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Sunday 20 April 2008
It's been a busy month or so at Scottish Christian.
• On Good Friday we unveiled a painting of the Crucifixion by Broons creator Dudley Watkins.
• And the site is being overhauled so that we can include more content and integrate news with links ... see the new Inverness and Roman Catholic pages as examples.
The main difference is a wider page, but we'll probably incorporate some subtle trickery, such as ...
• RSS display boxes
• Virtual pagination
• Scrollable content
• a Tabber

Sunday 2 March 2008
• This is fun, educational and stunning ... Scottish Christian goes on tour, thanks to Arounder.
• Church gizmo of the month: St Peter's Episcopal Church in Edinburgh is using the web-based Church Community Builder service for its administration.
• Webmaster gizmos of the month: loads of them at MiniAjax.com. Some are now out of date, but they indicate possibilities.

Sunday 20 January 2008
• This year's Week of Prayer for Christian Unity runs from 18-25 January. Extensive resources are available at the World Council of Churches website.
• Lent begins on February 6 ... Churches Together in Britain & Ireland have resources.
• Lead and copper theft from churches has almost doubled within a year because of rising prices. Church Alert gives preventive advice to church members and communities.
• In a similar vein, Church Watch advises on personal safety in church for clergy, congregations and other users.
• Internet Evangelism Day this year is on Sunday 27 April. Free
downloads: PowerPoint, video clips, handouts, and drama scripts enable you to build a short programme to suit your requirements.
• Windows Vista woes 1: Vista refuses to play with one of my favourite gizmos, EZBackitup. But I've found an excellent substitute - Karen's Replicator.
• Windows Vista woes 2: I like Vista, but its search facility is spectacularly useless. The interface is needlessly complex, and it only only searches files which it's indexed in quiet moments. Copernic Desktop Search does the same, but is much easier to use and also previews results documents.

Sunday 11 August 2007
• Jobs in the Highlands ... posts at Glenshee, Nethybridge and Oban.
• Gizmo of the month is Webshot, which enables you to create an image of a whole webpage, not just what's visible on the screen.
• Webmaster gizmo of the month: Audio Player Wordpress plugin from 1pixelout, adapted by Mindy Adams to work on any website. It's a simple but elegant embedded MP3 audio player which you can see in action at Glasgow Churches Together.
• Rescue gizmos of the month: Hard drive crash? Accidentally formatted your drive? Don't despair, and don't necessarily believe 'experts' who say your drive is dead or your data lost. Download diagnostic tools from your drive manufacturer's website. And try recovering data with File Scavenger or Partition Recovery. But remember that prevention's better than cure, and always be sure to back up your data.

Sunday 22 July 2007
• Our messageboard, Scottish Christian Webtalk, has been revived. Join in the chat! It's hosted by Boardhost.
• Congrats to Wester Hailes Baptist Church, who've added our news headlines to their site. You can do the same.
• Match up the needs of your congregation with the skills of its members through ArkAlmighty. (It's tied into the movie Evan Almighty.)
• Fed up with Windows and fancy a challenge? Spend a rainy summer testing Ubuntu Christian Edition.
• Gizmo of the month: The nation is littered with wireless networking kit which people can't get to work. Try networking through your home or church's electricity circuit instead, using Homeplugs.
• Finally, amuse your chums with Fake Progress Bar. How they'll laugh as they watch their favourite music and pictures being erased!

Sunday 17 June 2007
• A great new site for the north - Christians Together in the Highlands and Islands.
• And a great new site for Scotland: Resourcing Churches. Please support it by adding content!
• Two national churches have new sites - the Free Church of Scotland and the Scottish Episcopal Church.
• Does your church website include Bible references? Are you assuming that visitors will know the text or have a Bible to hand? Chances are that they won't, so provide a link to the relevant chapter at Bible Gateway. See it in action at Hope 2008 Scotland.
• Gizmo of the month: Zoho Show is part of Zoho's impressive bag of tricks and tools, enabling Powerpoint presentations to be shown on your website. See it in action at Hope 2008 Scotland.

Sunday 18 March 2007
• The Scottish Christian News Monitor has been overhauled; it should now be more readable and features longer stories and more categories. It's powered by Thingamablog.
• Remember we talked about YouTube last month? Check out these clips from Christianity Today. And this election campaign video from CARE for Scotland.
• Turn photos into BlockPosters.
• Need a new design for your website? Try Church Templates.
• Gizmos of the month: PrimoPDF and Foxit Reader.

Sunday 11 February 2007
• Add movies to your website with YouTube. Here are a couple of examples.
• Need photos? Try Stockxpert or Stockxchng.
• Gizmo of the month: Folder Marker.

Sunday 14 January 2007
• Welcome to a new year, and to Deep Impact, Highland Faith and Nexus Scotland.
• Here are some other years:
- 2008: Hope 08
- 2009: Year of Homecoming
- 2010: Towards 2010
• Meantime, catch up with more of this year's events, and add your own.
• This month's gizmo is PortableApps, a boon to folk on the move. For real geeks, there's Mac-on-a-Stick.

