Plus, I’m looking for some interesting people to follow on Twitter anyway. In fact, if I don’t already follow you, I’ll make it a point to go to your Twitter page and give you a follow. Just remember to leave your Twitter account/username so I can find you.

Post from: Scott Magdalein

• CSS Drive
• Church Beauty (Great Church Websites)
• CSS Website Gallery
• CSS Elite
• Best Web Gallery
• CSS Beauty
• CSS Heroes
• CSS Vault
• Urban Trash

Although those sites are great, there is one that is far above the rest.

• Design Shack

And, finally, if you want to build your own web gallery, you can use this theme from OS Designer.

• Wordpress CSS Gallery Theme

The Wordpress theme is super-easy to install and gives you multiple options. If you need some help, contact someone at Updatable and they’ll hook you up.

Post from: Scott Magdalein

I don’t like to use my personal blog to publicize client projects, but this one is different. Besides, it’s less of a client project and more of a friend’s project that Updatable got to help with, so I don’t feel bad for this announcement.

The site is WeTheChurch.org and it’s completely new. In fact, it just launched (officially) today. WeTheChurch.org is a new website where anyone can submit prayer requests and praises. I know. There are tons of websites out there that do this, but WeTheChurch is remarkably different. Here’s how:

• It’s really easy to submit a request or praise. Just go to the site and start typing. When you’re done, you click “Send It” and it’s sent.
• It’s really easy to follow. You can see the most recent requests and praises right there on the site or follow the Twitter feed (more on this below).
• It’s anonymous by default. God knows exactly who submitted which request or praise. We don’t want to know for many reasons.
• There are no accounts to sign up for. That means you stay anonymous and you don’t have to worry about one more account. If you’re like me, you have enough accounts on enough sites.
• The requests are short and sweet. With a 140 character limit, you won’t be reading droning prayer requests and praises that are paragraphs in length.
• You can follow the updates via RSS. Some people are RSS junkies and need feeds to survive.

I’m really excited about this site for two reasons. First, it represents Updatable well. We love these kinds of projects. We enjoy working on sites that have the potential to change how the Church works together to accomplish God’s vision for His people. It makes “work” a little less work-like.

The second reason I’m excited about WeTheChurch.org is that it’s the first time we integrated a site with an outside API; in this case, Twitter. Actually, the Twitter integration is the very thing that makes WeTheChurch so awesome. Aside from being incredibly easy to use, we made it possible to follow the updates (prayer requests and praises) by following the WeTheChurch Twitter account. Click here to go to its Twitter page.

This is the vision behind WeTheChurch. People need prayer and, with current technology, we should be able to get needs prayed for or praises rejoiced over much more efficiently than we have been. With WeTheChurch, your prayer requests and praises will be visible to everyone visiting the site and sent to everyone following its Twitter feed.

So, this is what I’m asking of you.

• Use WeTheChurch. Submit prayer requests and praises. Pray for the requests that you read there. They’re real requests from real people with real needs and praises.
• Follow WeTheChurch through Twitter. It’s much better than visiting the site several times a day to see what’s new.
• Talk about it. Blog about it. Send out emails to your friends/family. Link to it from your blog/website. The more people that use it, the greater impact it will have.

Thoughts?

Post from: Scott Magdalein

Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate.

Psalm 127: 3-5

Children are a blessing, but using this passage to support why we should have as many as possible is irresponsibly applying the Word. In this passage, children are a blessing in terms of military protection; weapons to defend your land/family/self.

Then Judah said to Onan, “Lie with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to produce offspring for your brother.” But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so whenever he lay with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from producing offspring for his brother. What he did was wicked in the LORD’s sight; so he put him to death also.

Genesis 38: 8-10

This isn’t a passage about birth control, refusing to have children, or masturbation. This is a passage about Onan rebelling against God by disobeying Levitical law telling him that he was to marry his dead brother’s wife and give her children. Period.

Discussion?

Post from: Scott Magdalein

Back in high school, my English teacher told me that she thought I actually had ADD. It wasn’t news to me. I’d never been the most focused kid, but I always thought it was just a teenage thing and that it wasn’t indicative of anything mental. She disagreed.

Since then, I’ve realized that, while I’m still not too sure about the ADD thing, I do have a difficult time focusing on one task at a time. Throughout college, I tried different techniques to stay focused on the task/project at hand.

• I’d listen to music, but that was a disaster. After only a few minutes, I’d either be rocking out or picking apart the song. I’ve got a musical knack, which didn’t mesh well with keeping my eye on the proverbial ball.
• I’d hit the library, but soon found out that silence is more distracting than background noise. Even worse is the couple that whispers in the corner about things you want to know about, so you start imagining what they’re talking about, and then you start having secrets with yourself and leaving them out of it just to spite them. Or, maybe that’s just me.
• I’d sit in the courtyard. Honestly, though, that was just to look smarter, not actually get anything done. But everyone has done that at some point, don’t they?
• I’d lock myself in my dorm room, but the sound of people having fun out in the hallway drove me nuts with curiosity. I found myself drifting to the door to peak out more and more often.
• I’d turn off the computer and use a pencil and paper, but my hand muscles must have atrophied over the years of very little “real writing” because I’d cramp up after only a few sentences. (Writing with pencils is a lost art. My handwriting sucks now. I still believe that the pencil is just a pen with a delete button.)
• I’d give up trying, which worked just as well as the other efforts at getting things done.

