I was reading some internal Church research recently regarding challenges most bishops face. One that caught my attention was that many bishops struggle to truly know their ward members. I don’t doubt this is true, but the statement did concern me in the context of some other research I did last August regarding a Church Web site feature that could help bishops better get to know their ward members.
Last summer, I did some analysis of the Stake and Ward Web sites statistics, and I found that 60% of wards have no member photos posted. A small percentage of units, 5%, mostly singles wards, are heavy users of this feature with over 100 photographs posted of the members of the ward.
I have never been a bishop, so perhaps there is something I am missing, but I would like to understand this better. Am I right that the photo feature of the Ward Web site would help bishops put names to faces? I know bishops want more than a name and a face, but isn’t that a good start? Is there something impeding more bishops from utilizing this feature? If you are or have been a bishop, what could we do through the Church Web site to help you in your effort to get to know the members of you ward better?
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This is something I think most wards drop the ball on. The websites could be a great way to communicate with members. Often most won’t even use email to contact their fellow members.
To me having up to date information is so critical, especially when you lose the bulletin and wonder when the next activity is.
Little things can make a tremendous difference.
I imagine the biggest reason more wards don’t use the photos feature is the logistical/maintenance problem. In a average sized ward its going to be a full-time calling for someone, in a larger ward, or one with high turn-over its going to need a committee. And those involved are going to need the technical knowledge and equipment neccessary too.
A shortcut that I’ve implemented in my last two wards is to take a ward photo (we’ve got about 170 active, in a larger ward you might have to split into separate Primary, Youth, Priesthood, and Relief Society photos.) I then trace around each head (in photoshop/gimp, using layers, but you could do with paper over the photo then scan or copy.) I put a number by each head, then do a separate key, matching the number by each head to names. Takes me a couple of hours once a year.
Oh, and I’d like a 6th option on the poll: I wish I had a ward website, but I don’t live in North America.
I have had “photo directory” as my calling. It is overwhelming and very difficult to complete. I have tried everything from scheduling appointments, going door-to-door, and taking up time during Sunday School. It is simply a large task to complete. I do think that it is a valuable asset to a ward however and something that should be undertaken.
The two biggest features that would increase the value of ward websites for me would be LDAP access (secure, of course) to to the ward directory and syndication of the calendar. Having to log into the website to look up a phone number of having to remember to log in to check the calendar makes it almost useless to me. I need the directory and calendar on my computer and my phone.
Like Wade, I’ve been the ‘photo directory’ person and it is almost impossible to maintain. LDAP integration would be awesome, because (like Wade alludes to) it’s not getting the information initially, it’s about keeping it current.
Honestly, I would suggest the church open up an API with the same authentication credentials required now. This would allow members to create tools under an open source license. I know the Church is making some moves in that direction; I would encourage leaders to look at the ward websites as the next big project.
Wade, you CAN download the ward directory into you computer. The website let’s you download all the info as vcards.
Wonderful topic!
Among my other callings, I’m currently ward website specialist … and boy! do I have a lot to say.
: )
In my experience the problem with ward website is multifaceted …
1) Username and Password
The problem starts with the system set in place to protect personal data from the public. It’s unnecessarily difficult and opaque. The Church wants to be reasonably certain that the person accessing the website is a member of the church and, more specifically, a member of the unit in question. Fine. But requiring confirmation date and membership number is such an enormous barrier to entry that few members think to ask and even fewer membership clerks make the effort to reach out. There are simpler ways to lesson the incidence and impact of inappropriate access.
So let’s say the member has their confirmation date and membership number (after weeks of asking the membership clerk for it) … choosing a password is a torturous experience: there’s no obvious indication about the required parameters, and the parameters required lack merit. So what happens? The user is forced to create password after password that they hope will satisfy the portal’s sphynx — often ending up with a password they will either write down (which renders it significantly less secure) or forget. Why not use a system hundreds of other sites do: a “security rating” which rates the chosen password, but allows anything but a duplicate of the username to pass muster. Then, on a regular basis, members with less secure passwords should be prompted to upgrade their password.
