Suggestions for Ward Websites
From LDSOSS
This page contains suggestions for the official Stake/Ward websites. If you have a suggestion that fits into one of the categories below, you may add it there. If necessary, you can create additional categories. If you want to add a "me too" or a "I don't think so" comment, sign and date it. This can help us determine which features are most/least wanted.
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Membership Directory
- Allow unique cell, work, and pager phone numbers per individual. Only a home phone should be shared per household. Also include phone number types, and preserve the ability for a member to show or hide any information.
--Stewart Ranch Ward Membership Clerk, Las Vegas Nevada East Stake 17:30, 25 September 2007 (PDT) I think the above is a great idea!
- Tile the photos on the Photo Directory. Currently, a ward with ~200 households has a photo directory that prints 40 pages! Tiling the photos (5x10 or so) makes the document much easier to browse and print.
--Lakeside Ward Membership Clerk 10:43, 19 February 2007 (EST) Currently the Website Administrator must add the photos. Allow members to add/change the photograph. An added/changed photograph must be apporved by the Website Administrator before it is visible. Currently the Website Administrator must add the photographs.
--Lakeside Ward Membership Clerk 10:43, 19 February 2007 (EST) Allow members the option to show/hide photographs. If hidden the Ward Leaders should still be able to see the photographs.
- Make individual members' email addresses more accessible by exposing them as a link (not hiding under the envelope icon) and including them in the abbreviated membership directory.
--Lakeside Ward Membership Clerk 10:43, 19 February 2007 (EST) Add option to show/hide each e-mail address. If the e-mail address is hidden the Ward Leaders should still be able to see the e-mail links.
- Allow Ward Leaders the ability to download a membership directory in vCard (.vcf) or similar format for importing into their address book or handheld device of choice. It's nice that MLS exports Palm-friendly data. Would be even better if leaders could access it on their own and it was compatible with other devices. As of 12/15/2006, VCARD or CSV outputs from the website are available, but their format could be improved upon. Outlook 2003 doesn't import a VCARD with multiple entries - it only imports the first one. The CSV file groups some items which should have separate columns. For example, head of household first name is grouped with email address in the same cell. Also children's names are exported without a column header (if you have more than 2 children). The VCARD handles children well by putting them in the Note field. --Jsmith1 01:55, 15 December 2006 (EST)
- Visually incorporate the ward directory with the Google Maps API to provide a ward map showing member homes. This would be invaluable for all members, whether stake presidencies evauating boundaries, bishoprics locating less active members, quorum leaders making preparedness plans, auxilliary leaders creating districts, home or visiting teachers looking for a home, class instructors determining the proximity of class members, or anyone looking to fellowship another member. The API provides the full Google Map functionality (zoom in/out, drag to scroll, map & satellite views, routes, etc.), can be set up within minutes, and would of course be contained securely within the unit website and accessible only to members within the stake.
--Stewart Ranch Ward Membership Clerk, Las Vegas Nevada East Stake 17:39, 25 September 2007 (PDT) This would be a great idea, but only if multiple addresses could be displayed on the same map
- Reformat something like the following. Note, US States are abbreviated, Capitalization of text comes from MLS (not all caps), Personal phone numbers are permitted, Email addresses would be hot links, "map" and "photo" would be replaced by icons, and ALL personal information would be editable by that member online or the Ward Clerk in MLS and ALL edits would be shared between MLS and the Local Unit Web Site.
| <Family Name> | <Household Phone + type> | <Street, City, State, ZIP> | <map> | <photo> |
| <Head Of Household> | <Personal Phone + type> | <Personal Email> | ||
| <Spouse> | <Personal Phone + type> | <Personal Email> | ||
| <Child> | <Personal Phone + type> | <Personal Email> | ||
| <Child> | <Personal Phone + type> | <Personal Email> | ||
| Doe | 568-123-4567 home | 287 East Main Street, Lovell, WY 82431 | map | photo |
| John | 568-965-7395 work | john@doe.com | ||
| Jane | 568-456-7298 cell | |||
| Susie | susie@doe.com | |||
| Tommy | 568-439-4389 cell | tommy@doe.com | ||
| Whatchamajigger | 568-493-3892 home | 1001 Sheridan Ave, Cody, WY 82414 | map | photo |
| Bill | bill@whatchamajigger.com | |||
| Karen | 568-402-3241 cell | karen@whatchamajigger.com |
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Personal Information
- Birthdays - omit birth year for adults
- consider adding this as a page to the site - upcoming birthdays (and recent ones)
- Add ability to enter a short bio for each member.
- This might allow people to use the site to get to know others in the Stake
- Add a "Contact Us" option so that members of other Stakes can contact the stake or ward.
- (We had a family who was moving, and I wanted to alert their new stake/ward, but couldn't. Perhaps you could check to make sure the user is a member before allowing them to see that information, if some units don't want their phone number published for some reason.)
- Add a section for members in the Military, similar to missionaries.
