New UUA.org Takes Shape With More for Everyone
July 15, 2007
If you've looked at UUA.org recently you know that it's changed. The redesigned site, which launched in the spring, aims to be more useful to visitors, lay leaders, and others."Even if you've checked it out recently, it's worth going back frequently," says Deborah Weiner, the Unitarian Universalist Association's (UUA) director of Electronic Communication. The site, although open for business in April, won't be truly complete until about the end of the year when most of the 20,000 or so pages will have been moved over from the old site. "It's a very complicated move," she says.
Here's a primer on how to use the new site. It's designed for three categories of users: visitors, members, and lay leaders. Click on one of those headings on the main page to find the information you want. A fourth heading is "I Am Interested In," which allows people to find information about eight specific subcategories including news, publications, religious education, social justice, and giving and generosity.
On the new site, under the "I Am Interested In" button, leaders can share the good news of their congregation in the Congregational Life section, find out what's coming up on the Events Calendar, or read a sermon in the Spiritual Life section. Index pages for past issues of InterConnections are also in that section.
Click on the "Leaders" button, then on Leaders' Library in the left column and that will bring up a screen that permits users to search for topics using keywords, such as "social justice" or "fundraising." Searches are also possible by size of congregation. Under the Leaders button users can also update subscriptions to Unitarian Universalist (UU) World, InterConnections, and other publications.
Under the "Visitors" button users can call up the names of congregations and specifically find those that are Welcoming or wheelchair accessible. Welcoming congregations are those that have completed the UUA's Welcoming Congregation program and are intentionally welcoming to people who are bisexual, gay, lesbian, or transgender.
The Visitors section also has a description of the UU Principles, as well as a description of UU worship services, music, ceremonies, and holidays. There is a list of books that are useful for newcomers and a place to ask questions about the faith.
The website of the UUA Washington office, which has been separate from UUA.org, is being merged into UUA.org. "There's a lot of emphasis right now on adding social justice information to the website, including the content of the Washington Office site," Weiner says. "Social justice is one of the biggest and most important parts of this website."
"The website is organized under a content management system (CMS) which is in common use across the business world and is the system used by most religious denominations," says Weiner. CMS allows many staff within the UUA to add and change content, whereas most of the information on the old site had to be created by three to four people. Weiner says about forty people will have responsibility for adding to the website. That will permit information to be added, updated, and maintained faster.
Weiner says complaints about the old website were that people couldn't find information, there was too much information for ministers and not enough for lay leaders, and not enough spiritual content. "We had a one size fits all website. We wanted the new one to be spirit-driven and configured in a way so that people could navigate through one of these four doorways to find what they need." If you need help with the site, email info @ uua.org.
She notes that every page on the new site has a link near the top so that page can be printed or emailed to friends. At the bottom of every page is a sitemap to help people get a sense of what the site includes and how it is organized.
UUA.org is designed to display properly for computers using Netscape, Internet Explorer 6 or 7, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari browsers.
For more information contact interconnections @ uua.org.
Last updated on Friday, April 18, 2008.
