Community of Christ - Website FAQ

Website FAQ

Welcome to the Website Frequently Asked Questions page. The questions are listed below – to see the answer for a specific question, just use your mouse to click on the text of the question and it will open up to show the answer. If you'd like to read down through all of the answers without clicking on a specific one, just click on the Show All Answers button below.

The questions are organized into three main sections:

General Questions – the rationale for the new site
New website features – new things you can see and do
Information for Congregations – questions congregations may have about how to get started with the new website

General Questions

1.1 Why did we need a new website?

The prior website was created to address the needs of the Mission Centers at that time. Today the technologies available are different and our needs are different – for example, we want congregations to be able to update their own information on the website without needing anyone at the mission center office to get involved, and we want to take advantage of new ways of communicating and relating with each other, such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter.

The primary way that it addresses the new requirements is by using a Content Management System (CMS).

1.2 What is a Content Management System and what does it do?

A Content Management System (or CMS) allow us to separate the structure and layout of the website (i.e. the messy, complex stuff about how the pages are organized and the layout of banners, menus and footers) from the more straightforward content of each page.

By separating them, the handful of people who have the specialized skills for building websites can focus on the messy stuff, and the people in the congregations who best know what information should be on the web pages (i.e. pastors, reunion directors, youth leaders, etc.) can update the content on the pages they care about without having to have someone in the mission center office make the changes for them (someday...!)

1.3 What Content Management System are we using?

We're using a Content Management System called CMS Made Simple, which is an open source system available online for free.

1.4 Never heard of it – does anyone else use it?

Yes, there are hundreds of websites built using CMS Made Simple, and in fact it's the same system that is currently used for the World Accord(external link) website and for the soon-to-be-available new website for Encounter World Religions(external link).

1.5 How big is the website?

Right now there are approximately 270 pages in the website, but that number will definitely grow as congregations begin to add their pages.

New Website Features

2.1 Shortcuts to go directly to a page I want

You can always go to a favourite page and then create a "bookmark" in your browser, but we have also given each Mission Center, congregation and campground their own "subdomain" address. So for example, typing the following into the address bar of your browser:

cem.communityofchrist.ca: will go directly to the Canada East Mission page
calgary.communityofchrist.ca: will go directly to the page for the Calgary congregation – every congregation has their own page, and every congregation has their own subdomain. Hopefully the congregation name is easy to figure out, but you may have to go to the main Congregations page to find out what name is being used.
ziontario.communityofchrist.ca: will go directly to the page for the Ziontario Campground, and similarly all of the other campgrounds have a subdomain (i.e. noronto.communityofchrist.ca, hillsofpeace.communityofchrist.ca, ...)

2.2 Every Pastor has an email...

We also use the subdomains to create an email for every pastor of every congregation – i.e. Click to email pastor , Click to email pastor , etc.

2.3 Spam Email Protection

You may have noticed that the email addresses above (and elsewhere on the site) are a funny blue colour. That's because they really aren't text on the web page at all – it is a graphic of the text of the email address!

Huh?! We don't want to put the text email addresses on the site because the bad guys use what are called "spiders" to read every webpage they can find on the Internet, and pull out any email addresses they find and sell them to the spammers. So your email appears on the page, and suddenly you start getting more spam email showing up in your inbox. By turning the email address into a graphic, the "spider" programs can't detect them as email addresses and so it will reduce the spam email problem.

Information for Congregations

3.1 How does my congregation change our page?

Your pastor (or the person designated as the web administrator) has received an email with the login credentials for your page.

Once you log into the web page, there is Help information to tell you how to change many of the settings.