Leave It Behind > Brian Bailey

Launch

The all-new Fellowship Connection website is now live! Enjoy all of the CSS goodness! Marvel at the incredible download speeds! Celebrate the cool graphics and bright colors! Experience the one-of-a-kind registration system . . . well, not quite yet.

Yes, we did in fact launch the new site and there is much for you to enjoy. There is only one minor piece missing - registration! We had a very long list of all the pieces that must come together to launch a new site (DNS, SSL, firewall, etc...), but missed one critical element. Our payment processor restricts access to the service by IP address for security purposes. Since this is a brand-new site on a completely different IP scope, our site did not have access to their system.

The great team at Fellowship Technologies has already enabled the service, so by the time most of you read this, all should be well. Just another helpful reminder that there's always something you miss.

Let us know what you think!

Have a Cup of COFFEE

Since we started the redesign of our websites, we've begun to put together a core set of web development principles to guide us. This isn't a new methodology, but a way of looking at each project and each problem. What these principles allow us to do is take a hard look at our solution and determine if it is truly the best one.

Two recent decisions can serve as good examples. During the past four months, we faced two missing pieces - an e-commerce solution and a content management solution. We experimented with a number of open source packages, we sought advice and asked questions, we researched extensively, and built basic prototypes. In the end, we decided to customize an existing e-commerce solution (Zen Cart) and build our own content management system. Each problem demands a unique solution, one that meets its specific challenges.

Introducing COFFEE

We call our set of principles COFFEE development. What does COFFEE stand for?

Cheap
Open
Fast
Friendly
Easy
Excellent

We want everything we do to reflect these principles. Of course, the first priority of our group or any web team within an organization, is to be in-line with the vision and mission of Fellowship Church. This isn't our own mission statement; COFFEE development is what we use to help us share the mission and vision of Fellowship on the web.

What do each of these mean? Every day this week I'll tackle one of these pieces and explain what it means to us and how we work to implement it. I know this will help me and my team flesh out our development approach and I hope it will benefit others as well. So, come back tomorrow with the venti of your choice and we'll see what Cheap web development looks like.

Another Shout Out

As I was writing my last post,  I started thinking over the history of our websites at Fellowship and discovered an amazing fact. In December 2003, 20 months ago, the web team consisted of two developers and one designer. At that time, the team was responsible for one site (FellowshipChurch.com) and one campus (Grapevine).

Fast forward to today. The same team is now responsible for four sites and four campuses! Though two of the team members have changed, these guys haven taken on more and more projects with an enthusiasm and commitment to excellence that blows me away. Many of the teams and ministries at Fellowship have grown during this period to meet the incredible new demands, and we may go down that path eventually ourselves, but I couldn't be more proud of the heart, time, and passion this group has put into what we've been called to do.

So one more shout out to Jeph, Mike and Brad - you guys are making a huge impact each and every day!

The Next New Thing

Monday marks a huge milestone for the Fellowship Web Team as we launch a new site - the completely rebuilt FellowshipConnection.com! For those of you who don't know, Fellowship Connection is a group of churches who have partnered with Fellowship Church to creatively reach their communities for Christ. Fellowship Connection also offers a number of conferences throughout the year, including the Creative Church Conference each January.

This is our second site redesign since our switch to open source/linux/php/postgres-driven development just four months ago. The team has been pouring everything they have into these sites. Our goal has not been to change just for the sake of change - there has been a purpose behind everything we've tackled.

In the case of the EdYoung.org redesign, the emphasis was on:

1. Moving to our new development and hosting platform
2. Providing a reasonable learning project for the team
3. Making the site far more accessible from different browsers, monitor sizes, and connection speeds (some pages went from 50K to 5K)
4. Improving the design and adding a number of requested improvements

The site has been a great success. As expected, the new platform and web host has been rock solid - the site has not experienced a single moment of downtime since launch and we are not aware of a single bug. Traffic has also been improving and people are staying on the site longer.

FellowshipConnection.com has been a terrific follow-up project. First, the site was in desperate need of a new look. The original look was modeled after FellowshipChurch.com, but as the organization evolved, the site design no longer met the function. This site needs to be as clean and simple as possible. It needs to be able to promote a few specific items and events clearly, allowing people to quickly get to information and, in most cases, registration.

I can't wait to release the new look, so I've included a little preview. It is bright and full of pleasant colors with plenty of white space. The menus are short and intuitive and we have space to creatively promote things.