So members now have a username and an utterly forgettable password. Which they forget … and then they must have their confirmation date and membership number AGAIN! to retrieve their username and password. GAH! Why not just allow the ward website administrator to reset the password?
The one thing I absolutely love — LOVE! — about the current permissions system is that the member’s account follows them around as they move from ward to ward.
2) Finding the Ward Website
So you have an account and you log-in… you’ve found the website — but what now? The website has some hella-long and indecipherable URL. You’ll never share the URL and unless you bookmark it, you’ll not be able to remember it. A kruftless URL (which I’ve lobbied for, elsewhere at LDS.org) is essential to lowering barriers of (re)entry. I understand that your URLs are dictated by your legacy CMS (Vignette, isn’t it?) … but how long will you allow a dinosaur system to come between you and serving those you’re meant to serve — website visitors?
3) Available Data
I like that I can view data for my entire stake … but it’s frustrating that other data is hard to find, inaccurate, or unavailable.
Calendars are hard to read — and are isolated from the rest of my life. I’d prefer to see calendars that look and behave like well-designed calendars elsewhere on the web (Yahoo, Google?). I also want to be able to subscribe to a calendar and/or download an hcalendar file for a given event.
Membership contact data are strangely out-of-sync with data on MLS — including those who reside in the ward and the actual data pertaining to the members. And as a former membership clerk, I’ve often been perplexed at the number of times I’ve had to submit corrections for the information to be reflected online. Beyond that, the data available is quaintly old-fashioned… one household number? Really? Every MLS record should have a space for a mobile phone for each head-of-household and a general slot for a “home” number for the shrinking number of households that still have a landline — and the website should reflect that reality. MLS should also have slots for multiple e-mail addresses — and updates to this field should be reflected online, as well. Finally, the photos. They’re essential. As you mention above, bishops NEED member photos to more fully fulfill their stewardships. And members — regardless of their respective callings — are much more likely to use a website that contains member photos. The problem is, uploading photos is an ENORMOUS chore. First off, there’s only one photo per household — which makes no sense at all. The likelihood of finding the husband and wife together at any moment of time is low. So I spend hours and hours of time tracking folks down to take their snapshot … only to spend hours more time stitching two photos together — and that’s only if — and that’s a BIG if – I have the tools/knowledge/inclination to do so. My ward website is filled with photos of the husbands because they’re the easiest for me to corner. The few women I’ve been able to corner aren’t up there because stitching the two photos together is a hassle. Photos should go with the individual member, not the couple. Photos should also travel with the members as they move around — which would mean the effort to capture photos would increasingly be one of updating an older photo than of recapturing data lost during the transfer. Updating is INFINITELY more tenable than starting from scratch every few months. With this in place, even wards without any web specialist to speak of would likely have some pictures online. So, now I’ve got photos … and I need to upload them. There’s no batching option, so I upload them one at a time (GAH!). Only to be told that I uploaded the wrong dimensions or my files were too large… server-side conversion is a snap. Why not resize the images on the fly? Or, at the very least, tell me before hand the required parameters (hiding it behind a (?) icon doesn’t count). It’s the password dilemma all over again.
The membership directory would also be served well with the ability to subscribe to the data and to download individual hcards.
A final comment on data: the site needs maps … maps to individual member homes; libraries of maps to ward gathering areas — the favorite city park, the stake camp ground, you get the idea; and a general map of ward boundaries. A export of this data for Google Earth would be especially useful in visualizing ward data points.
4) Speed.
I don’t know if I’m the only one… but I have a blazingly fast connection to the web, but LDS.org is slow loading. My ward web site, in particular, is glacially slow. It’s painful.
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So there you go. My two cents. For now.
Thank you again for the chance to offer feedback. As always, I’m available offline if you’d like clarification.
@michael: You can, sure … but my experience with downloading the material is that it’s filled with lots of data that I need to strip out to keep my system lean. LDAP requires none of that — and is always as up to date as the website.
