Ian's Messy Desk

A new blog from the editors of Leadership magazine.

link from B.D.

Feeling even more shame than Richard, I have pulled the contact form out from under that stack of papers on Ian's Messy Desk. ;)

Your Blog Should Blue

Your blog is a peaceful, calming force in the blogosphere. > You tend to avoid conflict - you're more likely to share than rant. > From your social causes to cute pet photos, your life is a (mostly) open book.

Though I like your "propensity for purple". Has a kind of poetic ring to it. ;)

31% evil, 69% good

Far more evil than B.D. or even the CBC!!! (That can't be right.) ;)

>

As if Darren doesn't have enough fingers in the blogging pie, he has joined with Jeremy and Duncan to create the b5media.com blogging network.

What is b5media?
b5media is a network of blogs that have been born out of conversations between Duncan Riley (of BlogHerald.com fame), Jeremy Wright (serial blogger from Ensight.org) and Darren Rowse (blogging at ProBlogger.net).

b5media is not a simple thing to sum up - you might want to look at the different ways that we as the founding team have described it in previous post on this blog.

Gordon proposes a little parochial meme to see how many Salvation Army bloggers he can flush out. My list of SA bloggers grows slowly but surely.

New blog search tool in two forms:

Google

Blogger

That's Toronto, Ontario for the uninitiated.

I have a week's worth of meetings at TSA's Territorial Headquarters next week. Glenda's coming with me and we're taking a couple of days at each end to visit family and friends in T.O. and St. Catharines. It's a pretty full schedule, so posting may be thin. Take time to visit the blogs on my blogroll.

My comments have turned up a new Edmonton blogger, Tyler William's. His blog, Codex Blogspot, contains, "My musings on Biblical Studies, Biblical Hebrew, Dead Sea Scrolls, Septuagint, Popular Culture, Religion, Software, and pretty much anything else that interests me!" and is part of his bigger web site Codex: Resources for Biblical Studies, Old Testament Hebrew, religion & popular culture, theology, film, and more.

Tyler is the Chair, Religion & Theology Department; Assistant Professor of Old Testament, at Taylor University College in Edmonton. Lots of interesting content at Codex, stop by and check it out.

For a long time now, I've been accustomed to seeing the search string "Ian McKenzie" in my referrer logs. Entering Ian McKenzie in a search engine returns Ian's Messy Desk at the top of the list, much to the obligatory amazement of one friend and my daughter. In the past week, I started seeing referrals from Yahoo.ca for the search string "Ian". A quick test shows that I am the number one listing (after the ads) out of almost one-hundred million Ian's indexed by Yahoo.ca. Gandalf is second place.

Boy, if I take that and a Loonie down to Tim Hortons, I bet they'll give me a small coffee. :^

Imagination Prompt Generator

Faced with a case of writer's or blogger's block? Visit the Imagination Prompt Generator at the Creativity Portal and get a prompt to start those creative juices flowing. Don't like the prompt you're given, click and get a new one.

link from 43 Folders

After Knock, Knock, Seth Godin's last e-book, it's only natural that he follow up with Who's There (free for now). In the new book he takes a look at blogging. Not a standard how-to, but:

"Instead, I divide the blog world into three groups and turn my attention to one. And in particular, I try to sell you hard on how building a blog asset can have a spectacular impact on you, your career, your organization and your ideas."

Richard has announced that the Sketty Methodist chuch web site is on-line. I'm particularly interested in the fact that they are using WordPress to power the site as I use WordPress to maintain our congregation's web-site. I'd be interested in getting some feedback on how suitable they —and perhaps others— find blogging platforms for maintaining this type of web site.

There has been much discussion around the web on the (un)suitability of using blogging software as a CMS. There are WordPress features that I find particularliy useful for this task:

1. Ease of updating —Once the initial installation is complete, adding content is relatively straightforward. As Richard mentions, any number of authors can be set up in WP, allowing individual groups within the congregation to add their own content.
2. Static pages —Certain types of information doesn't change frequently: address and driving directions, group membership lists, weekly schedules, etc. Static pages can be created and then updated only as needed.
3. Categories and sub categories —Church congregations generally have a lot of things going on. Categories allow the webmaster to manage the organization of the site. Individual groups get a sub-category, which is further organized under a category. (E.g., band, choir and worship team all have their own sub-categories, which come under the category of music.) Everything flows through the front page, so that visitors to the site can see at a glance what is happening at Edmonton Temple. Those who are interested in a specific activity, say ALPHA, can find the details they need in that category.

I've been using WordPress at the Edmonton Temple site for a little more than six months now and am happy with the system and the results. The response to the site has been good and our traffic has slowly been increasing.

My list of Salvation Army bloggers is getting longer, though probably not comprehesive. If you know of others that can be added to this list, let me know.

Blogging church