As with the previous redesign, we have made the site extremely fast, standards compliant, and accessible from any modern browser (one of our developers likes to test our sites in Netscape 1.0, if that gives you any indication).  The biggest project has been developing a brand-new conference registration module to handle innumerable scenarios. The new process is just three intuitive steps and includes a number of innovative methodologies.

The bonus eye candy is unbelievably cool. The site has always featured a Find a Church piece that allows you to enter a zip code and see if there is a Connection church in a specific area, particularly useful if you are moving, traveling, or helping out a friend. The new Find a Church utilizes the recently released (and fairly incomplete and inconsistent) Google Maps API. This is very slick; you can click on any church and view its address, phone number, and website address.

But the unbelievably cool feature is the map automatically scales to find the nearest church. So rather than simply tell the user, "Sorry. No church was found in your area", the map will scale to the point where at least one church is found. In other words, you will always see the closest church to you, no matter the distance. If many churches are found, the display scales appropriately as well. You'll have to see it to fully enjoy the experience.

I couldn't be more proud of Jeph, Brad and Mike and the many late nights and weekends they've put into this. Two new sites that are truly re-thought from the ground-up to solve specific problems. Within a week we'll dive into our third and most significant project - developing a brand-new FellowshipChurch.com. We have already built much of the content management system for the new site and have a lengthy project list of the many things we want to change and improve, as well as the cool new stuff. We also be gathering user feedback in the near future.

As soon as the new site is live on Monday afternoon, I'll post a link.

Today's Lyric

You were under the impression
That when you were walking forward
You'd end up further onward
But things ain't quite that simple.

> The Who > Quadrophenia

Graceland

Two weeks ago, I read one of the finest books I have ever read - Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. As most of you know, Rob is the pastor of Mars Hill in my home state of Michigan. I first heard him speak at our C3 Conference this January and was blown away. When I started reading Velvet Elvis, I found it nearly impossible to put down, devouring it in a weekend.  The moment I finished, I knew I would have to read it again, because it is written as a conversation - one that is worth having again.

The book is very different from any I have read, particularly for one about the Christian life. Without drawing clear boundaries, it addresses three distinct audiences - those outside of the Christian faith, current believers, and church leaders. I found myself thinking of people in each group who would benefit greatly from it, which is very odd.

Let me say upfront that I am not a pastor, nor do I play one on the internet. However, I honestly cannot recommend the book more highly, not because it is perfect, but because it is a thrilling, fascinating read.

Rob challenges churches to pour their energy into serving and loving others above all else. He wants churches to be an environment where difficult questions are not only allowed, they are encouraged and part of the day-to-day life of the community.

Rob's passion is for people to take their faith seriously, to explore the profound implications of wearing the label Christian, and to work out that faith in the here and now. In fact, he talks at great length about the phrase "on Earth, as it is in Heaven" and what that means for us in our daily lives.

Along the way, he offers a number of interesting asides, including his aversion to hearing the word marketing in the same sentence as the word church or the use of Christian as an adjective rather than a noun, as in Christian music.

The book will inspire you, frustrate you, and above all else, challenge you to rethink and reexamine your own beliefs and approach to sharing the Gospel. As he paints his picture, his Velvet Elvis, you may find much to dislike. I think Rob is cool with that, because you just might pick up a brush and start to paint your own.

Maybe I've a reason to believe
We all will be received
In Graceland

> Graceland > Paul Simon

Tanned, Rested and Ready

Good news! The PowerBook has returned from two weeks of spa treatments, massages, and facials at the exclusive Apple Resort & Day Spa. It appears to be much better for the experience, with few signs of the stress that caused the breakdown just weeks ago.

I received the call yesterday evening and picked up the laptop today. Besides the lengthy stay and rather high price, they did a good job and were able to preserve nearly all of my data. The only folder that was corrupted was my application settings, which didn't seem like a big deal until I realized that it included my NetNewsWire subscriptions, perfected Vim settings, and browser bookmarks. I'm nevertheless very thankful that everything else is present and accounted for. Special thanks to Howie for being there from start to finish.

As if to celebrate, Apple released a brand-new mouse today - the Mighty Mouse! This is the first Apple mouse to support multiple buttons and scrolling, a missing product for way too long. As Jason at 37Signals pointed out, it appears particularly elegant in that a child or new user can use the simplest of its features without additional confusion, but advanced users can take advantage of the power. Of course, every person has unique mouse needs, so I will have to experience one in person to know how well Apple has succeeded.

They have already succeeded in one way - Apple knows how to make products fun. Would you rather have a Mighty Mouse or an Optical IntelliMouse Explorer with Scroll Wheel? Life's too short. Why not have products, services, and environments that make you smile?