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Webservant's Page
What do you
specifically do in the Web Site Office?
Q: I heard you work in the Web Site Office 10-16 hours a day. Is this
true?
A: True. Better to say that I am in the office all those hours doing
something. Clearly there are interruptions and two or three times a
week I must go out to run errands. Other than this, I am at the
computer 10-16 hours a day.
Q: When do you sleep?
A: Generally from 6 AM to 2 PM. Pacific Standard Time.
Q: Why the odd hours?
A: One of my daily duties is to update the news on our
EA site. Most of this news is breaking
around the world in the late hours of the day from where I sit. We want
the latest stories posted when most in the US and Europe are waking up
and getting their days started. In addition, most contact the office
with Bible questions and other inquiries later in the day and we work
through the night processing those e-mails.
Q: Are you in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada?
A: No, I am in the other city named for the same
Captain George Vancouver,
Vancouver, Washington on the
Columbia River just north of
Portland, Oregon. I am just a few
miles from the
Portland International Airport.
Q: Are you an ordained minister in the ICG?
A: Yes. I was ordained by Garner Ted Armstrong at the Feast in Kings
Beach in 1998.
Q: How large are our sites?
A: The
EA site has 2,877 pages. The
church site has 2,575 pages. The
Gateway site has 1,342 pages. More are
being added all the time. I am currently in the process of adding about
100 pages to the church site.
Q: What are your primary duties?
A: I am the Director of the ICG’s Web Site Office. Mark Armstrong is
the Executive Director. I update and maintain the church’s three
primary web sites and answer Bible questions and general inquiries of
members of the Body of Christ and the public.
Note: We actually have six sites, each with a unique domain or
site name [like
www.garnertedarmstrong.org]. Three of
the sites are seen by the members and public and three others house our
video and audio files. This gives us adequate bandwidth for the
thousands and potential thousands that visit our sites daily.
Q: Can you get into specifics about what you and other staff members do
at the Web Site Office?
A: Sure. Take a look at the following table:
EA site
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News
research |
…finding breaking news stories.
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Processing stories |
…some
incoming from staff reporters.
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Finding
graphics |
…for
stories, commentaries and web pages.
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Updating News pages |
Breaking News |
Headlines |
End Time News |
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End Time Headlines |
Earthquake page |
Diverse Places |
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Temple Stories |
Armies Stories |
EU Stories |
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Commentary pieces (example) |
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Commentary pieces
[also known as Word from pieces] |
Author
them. Receive and process text from other authors. Find
graphics. Find links to source materials/documents in
commentary. Find related news stories on an on-going
basis. Find resources for bottom of commentary [Additional
Reading]. Cross reference commentary to other related
commentaries. Construct pages for commentary, news story
directory and one for each news story. Place all related
links to this commentary throughout the site [
homepage,
what’s new page,
commentary homepage].
Place links to all these news stories on the what’s new
page. Move older links to these stories from the what’s new
page to the
previous postings page.
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Monthly Letter |
Post
letter and
card with offer when
received.
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Video
and audio |
Post
audio and video of television programs, sermons and sound
and video bites after receiving processed audio and video
files from our Media Services Department. These items
placed on several dedicated pages at site. All accessible
from our main
A-V page.
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Feature pages |
Research, compiling and creation of
Feature pages. We will
provide these at the Church site soon.
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Mailroom |
Database all the thank you and praise e-mails we receive. A
periodic times, we process all the e-mails for posting at
the sites
Mailroom.
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TV Log |
Maintain the log with the latest information where the GTA
TV program is aired.
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21st Century Watch |
Receive
the text from Headquarters. Convert to a pdf file, if not
already received in this form and post. Move previous copy
to archive page.
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Video
bites for
homepage |
Maintain a database of video bites for use on the homepage.
Rotate every 6-8 days. Search sermons and TV programs for
other video bites that fit the gospel message of the EA
site.
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Church site
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Web Report |
Publish
on Thursday or Friday. E-mail to 254 subscribers.
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Weekly Reports |
Post
when received on Friday and e-mail 265 to subscribers.
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Australia Reports |
Post
when received on Friday and post at
Australia site.
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Special Announcements |
…Post
when I receive the
form.
…Make page [example]
for announcement
…Find links for links section of the announcement.
…Fill in all meeting location and contact people
information.
…Link on
Announcement homepage and
in
What’s New page
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GTA E-mail Alerts |
…Update
this page and send out 825 e-mails to subscribers to the
service.
