions, but which also enables tailoring to a specific member nation's need and encourages individual flair and innovation. And we want to collaborate with you!
Would you find this useful? What do you need in a website and how do think we can work together to build a template website to meet the needs of ICMDA members including yours?
To get the discussion going, here are some elements of a website that might be needed in an ICMDA member website...
ReplyDeletea. Information about the organisation
b. Contact web form
c. Links to icmda.net and to all other member nations with direct updatable feed from ICMDA.net.
d. Password secured contact list with all members details
e. Online registration for new members or contacts
f. Integration with common email services (eg Google Apps/Microsoft Exchange)
g. Discussion Forum with a range of moderator options
h. Donation processing/Campaign monitoring
i. Bookshop with online and offline payment options
j. Integration with common accounting software
k. Newsletter capabilities and sample newsletter templates
l. Events calendar with option of live feed of ICMDA events
m. Online booking for conferences with customisable options
n. Live feed of missions opportunities from various missions organisations
o. Local database of elective/mission opportunities
p. Resources section
q. Podcasting ability
r. Live web service access to ICMDA Resources items
s. News items
t. Articles
u. Search facilities
v. Different language options
This will be so useful! Blessings on all such collaborations!
ReplyDeleteSome of the things that CMDFA has had the need for is:
ReplyDelete- a quite developed member login section that is able to have much more resources and pages within it- because some of our resources and missions info have to be restricted for privacy reasons, and also to give members greater value for their fees
- flash integration, so that a flash module can sit on the frontpage and cycle through graphics or photos
- the ability to host video files, or at least integrated Youtube plugin so that videos can be viewed in-page
- a great deal of flexibilty in being able to add logos, headers, banners and select colours and modules, so that the website is customised to our own needs and tastes.
All the best with the development and can't wait to see all the benefits which will be reaped by our sister-organisations from this endeavour.