Web Catholic Blog : Now It’s Your Turn
by John Feister

(If you don’t have time to read this now, please take note of the buttons on the right. They are free for the taking, for you to use on your Web site. Click on a button to pick up the html code.)

Q U I C K S C A N

Parish Site of the Month
Worth a Click

Last month I mentioned all of the changes that keep happening as we all try to use the Internet for evangelization. These are the “wonderful things” that Vatican II’s Inter Mirifica document on social communications, back in the 1960's, could scarcely have envisioned.

I recently interviewed the technical director of the Vatican Web sites, Judith Zoebelein, F.S.E., for American Catholic Radio (www.FranciscanRadio.org). She concurred that the Church has kept responding to new ways to evangelize—the Vatican Web site (www.Vatican.va) enjoys enormous traffic, especially when there is a crisis in the world, she said. People want to be comforted, to know that the Church is there, watching and being with people. I share Sister Judith’s dream for the future of the Church on the Web: finding ways to help parishes everywhere use the Web to extend their reach, especially to those who have come of age during this Internet revolution.

That said, we’re starting our Web Catholic Blog right now, with this issue of Web Catholic. Click here to check it out. On it you’ll find a repeat of each column (we’ll still send them out by e-mail). You’ll also find the “Parish Site of the Month” and “Worth-a-Click,” conducted by Assistant Webmaster Amanda Barton, compiled together from month to month, starting with this month, to help spur your ideas. (Our Webmaster, Dave Rudemiller, is hard at work behind the scenes!) But what’s really new is that we’ll provide a place FOR YOU, THE WEBMASTERS OF CATHOLIC SITES, to share ideas. It’s an experiment—let’s jump in together and see how it goes. Blogs take many shapes and forms—this one, we hope, will become a running list of comments and ideas from Catholic webmasters everywhere. Take a look and post an entry!

Also, many of you have seen your sites recognized as Web picks over the years—sites to show off great ideas with. We’d like to announce a new competition, the “Web Catholic Parish Site of the Year.” We’ll be announcing categories,a timeline and how to enter this new Web Catholic contest in next month’s issue. Meanwhile, feel free to post your ideas (and sites) at the Web Catholic Blog !

Parish Site of the Month

All Souls Catholic Church (Archdiocese of Denver)
All Souls Catholic Church, honored as “Site of the Month” in 2003, has made upgrades worth talking about. First, the homepage’s content—including Scripture, announcements, Mass schedule and useful links—has a lot to offer visitors, but thanks to the clean layout, it’s not overwhelming or cluttered. From the homepage, click on calendar dates for Mass information and special events at the church. Also, browse the site using the nice drop-down menu, and read about the church’s history. Those interested in keeping up with All Souls can subscribe to the e-mail list, and parish members can sign up online to access further information online. Last but not least, the Youth Ministry page is worth taking a look at. If you’re looking to update or redo your parish's site, All Souls’ site is worth checking out for some great ideas!

Worth a Click

CatholicBlogs.com
If you’re looking to get into blogs, check out CatholicBlogs.com, a Google-like search engine for Catholic blogs. Simply do a search, as you do in any search engine, to see the latest relevant blog posts. Not sure what to look for? Check out the site’s list of recent searches. After completing a search, you can subscribe to an RSS feed (What is an RSS feed?), which will inform you, for example, of the latest Catholic blog posts on saints. If you’re interested in joining the Catholic blogosphere, browse search results to see what everyone is up to. Once you get your own blog up and running, make sure to add a CatholicBlogs search box. You can find the html code needed to do that here.

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