I’ve been the Ward Website Administrator from the beginning. I echo what Silus Grok said and would add that one of the biggest problems with the photos is the size limitation. The instructions say “Resize the image to 180 pixels wide and 135 pixels high.” If you go one pixel over it will not load. This size is just too small for an average family of six. Since the size was cut to 180 X 135 I ceased adding photos.
Yes… way small. They should be (easily) twice as big, and they should act as thumbnails to full-sized (what ever that means) images.
The website functions are, almost by definition, administrative. Effective Bishops are delegating their administrative functions so they can perform the functions that only they can perform (5 roles in the handbook). Therefore, the Bishops activities and the activities the website can help with are almost mutually exclusive.
I would also challenge the premise that Bishops don’t know their members, even the less active ones. I have yet to meet a bishop, even a new one, that didn’t have a pretty good knowledge of who each family is and what their challenges are.
However, as somebody who recently moved into a new ward, the photo feature has been a HUGE help in getting to know people, especially for my calling. The difficulty is in getting a camera, calling or assigning somebody to take the pictures, getting people to have their picture taken and then getting them uploaded. It’s a great help, but convincing the Ward Council to get that going can be a difficult task.
Finally, recommended changes to the websites:
– Enable a feature to show only ward activities on the calendar, instead of stake and ward activities.
– Make it easier to upload email addresses. This has been a huge undertaking. It would be helpful if the webmaster could input people’s addresses for them.
I’m not a bishop, but a feature I think would at least help alleviate the picture problem is allowing members to upload their own picture. I would love to upload a picture for the ward to see, and it’s something I do all the time on sites like facebook, etc. Then, a bishop could just make an announcement asking families to upload their own pictures, and he would only have to worry about catching those who either don’t have access to the internet or who don’t have the tech knowledge to handle uploading a picture.
Sorry for commenting again, but I had another thought that the brethren may not think of, as it is a more female concern. One of the reasons I think it can be hard to get photos of everyone is those quick snapshots often, frankly, end up looking really ugly. You’d think it wouldn’t be a big deal, but when you have to look at it every single time you look at a ward list, you might find yourself being less willing to cooperate the next time your picture needs to be taken. I know that’s happened to me. But, if I can upload my own family photo that I like and that looks good, then I have more incentive to cooperate.
Katie’s suggestion is a good one.
When we were in a BYUH student ward, we always had updated pictures of the ward members. Now we are in a small branch and there are no pictures. The difference that I have noticed is that in the student ward, the students were the clerks and or website technician (actual calling) and being technically savvy have been able to use the photo feature with ease. In the regular wards and branches, the ward clerks are the website techs and they are usually older and have no training in technology, nor are they willing to try. A suggestion is to keep photos attached to the electronic record. Our family photo from our previous ward is no longer attached to our record now that we are in a new branch. If photos were transferred with the record, then it would mean less that the new ward/branch clerks need to do.
I second Katie’s suggestion that members be able to upload their own family photo, and maybe even single individual photos of each member of the family.
And I support many of Silus Grok’s suggestions. Perhaps it would be possible to give each ward a subdomain like wardname.stakename.lds.org.
Also, I’ve noticed that a lot of Priesthood Quorums and Relief Societies are setting up gmail or yahoo accounts and collecting email addresses in the contacts so they can quickly send out announcements. This is really the kind of thing that needs to be done through the ward website, so that when a new presidency is called, all of that information is automatically passed on. A lot of built up institutional information is lost as new presidencies are called and they feel like they have to reinvent the wheel before they can get moving.
Excellent suggestions – all. These comments echo many that we’ve collected throughout the past 6+ years of Local Unit Website (LUW) use. Hang tight – if all goes as planned, many of these suggestions will be incorporated into a new version of LUWs in 2009/2010.
Another suggestion: update the “print directory” function to include a couple different printing options — and a more handsome interface all around.
An aside: I just can’t wait for MLS to be web-accessible. The jobs of clerks would be so much easier if they didn’t have to trudge down to the chapel just to make updates. And that will likely translate into a more accurate database for everyone.
Silus, you hit it dead on. Web-based membership clerk updates would be fantastic.
