Boyink! - Spring Forward on the Web

OK, so I’m making up words.  Or, maybe I’m not.

In any case, today’s message is for churches to stop using the web simply as a online distribution channel for printed items like bulletins and newsletters.

I’ll say that again. In another way, just for the sake of entertainment.  If you think your church website is finally “up to date” because you just uploaded a PDF version of this month’s church newsletter, you are mistaken.

The issues around PDF web content have long been noted, so I don’t intend this post as a general comment around PDF usage - but more specifically for churches.

So why not keep a church website up to date by simply posting PDF versions of the bulletins and newsletters that you’re already producing?

Because overall it shows a misunderstanding of the web - just as in the early days of television most content was repurposed radio dramas because people just didn’t see how TV brought new capabilities to exploit. 

Specifically, by putting that newsletter and bulletin on your site as web content rather than PDF a church can gain:

• A more flexible and responsive publishing schedule
  Aren’t you tired of sounding the “deadline drumbeat”?  Or staying late on deadline day because *everything* comes in last minute?  Or making exceptions for people because of their position in the church?  Your website can be updated any time - no deadlines required.  Last minute news item?  No problem. Finally,  a communications medium that can dance to the beat of the content, rather than the other way around.
• Readers on alternate devices
  I was at a holiday get-together with some other folks from my church this past week.  The discussion turned to some content on the church website, and one guy said “Oh I gotta go read that”.  He pulled out his wireless-enabled cell phone and within 15 seconds or so was reading the content - all possible because it was web content and not something captured in a PDF.  And take note, this was no 18 year old geek.  This was a police sergeant, a married father of 3 with one kid out of high school.
• Readers on slow connections
  As part of another church engagement last week I talked with a number of the church members.  A high percentage were still using dialup connections, and mentioned that they had issues trying to load PDF content.  Regardless of how you feel about PDF’s, the truth is they are another layer of technology, another application that has to load, and why? So the user can see text and images - just like in the browser.  What if that PDF content was the critical piece, the “last straw” for a visitor in making a decision to visit the church.  Or - to cross the line and come to Christ?  Why take the risk?
• More readers using assitive devices
  Yes, PDF’s can be made accessible (readable by people using assistive devices on their computer such as a screen reader, but frankly it takes more work so they are less likely to be.  Web content is much more likely to be readable by these devices.
• Better searchability
  Yes, Google can index PDF files - but what if you don’t use Google?
• Visitors
  Yeah, OK - maybe this is mostly me, but when I see the church website used mainly as a PDF repository I know this a church that’s behind the times and just doesn’t “get” the web.  And if they don’t get the web, they’re unlikely to see me darken their door.  What if it’s not just me?

Comments are closed, but you can read the comments other people left.

1. Nathan Smith on January 30, 2007

   Amen, and amen! This was a huge problem when I worked as a webmaster at Asbury Seminary. Staff persons would often just send a PDF, and tell us at the IT Dept to just upload it, with a link. Let the message be heard loud and clear: PDF does not a good website make.

2. Nathan Logan on January 30, 2007

   Great article.  I would add two more (off the top of my head).

   1.  Search Engine Indexing - you are much more likely to get your information indexed and searchable if it’s HTML.

   2.  Avoiding Browser Lag - most people have some sort of Adobe Acrobat plugin that requires quite a few resources to get fired up.  This takes time and processor cycles, neither of which people like to give up.

   Thanks for the article!

3. Jeff Wilkinson on April 03, 2007

   IMO, PDFs *can* be appropriate for some cases, and in others they may offer ease of publishing that is worth the losses in accessibility, etc.  (particularly for publishing more complex things that would be time-consuming to format and post with the tools you have in-hand)

   I won’t repost it here, but I wrote a little more on this in the comments to one of Dean’s posts.

   http://healyourchurchwebsite.com/2007/04/03/rockville-united-methodist-church-a-case-for-periodic-site-re-factoring/#comments

   Sure, reading PDFs can be a pain, and they are often not appropriate, or are overused, but IMO sometimes that ease of publishing can mean something gets online that wouldn’t have otherwise at all. 

   And, often as a webmaster, the inputs I get are in the formats provided by the staff.  I don’t get to tell them what tools to use since their main purpose is usually making something for print. So I get MS publisher files or MS Word docs.  I can do a lot of manual copy-and-pasting to format every little newsletter, specific ministries calendar, annual report, etc so that it’s wonderful forever on the web, or I can make a PDF in a 10th the time. 

   As a volunteer managing our site on whatever time I can get, with little help, I don’t have to feel (much ;-) guilt about that…  Compromise doesn’t have to be a dirty word.

4. Boyink (Author) on April 03, 2007

   I can see the point, but the bigger issues still bug me.

   What’s the bigger issue?  That the website isn’t seen as important enough to deserve A) a paid editor and B) First thought/priority when it comes to content.

   I know many times PDF is the best you can do - but I still see it as a band-aid.

   I had hoped that church webmasters wouldn’t have to be “bulletin-diving” for content these days….

5. Jeff Wilkinson on April 03, 2007

   Are you sure you’ve worked on a website for a church?  ;-)

   We pay an editor who does most of the communications, but she’s concentrating mostly on the print publications at this point, including a *weekly* newsletter that sometimes runs up to maybe 8 sides of pages.

   So, while I’m not exactly ‘bulletin-diving,” the articles and content are written for the primary purpose of that main communications medium.  I pick and choose what is appropriate for the website.  Those items aren’t what I’m talking about PDF’ing though, at least not in our case.

   I’m just thinking that some of the publications that have most meaning in a limited time range (like newsletters for some churches), and which may have creative layouts, etc, may be reasonably published as PDFs as a compromise.

   Anyway, perhaps you are lucky in your church’s budget or in their leadership or just your web team, but I’d guess that a great number of church webmasters are in the situation that you seem to hope we’d passed. 

   Admittedly, my own situation should be improved as soon as I get time to pick a good CMS and migrate the site into it, where the staff will have ability to edit content themselves directly.  However, I’m sure we’re not the only church site that hasn’t made that move yet, so my argument on PDFs stands, at least for those of us with more ‘limited’ resources, both human and technical.

   Mainly I don’t want the discussion to lead people to think that its such a terrible thing if they choose to use a few PDFs where they need to make that compromise.  IMO all website work is a work-in-progress, and we do the best we can for the resources and time and abilities we have at the time, then improve when we can.

   http://www.centralpc.org/admin/webminfaq.htm#intimdated_not

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