As the 2008 Unitarian Universalist General Assembly begins, Welcoming Websites is proud to announce the launch of the new website for the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.  The new website reorganizes UUSC's content around four high-level navigation menus, and allows visitors to learn a great deal about UUSC's four focus areas, its membership engagement activities, and its wide range of human rights advocacy resources.  The launch of the new website coincides with the launch of UUSC's e-Community, an online community which facilitates email newsletter signups, online donations, and e-activism.

Welcoming Websites took an active role in planning and implementing the new UUSC website.  The project began with a brief strategy phase, which focused the site's goals and core audiences.  An initial version of the site was implemented using Drupal 5.x, combining a variety of standard modules including CCK, Views, and eCommerce.  A look-and-feel incorporating the new UUSC logo was drafted by JM Design, and converted into a Drupal theme with close cooperation between JM Design and Welcoming Websites.  Welcoming Websites devised a number of custom modules and theme modifications to complete the project.

A great deal of the content on UUSC's website is related to major initiatives or membership engagement activities.  This content is organized into a small number of "minisites".  Each minisite corresponds to a single UUSC focus area, campaign, or membership engagement activity.  Minisites conform to a standard structure, allowing visitors to navigate through the site easily, knowing that they can expect a consistent experience from one page to the next.  At the same time, administrators have the freedom to tweak and refine this structure, to emphasize information that is specific to a small number of initiatives.

The use of Drupal for the UUSC's website significantly reduces the overhead involved in managing content, which facilitating unique functionality and content organization, through minisites and other core Drupal functionality.  Welcoming Websites is excited to support the important human rights advocacy work carried on by UUSC and its members through the creation of a solid platform for online communications.

Welcoming Websites today announces the launch of the new site for the Universalist Unitarian Church of Riverside. The new site will help UUCR reach out to prospective visitors, provide its members with important information, and gather feedback from website visitors. UUCR's new site includes a Sermon Archive, Minister's Blog, and a variety of other useful features.

This site was built in Drupal 5, using the Beale Street theme from RoopleTheme. We also included important site maintenance features, like the TinyMCE rich text editor and an automated Backup-and-Restore feature to help UUCR protect itself against potential data loss.

We're very excited about the launch of this site, as we believe it will help UUCR extend its ministry to new visitors and build community within its membership.

Today Welcoming Websites launched the new site for the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association. Launched in coordination with the UUMA's drive to register members for its annual Ministry Days, the new site will help UUMA members share information and connect with one another. It will also help members and staff achieve many common tasks, like archiving and retrieving documents, more efficiently and quickly.

The site was built using Drupal 5, and it brings together a number of Drupal's most powerful features. These features include user management, group subscriptions, content types and dynamic views, and ad hoc form design. The Drupal architecture will serve UUMA well for many years to come, as it will allow the organization to continually enhance and upgrade its site as new extensions and upgrades are added to Drupal.

We are proud to serve this vital Unitarian Universalist organization, and we look forward to supporting the UUMA's crucial mission in the future.

Next week, Shelby and I will be attending Drupalcon, the foremost international conference for Drupal users, developers, designers, and consumers. The program looks fascinating, and we can't wait to see what's brewing in the Drupal world. I'm also looking forward eagerly to the Drupal Code Sprint, taking place at that architectural marvel known as the MIT Stata Center.

If you'll be in Boston for Drupalcon, contact us, and we'll plan to get together. It should be a great time!

Earlier this month, Lightbulb First and Welcoming Websites co-founder Shelby Meyerhoff begain writing for UU World and Street Prophets.

UU World is the most well-known publication for Unitarian Universalists. Shelby's writing at UU World covers ongoing debates and discussions in the UU blogosphere. Her weekly blog and quarterly column is called The Interdependent Web.

Street Prophets is one of the most popular blog for Religious Left activists. Shelby's weekly front-page blog posts cover religion and politics news. You can find them all through Shelby's Street Prophets profile.

At Welcoming Websites, we are proud to help liberal religious organizations develop and implement online communication strategies. Shelby's writing at UU World and Street Prophets marks her as a leader in this field, and we hope that her contributions will help other liberal religious organizations use the web more effectively.

Today Welcoming Websites is proud to announce that the website for the First Parish in Cambridge, Unitarian Universalist, has been upgraded to Drupal 5. Shelby is a member of this church, and we've been providing pro-bono work on this site for quite some time. It's great to see the site continue to grow and improve over time.

The upgrade to Drupal 5 will open the doors for the church to deploy a lot of additional functionality on its site in the weeks and months ahead. Already on the radar screen are audio files for the sermon archive, a more dynamic photo slideshow on the home page, and a more robust system for managing church publications, like Fourth Principle Quarterly and the Meeting House News.

We hope the new website continues to improve and to serve the members and staff of First Parish, and to attract new visitors!

It appears that we will soon be completing the relaunch of the First Parish in Cambridge, Unitarian Universalist. This is the church that Shelby and I belong to, and I've been working on their site for some time now, as a pro-bono project for Welcoming Websites.

The past few months have been dominated by a fairly complex upgrade of the old site, which was implemented in Drupal 4.7. Happily, we are nearly done with that upgrade, and the new site, based on Drupal 5, should be released quite soon. On top of that new foundation, we have big plans for the new site, starting with a sermon podcast; moving on to home pages and workspaces for the church's committees and groups, using Organic Groups; and perhaps winding up with a virtual store and rental payment system, using the eCommerce module.

We're very excited for the relaunch! Stay tuned for more updates on this cutting-edge site, coming soon.