“Sticky” contact info between bishopric transitions and between unit transitions is key. Everything, including the photo, alternate contact numbers, email addresses, etc. should follow each member who is of appropriate age.
Being able to mass e-mail people would be great, but having just gotten a request for this from the EQ Pres., I would say that it would be even better to be able to have clickthrough tracking. Each email delivered through an LDS email distribution system could have a small .gif file linked to so that, when the email loads, it would register a “hit” for the received email. Even better would be to take the Responsys approach and track stats like sent/bounced/skipped duplicate/opened/read/responded.
Bishops, at least in “family wards” are still in the older age set and are disinclined to go near _anything_ smacking of technology. Even if they work in a technology environment for their regular job, they’re more likely to be in upper or senior management and therefore they are too busy for such things and/or their skills have fallen behind in that regard. The younger generation coming up and filling bishopric callings will be more inclined to use technology as a means of getting things done and getting information. But they’ll also be more into social networks and may find “one more thing” to be overwhelming (unless they switch their social media priorities around).
The delegation bit is also tricky. Even if the bishop is tech savvy, ward clerks and other assistants might not be.
I hate to suggest this, because it usually means one more meeting to attend, but the Church needs to coordinate technology training at a local or stake level and then mandate technology use via the handbooks whenever it has been found to improve efficiency and/or reduce cost burdens. Without a specific mandate (with exceptions for tech-poor units), Bishops will set aside technology as a “nice-to-have-if-I-had-the-time” luxury.
Obviously, if mandated, whatever technology we’re talking would have to produce a net INCREASE in efficiency through better user interfaces.
I would echo what M said above. Bishops have the ability (and extra help through the Exec. Sec.) to call in any member for an interview and get to know them that way. The rest of us don’t have that luxury and so I’d argue that the pictures are at least as important for the rest of us in getting to know our fellow ward members as they are for Bishops (the possible exception being student / singles wards with transient populations and Bishops taken from other wards).
My main problem with the Ward website (I’ve been (membership) Clerk and Exec Sec) is that it’s sandbox/playpen. Lemme ‘splain:
You can’t use anything except the website to update the website. This keeps me from automating any portion of data input. I can’t set up a photo booth at a ward party to auto update their family picture, for example.
Auxiliary leaders don’t have access to update their own calendar items, so they don’t use the online calendar;
There’s also no way to hook into the information that’s there for use anywhere else. I can’t subscribe to ward or stake calendars in my calendaring app. I can’t ldap query the ward list for my contacts app. I’m stuck with dumb “save as downloaded file” stuff which needs to be reimported to my contact app every time it changes.
Additionally, there’s a curious disconnect between MLS and the website data, and a huge disconnect between the members themselves and their data.
Since the Church seems uninterested in making batch-processing tools available, or giving edit privileges to ward members, I doubt we’ll see anything useful coming from the ward website.
Finally there’s the question of content. What does the ward website provide that a ward list printout doesn’t? Right now, almost nothing at all. The MLS printout is quicker (wait 5 minutes for the clerk to print it), friendlier (only the clerk needs to know how to get it), and more up-to-date.
Because the wards don’t have the ability to use the website to meet their own needs, the sites end up fallow and meeting almost no one’s needs.
I’m fascinated with all of the technical discussion that there is almost no discussion about the human aspect of this. I’ve never been a big fan of having my family’s “private” data (especially that of my children) available on the Internet, no matter how secure the site may be. Adding family photos to that only increases my unease.
It must be a generational thing – I am young enough to have embraced email, but old enough to not want much to do with Facebook and MySpace.
Also, with the depth of personal information already contained in church records, it just smacks a bit of LDS Big Brother to add photos to the mix. Yeah, I know that sounds a bit paranoid, but…… 🙂
Perhaps it is a similar circumstance for others in local wards and branches – that the idea of having one’s picture on the Internet WITH name, address, phone, and other information is just too much.
Silas sure has a lot to say – and I think he shares a valuable perspective. I also liked the idea of allowing members to upload their own photos.