- Add ability to click on a member (on the Web site) and see the entire membership record, including the prior unit information. Then, when you click on the prior unit info you can immediately bring up the prior bishop's phone number to call for new move-ins. Obviously this should only be available to leaders with appropriate permission. Now the bishop has to bring the record home, log into the CDOL website, and manually type in the unit information to bring up the prior bishop's phone number.
--Stewart Ranch Ward Membership Clerk, Las Vegas Nevada East Stake 17:47, 25 September 2007 (PDT) I think the above five items would be nice features, and some people would find them more useful than myself or others. The "Birthdays" and "Contact Us" features stand out to me as being useful. The last item however, may raise concerns about privacy security amongst the general memembership, and maybe even some leaders, and make them uncomfortable. Just a thought to consider.
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HTML Formatting
- Add option switch for textarea input boxes to suppress adding
<br>tags for each CR-LF.
- Adding breaks might be useful during initial entry, but when making changes, it can confuse novice users when they go back and try to revise their text.
- Also, it makes it harder for experienced web designers to use HTML to format articles.
- It is much harder to debug HTML if you can't indent tags to indicate structure
- BTW -
<br>tags should really be<br />to be XHTML compliant.
- Use of Style Sheets
- Consider publishing existing styles (featurestext, featurestitle, etc.)
- Consider adding P and TD entries for the existing styles so that isn't needed
- Allow administrator to create their own stylesheet.
- Include content of stylesheet between <style> and </style> tags within the <head>
- This will make it easier for administrators to produce consistent looking pages
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Helpful Administrator Features
Zane Clark...Ward and Stake Web Administrator, Red Rock Stake, Las Vegas.
I agree with many of the suggestions but what are the chances of any of them being
implemented? I had to call SL this morning on a problem and asked if and when changes might be expected in they web sites. He said that the web sites were pretty much on their own as all the efforts are going to the MLS. I realize that this is very important but it would be nice if they could spare one
programmer to look at the web sites occasionally.
- Allow administrator to specify "visitors" to site
- Administrator can enter a list of Membership numbers of people who can enter the site
- This will allow members to keep in touch with former wards, and children at school can visit home ward site, etc.
- Visitor entries can have an expiration date if desired
- Ability to upload information in addition to keyboard input via browser.
- For example, calendar items and ward positions could be prepared offline first, and then uploaded to the database using some sort of standard format (e.g., CSV or XML?)
- Articles could be prepared locally, and then uploaded as a single file.
- There are Java classes on www.sourceforge.org to extract text from MS-Word documents
- Ability to download information to local computer
- For example, the ability to download certain information into Excel spreadsheets
- Examples could be upcoming events, birthdays, etc.
- This information could then be incorporated into newsletters, e-mails, etc.
- (Downloading to Excel is easy - just set content type & write an HTML table.)
- Provide listing of most recent registered users so that the administrator can see who has signed up recently.
- Provide list of visitors who most recently visited the site (or possibly how many times they visited.) This can be used by administrators to see how often the site is visited.
- If privacy issues are involved, then maybe how many times given pages were referenced recently.)
- Provide users who have forgotten their user name or password with more specific help from the login screen.
- Currently a user who clicks 'Forgot your user name?' gets the following:
- "Please contact your ward Web site administrator or clerk to retrieve your user name."
- Problem is, many members don't know who their website administrator or ward clerk is (believe it or not), so they're stuck. Same for 'Forgot your password?'. Suggestion: Provide a way for members to contact their web administrator right from the login screen. An automated method for users to retrieve their user name, membership number, and confirmation date, based on their email address, would even be better. That way they don't have to wait for the admin or clerk to get back to them.
- Provide a report to Admins that lists members of the ward that are unregistered on lds.org. This would easily identify them and help encourage them to register.
- Provide a report to Admins that lists members of a quorum or auxiliary that qualify for an email broadcast group but have chose not be subscribed to it. For example, a High Priest that is not subscribed to receive High Priest Email Broadcasts would be listed on the report. We've found that most users are unaware that they're not subscribed. This would easily identify them and help them subscribe.
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Email Broadcasts
- Admins need the ability to subscribe or unsubscribe ward members from email lists.
- Allow ward leaders (listed on the Leadership Directory) unmoderated access to the Email Broadcasts, NOT just ward/stake web admins.
- Provide ability to send email without having to login to lds.org by providing senders with the ability to compose email with their external application of choice.
- For example, approved Ward Leaders could compose email and send it to "my_ward@ldsmail.net", "my_ward_eq@ldsmail.net", or similar.
- Automatically prefix subject line to correspond with the recipient group like other standard email lists. Our ward uses "WARD:", "HP:", "EQ:", "RS:", "WARDLDRS:", etc...
- Allow html formatting and reasonable attachments (file size and type).
- When a calendar event or 'News and Information' item is created, email out the actual event/news item details composed by the author of the event, instead of a title and generic message. Another option would be to allow the admin to modify the email message contents. The current email contents are terse and unhelpful. The email should come from the submitter of the event, not the ward/stake web Admin. This would make the email more meaningful and not require the recipient to login to lds.org (which most aren't going to do, just to read a message).
