Website and IT Report 2019
The website has increased a bit in unique visitors per month at around 2300 unique IP addresses per month (was 1600 in 2017). The engagement on the website was low again this year with one comment again from the community in 2019. The five most viewed pages averaged over the calendar year are the home page followed by the old website home page, contact us, website setup and exploring faith category. From the Google search engine at least twenty-five click-throughs a month on "brougham place uniting church". 60% viewers via Google use tablets or mobile devices to view the website and Google is our main (91%) source of visitors via search engines (Bing 2.5% and Sogou (搜狗) 2.7% each). Direct visitors came from Wedding SA and Facebook.
The hall computers continue to be appreciated by Bari School scholars and occasionally the children after morning worship. As at 26th January spare computers and equipment take up about 1.4 cubic meters of space in the Southern tank room, up from 1.2 at the same time last year.
Other activities completed in 2019 include:
- Connection to the NBN including moving the church phone number to VOIP
- Migration from Dropbox to SharePoint. All documents are now backed up to and shared from the "cloud".
- Replace faulty office computer with recycled computer and add second screen
- Provided a recycled computer for volunteer use in the workroom
- Continuing support for Office Staff and Sukulu na Bari.
- Continuing production of paperless order of services.
Plans for 2020 (mostly rolled over from 2019) include:
- Ducting for cabling for downstairs offices at least as far as Sukulu na Bari.
- Merge old wiki into current website and remove old infrastructure
- Move to a more permanent Asterisk IP PABX and VOIP phones
- Logging of hall computer usage with a view to reducing numbers
- 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 storage used for unused equipment
- Exploration of other social media platforms
I'd like to recommend to anyone looking to replace their computer who has a senior card or another concession card to seriously consider a recycled computer. The office computer including both screens came in at under $200. A saving for the church, the environment and provides employment for people living with disability (Electronic Recycling Australia is part of Minda).
Alex Sims
IT Co-ordinator