I think that Designated Conservative brings up two good points with his comment. First, members should be allowed to not have their pictures included if it makes them nervous. Second, the issue with bishops using the feature may be a generational issue as many bishops may not be comfortable with the technology I’m sure the number is decreasing over time.
J. Max Wilson commented that many relief societies and priesthood quorums are creating yahoo or google lists/groups to distribute information and that that distribution should go through the ward website. I can attest that the ward websites are meant to be used that way as I learned of my records transferring to my new ward when I started getting website announcements from the new ward (I got those before they had a chance to introduce our records in Sacrament meeting). Perhaps this is an issue with presidencies not knowing what tools the website offers.
I suspect that the 59% of ward web sites that don’t have photos is indicative of the number of wards that don’t use the ward web site AT ALL.
My ward, for example, hasn’t updated their web site in the 18 months I’ve lived here. Hardly any of the leaders use email. No ward calendar items are ever created, and the leadership directory is years out of date.
Photos? I’d just love to have an up-to-date list of leaders!
Mike Parker mentions one area where the MLS/website disconnect is painfully evident: leadership lists. Our MLS system (stake and ward) has up-to-date leadership data but the website does not. Where’s the communication? And forget entering it by hand: it’s almost as labyrinthine as getting an account.
@David… yes, a lot to say.
: )
A large part of my day-to-day life is spent using the web and design web interfaces. I love the church and just ache for the tools the church makes available to me as a member to compare favorably to the tools I used on a daily basis, elsewhere.
(Though the number of orthographic errors in my comments might suggest otherwise.)
I don’t know if this has been addressed. A lot of the tech talk is over my head. It would be nice to be able to upload my own photo the the ward web-site or at least put in a picasa link and have it grab the photo from there. That way the church wouldn’t have to store it on their server. Good luck you nerds. =)
I believe someone alluded to the need to separate the stake and ward calendar. I would like to suggest a layered calendar – like Google calendars. Allow each Aux. to have (and maintain) their own. Let the ward member choose to “see” the calendars that are important to them.
This survey highlights the difficulties of a worldwide church in that needs are different depending on where you go. Member photos is the least useful feature for me but I can see the need for member pictures in a unit with high turnover. In my experience, that’s not the norm for units outside the Intermountain West. When someone new moves into a ward or branch here, everyone knows about it because there’s a new face to welcome.
I voted for more communication features. Keeping one email address and two phone numbers for a household prevents me from using the LUWS in communicating with members in my branch. It’s far easier to use personal email since I’ve got individual addresses grouped by auxiliary and in a branch list in my personal Yahoo address book. There will be a great leveraging of information when the church fixes MLS and LUW to allow for individual phone numbers and email addresses.
We only use our unit website for calendaring activities and providing the membership contact list. Our stake has informed us they will no longer provide a stake calendar in hardcopy or electronic file in lieu of using the LUW. Good use of resources and cutting down expenses of photocopies. I think the calendar function works adequately. My only suggestion would be to make an activity show up in my personal online calendar (Yahoo, Google, Outlook, etc.) by clicking a link rather than cut and paste from one to the other. (Kinda petty but helpful feature…)
Allowing individuals to update their own contact info and/or pictures would be a big gain in efficiency for the LUW administrator and the membership clerk. You wouldn’t believe how often some people change their phone number or move. I better/faster link between changes in MLS and LUW is also needed.
I really like the suggestion made to fix the URL because the URL is just impossible to share conveniently. Even using the unit numbers that few people know exist as a subdomain would be better: luw.123456.lds.org is better than the gibberish used now.
Chad Fullmer, thank you for acknowledging some of the previous suggestions will be used. I don’t know all the ins and outs of the task but waiting until late “2009/2010” is a bit discouraging. Nearly all of the suggestions that have been made here were made on the LDS Tech forum when it started two years ago. Did the entire team go on a mission? 😉
@Matt … I’m not sure what the mechanics are that cause it, but the LDS web group moves at a snail’s pace. The new look of LDS.org was designed a full TWO YEARS before it saw the light of day. Too many cooks in the kitchen, I’m guessing.