- Any bounced email from an email broadcast from a ward or stake website submission will automatically disable that account from receiving further emails. Upon the next logon to any official church website after a bounce, it will first direct the user to a page that tells them that email messages sent from their ward or stake website to their listed account are being bounced back as undeliverable and that no further ward or stake emails will be sent until they update their email address. On that page a link button will be provided to direct them to proper page to update account information. The page will also have a “continue without updating” button. That email address will also be marked on the stake and ward administrators list as unusable. From then on, every login will bring up that page until the email address is corrected.
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Synchronization with MLS
- Update the membership info on the local unit web site immediately as it comes in from MLS transmissions. Once per week is not frequent enough.
- Share email addresses, and preferred names with MLS just as addresses and phone numbers are shared.
- Allow both members and clerks the ability to update contact information (address, phone, email, preferred name), members via 'Update Profile' on lds.org and clerks via MLS. Each should sync with the other, and point out conflicts when they occur.
- Synchronize the online Leadership Directory with the corresponding positions in MLS (and SMLS). Because the online Leadership Directory is a manual update, it's tough to keep current. Sharing the two eliminates double data entry.
--Josh 16:31, 16 January 2008 (EST)I definitely agree with this.
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Account Privileges
Registered users have online access to the following information depending on their ward function:
- General Membership:
- Membership Directory (Contact info NOT hidden by a member or admin such as preferred name, address, phone(s), email).
- Ones own HT/VT assignments with reporting capability
- One's own Pedigree from Ancestral File/Unified System
- One's own Certificates w/appropriate Presiding authority signature(s)
- One's own Patriarchal Blessing + those of direct line ancestors and decendants
- One's own Priesthood line of authority
- Membership Record self management with clerk and leader authorization/approvals
- Ward Leaders (Ward Council):
- Everything above plus:
- Send Email Broadcasts
- Birthdays (w/o year)
- Callings
- Bishopric & PEC:
- Everything above plus:
- All contact information (hidden or not)
- Birthdays (w/year)
- HT/VT assignments for all members
- Temple Recommend Expiration Date
- Membership number (for filling out recommends)
- Option to download above in vCard (.vcf) format for importing into handheld device of choice.
- Home and Visiting Teaching organization management
- Ward Web Admin (i.e. Membership Clerk):
- Everything above plus:
- Current ward web admin privileges
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Home & Visiting Teaching Reminders and Statistical Reporting
Suggestion: Display home and visiting teaching assignments with ability to report on the ward web site.
Thanks for like minded priesthood holders a very popular web app solution exists. It's located at www.returnandreport.org
This was so well received by the Brethren and it has lead to an official project by the church. While that solutions is years away www.returnandreport.org is available now.
If you'd like to contribute ideas for the project underway go to tech.lds.org and submit suggestions there.
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Calendar
- Put Church, stake, and ward events under different css style tags, so they can be printed with different fonts, so that can be told apart on a black and white paper copy (our ward has probably less than 10 people that look at the on-line calendar)
- Provide ward leaders the ability to 'subscribe' to the ward/stake calendar from their desktop computer calendar application of choice. For example, iCal allows users to subscribe to read-only online calendars (.ics files) hosted on a WebDAV enabled server. This would allow ward leaders to have a syncronized, read-only ward calendar on their desktop computer, handheld device, and more. No double data entry. Everyone's sync'ed.
- Allow unit leaders the ability to create private calendar appointments, or at least link web-available calendars from other locations in a private way. This would allow for the executive secretary, etc. to schedule appointments in real time, and eliminate extra phone calls / emails / etc.
- Allow repeating events to have gaps, for example an event that runs from Jan-May does not occur June-August and then continues from Sept. - Dec. I'm a Mac guy and I can easily do this on ical. In general, it would be VERY helpful to be able to edit individual occurrences of a repeating event (delete it, move it, change it, etc.)
- Allow repeating event to have different descriptions for each event. (e.g. Young Men/Women event every week, and put a description of the activity on each week)
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Misc.
- Change error message for unauthorized Administrator
- The current message is a good explanation, but a larger text above it saying something like:
- "This option is limited to Site Administrators" might be less confusing.
- You could also use this link to allow the user to configure their profile.
- Make Building resources "resources"
- there should not be a seperate calendar for scheduling the building.
- One should be able to request a calendar event and select a resource from a list of available resources during the time selected.
- maybe a drop down list showing all resources available to that Ward with the occupied resources grayed out if it is not available durring the time selected.
--Josh 16:35, 16 January 2008 (EST) I still think there should be separate calendars for each building (for convenience of members determining what is available) but I agree that you should be able to select a resource when scheduling an event and have it automatically go on th resource calendar. You should then have also the ability to edit the item on the main calendar and the resource calendar separately, in case they need to have separate descriptions.