Then, I found the sweet-spot. I’d find a quiet place and play jazz music that was instrumental only. I’d use speakers and not headphones because the wire on the headphones was distracting. The music was loud enough to block out the ambient noise, but not loud enough to get in my head. That’s when the magic happens.

In fact, if it’s the middle of the day and you don’t see too many tweets coming from me, it’s probably because I’m GTD’ing my own way.

Post from: Scott Magdalein

“I told you so.”

Okay, now that that’s out of your system, let’s get down to brass tacks. I adopted Twitter about three weeks ago. It quickly became my favorite addiction. However, after using it for only a short time, I’ve come to realize its real-world value and usefulness outside of engorging myself on absurd amounts of web content.

After Chad Wright used it to contact me about helping him with a project that used the power of the Twitter mob, I started looking into other ways that Twitter could be used for business, life, and ministry. And, holy cow, I’ve come up with some great little ideas.

For example, I just finished the first stage of a project for another client over at SwellSignal.com. After completing the designing, putting some finishing touches to the coding and functionality, I called him and had a chat about what Twitter is and how it could make SwellSignal even more fun and useful. Needless to say, it was an exciting chat.

Next, I talked with our pastor’s wife who organizes the prayer ministry for our church. She’s been looking for a way to have interactive, chat-like prayer on our church’s website without dropping money of custom coding or using a third-party app that just looks awkward. Twitter’s feature-set might work in that area, too.

Then, as I was trying to write another blog post here this morning, I tweeted that I was having a tough time with it. In no time, I got several replies in Twitter telling me that Twitter is the cause of my blogger’s-block because it’s killing blogs. My guess is that all the good ideas are simply posted to Twitter instead of blogged. That makes sense to me.

Yesterday, Clayton Bell introduced me to HashTags.org, a nifty little tool that makes Twitter act more like a forum or wiki. As soon as he explained it, I realized the power of what that little tool can do.

Wait, I just had an idea that I’m going to run with. Look for it in a couple days.

Do you have any ideas about what Twitter could do with a little ingenuity?

Post from: Scott Magdalein

Jermayn. I’ll contact you soon my friend.

Post from: Scott Magdalein

About a week later, Cory from iThemes.com and Church Communications Pro contacted me and asked me if I wanted to join with him to give away a free premium theme from his newest venture. Duh! Yeah, I’d love to give my readers a rockin’ premium theme. But, just like anything in life, there’s a catch, but it’s a fun catch.

The official prize will be a free theme of your choice from iThemes.com and a free Wordpress install from me. Cory will give you the theme and I’ll install it and do some small tweaks to it to make it fit your personality. If you already have a self-hosted Wordpress blog, you can still be eligible for the theme, but you won’t need the install (obviously).

How to Enter

In the comments section of this post (and you’re welcome to post your entry on your blog if you wish, but it’s not required as long as you’ve posted it here) finish this statement: “If I had a million readers on my blog, I’d…”

So there you have it. Be funny, silly, serious, it doesn’t matter! Just finish that statement in the comments section of this post and you’re entered to win one of the above prizes.

Rules:

• One entry per person.
• The winner will be chosen by a random number generator.
• The contest will run for 72 hours beginning with the time stamp for the post.

Comments are open.

Post from: Scott Magdalein

Erica tells a story from Scott Magdalein on Vimeo.

Post from: Scott Magdalein

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I feel like I’ve had SEO (Search Engine Optimization) crammed down my throat for several months now. It may have been around before then, but SEO seems to be gaining traction as the current mystical path to success on the web. I can’t escape the onslaught of tips, tricks, and how-to’s to help me increase search engine traffic.

Here’s my opinion on search engine traffic.

It’s not worth the time you put into working on it, at least not for a blog. You might want to put more thought into it for your church’s (or your business’) website, but even then, there’s only so much you can do with it and only so much help it can offer.

Why search engine traffic sucks.

They don’t stay. Visitors that come from search engines are looking for something specific (that’s why they went through Google.) and when they find it, they’re going to leave. If they don’t find it, they’re going to leave. Search engine traffic isn’t sticky. On the other hand, niche traffic from visitors who are in “peruse” mode when they hit your blog/site will be much more likely to stick around, learn a little about you, and maybe even comment or subscribe.

Here are my suggestions.

For your blog, keep great content flowing, comment on random stranger’s blogs that are also within your niche (this is a big one), and participate in social sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Stumble Upon, etc.

For your church/business website, buy PPC (pay-per-click) ads through Google or Yahoo or MSN. This will drive only the kind of traffic you want (a.k.a. targeted traffic) and you wont waste countless hours on stupid SEO “tricks.”

Here’s The SEO Rapper layin’ it down for you with some guidelines for PPC marketing. (Video embedded.)

Post from: Scott Magdalein