With the Kenya mission team leaving today, we thought it would be a fun time to show you another way to see all of the places that Mt. Bethel is going this year.
You can already view all of our off-campus events in a Google Map, and you can even download a file to view them in Google Earth. Now you can view them using the brand-new Google Earth plugin.
This plugin allows you to view Google Earth content right in your browser, including 3D terrain, buildings, and fun stuff like that. We’ve added the rest of our 2008 mission trips into a collection, which you can browse below.
You’ll need to install the plugin before they will show up, and the plugin currently only runs in Windows (sorry about that — Mac/Linux support is due in August). Check it out!
Powered by EarthSwoop | More info about this collection
Check out the new Mt Bethel Podcast (MBP), titled “What’s Happening Now?“. The MBP is designed to help you stay informed about some of the great ministries that are taking place in your church.
Our first podcast highlights our newest ministry - Camp Winfield. Nic Slade and I sit down with Dr. Randy Mickler to talk about the vision and mission of Camp Winfield.
Follow this link to listen to the interview or you can download the podcast to your ipod (add the new Podcast to your iTunes). Let us know what you think!
Jody
The search feature our main website has always been pretty solid, but it was a separate tool from the blog search engine. This week, those tools have been combined into one big search engine that can help you find whatever you’re looking for. You can use either the search box in the top right corner of the main site, or use the search box at the top of the blog — they’ll both pull up the same results.
The search engine now searches over 500 pages of content to help you find exactly what you’re looking for. The numbers change a little bit from day to day, but as of today it breaks down as:
- 76 upcoming events
- 333 content pages
- 94 staff members
- 86 blog entries
The search engine will dig through all of those areas, then put the most relevant results at the top of the list. If you see anything come up that seems out of place, let us know in the comment section below and we’ll make the necessary tweaks.
Happy searching!
I recently received an e-mail from a church up in Maryland asking what tools we use to build/maintain the website. While the main areas of the site (events, news, etc) are handled using a home-grown system, we use many 3rd-party products throughout the site. I thought I’d share that info here for anyone else that is curious:
- We use a product called vBulletin to handle our user authentication and the forums. The authentication is used so that we can give access to the back-end of the site for those that need it. Cost: $160 (one-time) + $30/year
- SignUsUp for online registrations. Cost: Varies
- TinyMCE handles the WYSIWYG editor on the backend, so that we can use buttons to make things bold, italic, linked, etc, rather than having to write code for all of that. Cost: Free!
- We purchased Widget Podcast a few years ago to power the Podcast. We’ve modified it very heavily, but it’s technically still in there a little bit. Cost: $40
- Flash Nifties XML Flash Slideshow helps power the animated Flash elements throughout the site. We’ve extended the script quite a bit using mod_rewrite and our main database, but their script has saved us a lot of time. Cost: $10
- This blog is powered by WordPress. Cost: Free!
- We use Twitter to handle the Rec Update, which allows our rec staff to update it from anywhere via cell phone, and allows members to receive text message updates if they sign-up. Cost: Free!
- We also use Twitter2HTML to help us pull the Twitter data and show it on the site. Cost: Free!
- We use Constant Contact to manage and send our e-bulletin. Cost: $30/month
- We use PHPforms to help us build some of our non-paid registrations. Cost: $29.99
- We use Animoto to help make some of the cool videos on the site (like this one). Cost: $30/year
- We use the Google Maps API to help with the directions page and the “map of off-campus events” page. Cost: Free!
- We use Riva Encoder and Flow Player to embed some of the pre-mixed videos on the site (like this one). Cost: Free!
- We use SmugMug for some of our photo hosting. Cost: $99/year
That’s about it. If you have any questions about specific items, feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll be happy to help.
Mickey
It was just over 10 years ago, on July 20, 1997, that Roger Barnette had the foresight to purchase the domain mtbethel.org for our church. Given that there are hundreds of organizations named “Mt. Bethel” in the US, having such a great domain name is only possible because of Roger.
I thought it’d be neat to take a look at the changes in the site through the years. I don’t have any screenshots from the first few years, but we can start in March of 2000. This design, along with the next four, was done by Mike Gutting. (you can click on any image to view a larger version of it)
In October of that year, Mike added a column on the right side of the page to show additional information:
Not too much later, in January of 2001, Mike updated again with a fresh look:
In April of 2001, the look was refined a bit further. This is one of my favorite old designs of the site:
A few years later, in February of 2003, the site got a nice new look:
There was one more design that Mike had done, but I can’t find a copy of it. It was the first one that started asking questions on the front page (”What Should I Expect When I Visit?”, “How Do I Get There?”, “What’s Available For My Kids?”, etc), which was a very useful thing for new visitors.
Next up was my first design for the site, in September of 2004:
In April of 2006, the color changed to red. The front page looks a bit different, but the inside pages stayed about the same:
Later in 2006, just before the end of the year, we released this design:
Finally, here we are today:
And there you have it. If you happen to have copies of any other design that I might have missed, please e-mail them to me and I’ll post them up here.
Mickey
We’ve just released some new features on our site that integrate directly with Twitter, the very popular micro-blogging service. We’re doing this in an effort to make it easier for you to get the information you need.
We’re starting it in two areas - the upcoming High School Girl’s Retreat and our ever-popular Recreation Update. We will likely do this will other events in the future, depending on well it goes.
We’ve been very careful in our implementation of this, in not changing any of the old ways of doing things. If you’re used to just clicking the “sunshine icon” on the front of the site to get the rec update, you still can - that’s not going away. We’re simply adding more ways for you to stay updated.
If you’d like more information about how to use this new technology, please visit this page. Let us know if you have any comments or suggestions.
Mickey
We’ve just added a map with a list of all upcoming off-campus church events. It’s a neat way to see everywhere that Mt. Bethel is going in the upcoming months.
Check it out!
Mickey
