Website and IT Report 2014
A major project this year was moving the public portions of the church website to Wordpress during the middle of the year. Readers can now engage through comments and conversations about topics, with 13 comments in 2014 along with literally thousands of spam attempts. The website (www.bpuc.org) attracted an average of 4000 unique visitors per month in the first part of the year with a marked increase in the last quarter. Visitors with mobile phones and tablets are around nine percent. The five most viewed pages averaged over the whole year are the home page followed by the Exploring faith category, Love makes a Way, Love Makes a way in court and the About page of the old website. People rather than robots are forming a greater portion of the readership with the logs showing more activity in the Australian evening hours. The popularity of the Exploring faith category may be with robots only.
The hall computers continue have been updated during the year and continue to be well loved by children after morning worship as well as Bari School scholars. As at 20 January 2014 the spare computers take up about 1.7 cubic meters of space in the southern tank room, up from 1.5 at the same time last year.
Other activities completed in 2014 include:
- Further development of a Facebook page for BPUC (facebook.com/bpuc.org); currently 76 likes (58 last year). Some advertising was purchased with apparent good effect.
- Enabling a better experience for the increased mobile phone and tablet users of the church website.
- Replacement or upgrading of all Windows XP computers.
- Increased memory for all Bari school and Hall computers to meet the needs of current operating systems.
Plans for 2015 include:
- Conversion of web sites to use https (secure connection)
- Refinement of electronic order of service
- Making the use of video projection easier and less intrusive in worship.
- Tracking paper order of service demands to better match production with usage.
- Better reporting of photocopier usage for billing
- Better network documentation and computer labelling (larger print!)
- Ongoing reduction in the amount of unused equipment stored
- Progress towards automated rather than manual backup of all computers
- Exploration of other social media platforms
With some help from Derek Munneke I have continued to help with the church’s computing needs, including providing support for the office, ministers and the Bari Cultural School.
Alex Sims
IT Co-ordinator