Frankly I agree with nearly every comment on here. I don’t know why I bother reading posts like these here or on LDS Tech or any other site – it just frustrates me more. The Church is, in my not so humble biased and frustrated opinion, moving everlastingly too slow. To use a scriptural term, perhaps nearing “everlastingly too late” to stop the disgust, frustration, lack of trust, lack of function, etc… of the North America only archaic website from the 90s. Get the new platform out there, stop working towards perfection, anything – ANYTHING even in modules would perhaps make the websites worth the effort to utilize. Tack the word “beta” on there, in the meantime we’ll use our Excel docs, our Gmail lists, our Yahoo/Google groups accounts, our Google Calendars, our other workarounds to “unofficially”, under the table, etc… get the functionality we need and want to accomplish our purposes until the web teams and bureaucracy in downtown SLC get with the times and take even the slightest risk in implementing something.
I know you all do great work, but something has to streamline this – it’s worse than waiting for a new Microsoft OS 😉 (i.e. XP – Vista). Hopefully we won’t be disappointed, even if we have to wait and muddle through until late “2009/2010”, 2012, 2014…….20xx.
Oh, and something to counteract the disgusting Vignette URLs would always be appreciated.
I usually praise the Church for most of their work, but having been a ward web admin several times and a clerk several more times, this is a sore spot.
We have a unique challenge in our city ward, in that we have 300 active members and 400 inactive members who are mostly single (at least in the records) and many of whom would not be up with the ward photographer stopping by. The ratio is even more skewed when comparing households.
If we used the photo feature on lds.org, most lines would be blank.
That said, I do have a photo directory, which is managed by a member of our ward. We take the csv export of our ward metadata and run it against a database of pictures to produce our own document.
The features that are most helpful in our version
1. The format: leader list on the first page, grid view of pictures w/ name, address, phone (3 households wide, 4 high), followed by a complete 2-column directory of everyone’s phone numbers and addresses. It’s updated every week or two and I use it daily.
Other tip for bishoprics and anyone else working with the general ward body, I dumped those same pictures on pda with the filenames recorded as the family (lastname, first names) and quizzed myself until I knew everyone.
So what do I want from lds.org’s directory?
-grid view of households with pictures
-active search (quickly get to the person I want with the search box guessing)
-multiple phone support for cell phone families
-attractive printable version with a half-decent font.
When I was Bishop, I insisted that everyone who had a computer get registered on the ward web site and trained them to use the calendar and web site for booking church resources. I always referred people to the web site when they asked for information.
The photo part of the ward web site is a terrible feature however, causing the ward directory to load *painfully* slow.
A better solution that we used was to create a photo directory, which we did once and now – 6 years later, we still refer to it for people who are not familiar with everyone.
I’ll add my two cents. Perhaps my point has been covered already, but didn’t make it through all the comments.
Having served as bishop in a ward in Florida, and now living in Utah, my observation is that the bishop’s I’ve known in Utah generally know almost everyone in the ward. That may have to do with activity levels and geographic proximity of the members.
Likewise, when I served as bishop in Florida, I knew virtually all of the active members. However, I knew very few of the less active. I was in a ward of 750 people, of which less than 200 were active. Getting a picture of all members of the ward would be extremely difficult, if even possible. Many less active would not want their picture taken (many didn’t even want a visit!). With over 500 less active, we struggled to even visit a significant number of them, let alone get a picture.
So, it would be useful to have pictures of the less active, but those would be the least likely to provide a picture.
Since I was called as ward clerk in a married student ward at BYUI I’ve been researching if it is possible to counter act some of the negative aspects of high-turnover semester-based membership. Anyone involved with such a ward will know just how any ward administration item is complicated exponentially by the 30-60% turn over every 3 1/2 months! Having been in a secretarial position as a student(Exec. Sec., EQ Home Teaching Sec., EQ Sec., now Ward Clerk) for the past 2+ years I can only say a solid ‘AMEN’ to what’s been said already.
