28 Mar 2010

NEW CHURCH WIKI

A "wiki" has been set up to assist with church communications. A wiki is a set of web pages, which you can access just like any other web page. You can visit the church wiki by pointing your browser at

and you will see the Home Page of the new church wiki. From there you can browse through pages describing the operations of the Church Council, the Elders, the Communications Committee, and of course, the four Missional Groups: Outreach, Inclusive Community, the Hub, and Growing Faith. Any church group is encouraged to create their own page - as an example, see the ChoirPage. In time, we hope to serve all church rosters from the wiki - which incidentally, will make 'swaps' between people much easier!

Wikis differ from ordinary web pages however, in that they can be altered by you, the reader, rather than just the web master. This gives great flexibility and power to the wiki. To make sure that only church people can do this, there is an authentication mechanism, based on the usual "username" and "password" combination. Some pages don't need this - they are readable by anyone, and behave just like web pages. Other pages require you to login in before you can read them. In general, you should login each time you use the wiki. There are instructions on the wiki about how to do this, to get you started.

The reason for creating a wiki is to establish a forum in which all can contribute their thoughts and ideas, debate key issues within the church, and generally keep yourselves informed of what is happening around the church. We realise that not all will be able or want to contribute to the wiki - that's fine, and for those who do not have access to the internet, we plan to have printouts of pages in which you might be interested available from the office.

The wiki is very secure - every page can be controlled down to the individual level as to who can read and/or write. Not only that, but all pages are backed-up, so if you do make a mistake, it can be undone. You should not feel afraid of breaking anything, except your reservations!

In the meantime, we urge you to "have a go"!

11 Apr 2010

NEW CHURCH WIKI

Over the last two weeks, you will have seen an announcement in the Bulletin about the new church wiki, hosted at the new permanent location:

There are now over 200 pages of information relating to the Glen Wverley Uniting Church and its activities. The wiki pages are open to everyone in the church, and church groups are particularly encouraged to build their own wiki pages to report on past events, and announce forthcoming events.

Over the coming weeks, I shall be including some helpful information on how to get started using the wiki. All of this information is taken from the wiki pages themselves, so once you get the hang of it, you can go exploring for yourself.

Create a Username and Password for Yourself

You will need to do this to access certain of the pages in this wiki.

  1. Go to the Create Account page.
    • a . This will open in a new window, so move it so that you can see these instructions.
  2. Fill in the details, and then click 'Create Profile'.

    1. Make sure you write your name in the style FirstnameLastname, with capital letters and no space.

  3. Click on the 'Login' button at the top of the page to now validate yourself.
    1. You should do this every time you visit any of these wiki pages.
    2. Most browsers will allow you to remember your details automatically.

You can also visit the HelpOnLogin page for more help.

Visiting a Page

A Wiki page is just a web page, so you can use any web browser you like to view wiki pages. They have the same means of access as ordinary web pages - an URL, or Uniform Resource Locator (sometimes pronounced as earl). This page, for example, has an URL of http://wiki.gwuc.org.au/gwuc/HowToUseTheChurchWiki. (Try it!)

Anytime you want to visit a page in this wiki, simply enter the URL in this form, replacing the HowToUseTheChurchWiki with the page name that you want. This is also the way you send the address to anyone else, so that when it appears in their email (for example), they just click the link and the web browser does the rest. This is also the way you should see wiki pages quoted in the ChurchBulletin.

JohnHurst
Chair of Church Council

25 Apr 2010

NEW CHURCH WIKI

Over the last four weeks, you will have seen an announcement in the Bulletin about how to create a user name and password for yourself, so that you can visit the new church wiki, hosted at the new permanent location:

There are now over 200 pages of information relating to the Glen Wverley Uniting Church and its activities. The wiki pages are open to everyone in the church, and church groups are particularly encouraged to build their own wiki pages to report on past events, and announce forthcoming events.

This week, we will explore navigation in the wiki, and how you can keep up-to-date with what is happening on it.

WikiNames are two or more words, capitalized and "glued" together, like WikiName. These have a special purpose in the wiki, and are the names of pages in the wiki. The first word in the name is often used to indicate what part of the church activities the wiki page describes, such as in CongregationalMeeting14Apr2010, or CouncilPage.

Whenever you see a WikiName in a WikiPage, it is usually highlighted in blue, indicating that it is a link to another (wiki) page. Clicking on these links will take you to that page, just as links in a normal web page do. The main difference is that the address is just the WikiName, without all the server information. For example, http://wiki.gwuc.org.au/gwuc/CongregationalMeeting12Apr2010 and CongregationalMeeting12Apr2010 are the same wiki page, but the second shorter form is what is used inside a WikiPage - hence the idea that the wiki gives a "quick" way of linking to other pages ("wiki" is Hawaiian for "quick").

Up the top of the wiki page, the system keeps a list of the last 5 or so pages that you have visited. This is convenient if you want to jump back quickly to those pages. The GWUCHomePage is also listed, just after the Uniting Church logo, as GWUCWiki, so you can jump quickly to that as well. On the HomePage itself are "quick links" to all the activities of the church covered by the wiki.

Subscribing to wiki pages

If you have a particular relationship with one of the many church groups, you will want to know what's happening in that group. The wiki allows you to "Subscribe" to various pages, so that you will get sent an email whenever some new information is posted to that page. At the top of each page is a line containing various links (and the pull-down menu "More Actions"). In that line you will see the word "Subscribe". If you click this link, you can subscribe yourself to get an email whenever this page is updated.

If (when) you get sick of those emails, that same link will now say "Unsubscribe", and clicking it will reverse the subscription.

JohnHurst
Chair of Church Council