Sunday 17 December 2006
• News and links at Christmas 2006.
• Check out our new Online Store.
• Note to webmasters ... Windows users are upgrading to Internet Explorer 7, so you need to do so as well in order to test your sites. Unfortunately, you might be in for some surprises.
• This is really handy - 2 gigabytes of online storage space available free with Diino, along with automatic backup, photo and document sharing, and many other advantages.
• You might still be able to find a copy of the January 2007 issue of Computer Shopper magazine, which carries a full, free edition of publishing software QuarkXPress 5.01. If you've missed it, watch out for cover disks carrying Serif PagePlus.

Sunday 5 November 2006
• Some seasonal links:
- Guy Fawkes at Wikipedia
- Gunpowder Plot at Wikipedia
- Fawkesian Society website
- Gunpowder Plot at the Catholic Encyclopedia
• Why not use a contact form instead of an email link to increase feedback from website visitors? The Site Wizard has a good script.
• Using Google Adwords to attract people to your church or website? Experiment with 'double-entering', as Destiny Church do at Scottish Christian, to increase click-throughs. Give it a shot this Christmas!
• Fancy tinkering with Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP)? Skype is offering free calls made within the UK to UK landlines for the next six months.
• Windows tip: if you'd like an easier way to access programs you use regularly, try this technique from Gareth Saunders.

Sunday 1 October 2006
• Exclusive preview of our new Books section.
• Christian Life is no longer a page but a full section.
• Ding dong merrily online! ACTS' Advent material is available online. And the Churches Advertising Network has begun its annual Christmas campaign. Finally, take a tour of Royal David's City.
• October is Clergy Appreciation Month in the USA. Why not celebrate it here too?

Week beginning 31 July 2006
• With a belated nod to Independence Day earlier this month, we're looking at major church websites in the United States to see how they shape up in terms of design, usability, organisation of information, and quality of 'about' information, scoring from 0-3 points in each category. Care to comment? Email Len at crossfire@angelforce.co.uk.

Church	Ian's scores/12	Len's scores/12	Total
Episcopal Church USA	6	7	13
Assemblies of God	9	10	19
Presbyterian Church USA	7	6	13
US Conference of Catholic Bishops	10	9	19
Salvation Army USA	7	6	13

Week beginning 5 June 2006
• Irish commentator Gerry McGovern's weekly New Thinking newsletter is often as relevent to church websites as to businesses.
• Need to read your email away from home? Use Mail2web.
• Horrible name, and parts of the website may offend some, but a great product: The Rasterbator enlarges pictures and outputs them on A4 pages in a PDF for printing posters up to 20 meters in size.
• Another handy program is Email Stripper.
• Need a web-page design tool? Seamonkey is reminiscent of the old Netscape suite and includes a Composer program.

Week beginning 2 May 2006
• We now have individual news pages covering Edinburgh and Glasgow, plus Ecumenical News International.
• RSS ... all of our syndicated content can be accessed from one page.
• Fancy a job in Japan?
• Scottish Christian had 10,012 unique visitors last month! Is your website's stats package up to scratch? Try Awstats. If you find it too tricky to install, some webhosts like Aqhost provide it as standard.
• Sunday, May 7, is Internet Evangelism Day, an awareness day for churches to learn more about potential of the web for effective outreach. The website includes 70+ tips for effective church sites.

Week beginning 4 April 2006
• New content ... a Notes & Queries page.
• Check out our latest links.
• We now have a message board for discussing the new / emerging / next generation church. This phpBB board was easily installed using Fantastico at Scottish Christian's web host, AQHost. If you're looking for a web host, see if they have Fantastico; it makes it easier to add scripted features to your site.
• The prospect of undesirable web content being accessed by children - or adults, for that matter - is unpleasant. Fortunately, free software is available to block it. Naomi is easy to install and brutally straightforward in execution - it simply closes the browser at the first hint of content featured on its pre-set hit list. Parental Filter is more flexible, allowing you to customise the list of blocked sites and keywords, while Chat Controller provides a specialist service, limiting the use of instant messaging software such as MSN Messenger on your computer.

Week beginning 7 March 2006
• Check out this discourse about churches and the internet .
• Easter: Why not take part in the Scottish Cross pilgrimage to Iona? Or follow this Lent blog?
• Privacy: Did you know that website owners may be able to find out your location if you have broadband? And use that information to personalise messages or present targeted advertising? You can avoid this with the Anonymizer online service or Ghostsurf software.

Week beginning 6 February 2006
• Like our redesign? More info here.
• Try our new denominational news pages: Church of Scotland, Roman Catholic, Scottish Episcopal Church.
• Tip: Need help cutting and pasting? Clipdiary is the answer.