I’m VERY pleased to know that someone is listening when it comes to these concerns.
I feel very strongly that not only are these changes good, but they are going to be essential for student wards at BYU-Idaho etc. to reach their full potential. I mean, where else in the world do you find multiple stakes with stats like BYU-I(Church Schools)? You don’t.
When 99.99% of a stake qualifies as full-tithe, why do we see faltering, and sometimes ridiculous, home teaching/visiting teaching statistics?
Sure, maturity, testimony, and false traditions play a role, but you should see the bad communication that happens! Almost always a brother who struggles can be paired with a brother who is a valiant home teacher in our ward. This usually takes care of the subjective problems, with few exceptions.
Most of the problems come from “I didn’t know who my companion was”, “I don’t know their phone number”, and “Who is that? I’ve never seen them before?” This is where the picture directory comes in handy, even necessary.
Now the best part about the web site is that it is directly linked to MLS. If we used the online directory this would save us A TON of time and overhead, instead of creating a directory via a calling (who takes pictures & formats the directory MULTIPLE times a semester–and lags behind the records). On top of that, if pictures came with records then taking pictures (not an option now) would be reduced depending on needs. This helps when people move between student wards, or out and in again (which happens allot).
Overall, the accessibility with security, timeliness, and accuracy of a photo directory are essential for student wards to be successful. That’s why we do it!
Making these changes to the web site will not only be a luxury from my perspective, but also a vital step forward in training and preparing the next generation’s leadership.
In counsel with my Bishop, he reminded me that people-to-people is always the best way to do the Lord’s business (which we should be careful about when considering what is appropriate to do online!), but we need information availability too! In the end, it comes down to people’s initiative, faith, and willingness to serve. The website should make it very easy for members, even with tiny initiative, to obtain any and all information they need to contact leaders and fulfill assignments.
Here are a couple of suggestions to help the website membership directory meet the specific needs of such wards as ours:
1. Multiple formats for photo directories, especially grids(3×4, 4×4, etc); the current ‘photo’ directory is over 15 pages long, and has 5 pictures per page. Although this is a desirable format for taking notes, it isn’t practical for printing multiple times, even if printed front to back.
1.A. The options of including a bishopric photo at the beginning (Larger in size), Custom titles and headers, and text space for notes & information at the end for those using the directory (ie. contact info for photographer / directory specialist, etc.)
1.B. The option to override alphabetical order for special entries, like the bishop to be listed first, for example.
2. The option for Administrators to print all information available for entries, even if they have choosen to keep it hidden from regular visitors. (This would be effective for bishops and other leaders who need such info, while protecting the rights of members to keep it hidden from general ward membership)
3. (If it doesn’t already happen) The picture of a household to transfer into the directory when the records come into MLS (assuming a picture has already been uploaded once before in the previous ward)(we have allot of move ins, outs, and back ins).
4. The leadership directory on the website to be updated when the MLS directory is updated for the ward (Like the membership directory is updated when records enter our MLS)
5. –If possible–the photo file to be included when exported as a .csv or .vcf
6. Suggestions and examples of how to use the .csv and .vcf files for ward purposes, customizing, or any other useful thing.
7. Multiple Entry-photo upload at once.
8. A ‘when moving out of ward’ information item for members.
I was pondering how to get all the ward members photos when a friend suggested I take the photos while families were waiting for tithing settlement. I asked the bishop if I could do this and to my surprise he said yes. Almost all the families agreed readily to having their picture taken. One sister didn’t like the idea at all. She said, “What idiot suggested that we have our pictures taken at tithing settlement?” I replied, “Your husband.”
The main issue I had with the ward website is that if I wanted to print out the directory for distribution, it prints on about 30 pages! That is without photos. With photos it gets closer to 60.
I at one time was in charge of the ward directory and had the challenging job of making a photo directory.
So I created a program to make it easier. The application is freely available (open source too) and can make compact directories. It is also able to import the data from MLS and from the ward website. It is available for download at http://warddirectory.blogspot.com
I posted in the hopes that it would be useful to someone that is in the same situation I was once in.