A Ministry of the Congregation Welcome to Website Version 3.5 -- Our mission of reaching people with the love of Jesus Christ extends to the Internet too. With that in mind, the goal of this website is to facilitate outreach by utilizing the most up-to-date technology available, inviting people into a Christ-centered community. A variety of gifts will be needed to make this ministry a continued success, namely people with an understanding of the culture of our congregation and gifts of communication to shape an online picture of Lord of Life that expresses our community. Maybe this means you are a writer, photographer, or graphic designer... or, yes, even the tech geek who gets a thrill out of debugging PHP code. If you are interested in joining this ministry, contact John Kalis

Website 3.5 - Performance and Expandability, Refined

Since the launch of Website 3.0 in July of 2009, the website team has been keeping close watch on the successes and growing edges of Lord of Life's site. Toward addressing those needs, Website 3.5 was introduced in November 2009.

The most obvious change is a new graphical interface, with softer tones, a more consistent palette, and layering via fields of color instead of gradients. However, the true motivation for the upgrade is the presentation framework of the site. The new framework allows web administrators access to over a dozen new module variations in appearance and location on a given page. This will allow a more efficient layout of pages, particularly on the front page of the site. Further, by implementing a state-of-the-art framework that uses CSS sprites and GZIP compression, page rendering time has been decreased. Finally, the menu system has been completely rewritten, eliminating previous usage difficulties.

This upgrade does NOT alter site topology or general page element layout. In other words... everything is works like it did before, it just looks different.

Website 3.0 - One Giant Leap, Inside and Out

Content-driven Operating Platform		New Features
The major technological innovation of version 3.0 is the use of the Joomla! content management system (CMS) as our operating platform. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla! among the most popular website software solutions available. Joomla! is used as the backbone of sites as varied as the International House of Pancakes and the Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The use of Joomla! for church websites is still comparatively uncommon, and we at Lord of Life are excited to be using this tool for missional outreach.		All dynamic content, including menu structures and article presentation Unified and refined graphical theme Attention-getting home page slide show Member resources section ("Digital Narthex") Individual user logins, users can change their own passwords Individual ministry logins with credential-tracked edit privileges Documents available for download only by members of the congregation All email addresses and web links are abstracted, spam proof “Upcoming Events” entries are live lookups to Google Calendar Polls Specialized FAQ engine Banners, randomized “Speaking Of...” ribbon, randomized Robust site-wide search engine, with advanced search features Capacity and capability for full audio-video media streaming Visually appealing and easy-to-administer photo albums Google Analytics embedded tracking Administrative interface purely web-based, manage anywhere One-click monolithic backup and restore for administrator

Continual Growth and Refinement

While we are very enthusiastic about the new technical features of the site and the possibilities for ministry outreach the site offers, continuing to make this a useful tool of ministry outreach will require targeted expansion and fine-tuning.

Into the winter of 2010, elements will be refined and expanded, with new features added into the foreseeable future. Most of the new features that have been implemented thus far came as a result of an early-2008 congregational survey about what people hoped to find in a website. As this ministry continues to evolve, feedback from members of the congregation will be important to crafting a website that is relevant to the needs of current congregational members. To give feedback about this site, contact the web administrator

• Monthly Website Traffic Report