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Church Library |
…Surf
web for sites that will benefit the library and church
members.
…Place link to site on page in library by category [example]
…Make a description page for each site [example].
…Update the
New Book Shelf
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Post
photos |
Post
photos to our photo album section:
This is
quite time consuming right after the Feast as we must go
through hundreds and hundreds of photos, selecting the best
and renaming each of them for posting. Then pages have to
be created, each with a photo album. Photos are imported to
the album and then captions added.
This duty includes receiving, processing, viewing and
posting of animal videos and clips from the Feast.
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Post
audio and video files |
…Post
audio and video of sermonettes, sermons and Bible Studies
after receiving processed audio and video files from our
Media Services Department. These items placed on one of
seven pages at site. All accessible from our main
A-V page.
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Projects |
…Constantly creating, updating and expanding projects at the
site including these examples:
---Bible
Correspondence Course
---“I
can’t find what I am looking for” search page
---Family
Project pages
---Healing
Section
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On-going Projects |
We are
constantly adding to on-going projects at the site, such as:
---Bible
Class
---Specific
Studies
---Bible
Study on the Fly
---Hymnal
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E-mail
Forwarders |
For
each of the local web sites we create, we give the local
ministers, elders and contacts an icgchurches e-mail
address. These are actually e-mail forwarders. One using
one of these icgchurches addresses to contact these members
is actually sending the e-mail to their real address. It
looks good for all the e-mail addresses on the local sites
to have the address reflect the church. Serves privacy
issues as well.
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Gateway site
General Duties
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Process
Incoming
E-mail |
…Literature
requests---process & send to Literature
Fulfillment Department
…Church
Near Me requests---process & send to Church
Locator Office-100+ a month.
…Bible
Questions and other inquiries ---Process &
answer. 9,840 done in 2007.
Lion share of these done by directing individual to
elements of web site.
…News Services---Process incoming news stories from news
services to which we subscribe and from our staff reporters
[members who send us news stories].
…Receive and process incoming e-mail contributions to
Church Library,
Web Report,
Photo albums and other
pages.
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Ministerial counseling via on-line & telephone |
Counsel
members on personal situations and Bible questions via
e-mail and telephone, preferring e-mail. Several hours a
week.
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Bible
Study/Research |
For
site content, letter answering, counseling, sermon
production, Bible studies and on-line Bible studies, such as
Bible Study on the Fly,
Specific Studies, and
Bible Studies at the EA site.
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New
Technologies |
Constantly research the state of the art in computers,
software, procedures, security, Internet and web site
design.
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Databases |
Constantly making and/or updating several databases of
information and stats regarding office production and for
various pages at the sites.
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Feast
of Tabernacles
Kings Beach |
Preparing for several elements of the Feast at Kings Beach
including:
---Raffle—updating procedures, briefing raffle team. See
photo album.
---Bible Bowl—authoring 100 questions used. Updating
procedures.
---Morning Bible Studies [Menu-driven,
Open-forum Bible Study]
---Sermon and sermonette production for the Feast.
---Preparing text copies of sermons I give at Feast.
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Software and Hardware maintenance |
Hardware maintenance:
---cleaning the interior of the computer housing of dust.
---cleaning and storing of CDs.
---making sure the printer has paper and toner.
---optimizing the hard drives.
Software maintenance:
---run periodic virus software programs.
---run various computer software programs to fix software
and registry problems.
---research and find new software programs that will aid the
work done in the Web Site Office. Learn the software.
Currently doing this for new web site creation and
maintenance software that is replacing what we currently
use.
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Site
maintenance |
---constantly survey site looking for broken links,
misspelled wording and other anomalies.
---updating the design or structure of individual pages and
sections.
---backing up files onto CDs and removable hard drives.
---constantly survey all files, deleting outdated files,
moving files and creating new files.
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Ministerial Resources |
Maintain multiple resources for use by the ministry.
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Office
maintenance |
Conduct
general office organization, filing and cleaning.
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Domain
name and server maintenance |
We have
to insure that we maintain ownership of our six primary
domain names. We also have to be in regular contact with
our host server to insure they are keeping our sites on-line
and operating. In addition, we have to familiarize
ourselves with the multitude of software programs the host
server provides that are designed to keep the sites working
at top efficiency.
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E-mail
address book |
Maintain the e-mail address book to include the group names
for our free subscriptions lists such as
Your Daily Start, the
Weekly Report, the
Web Report and the
GTA e-mail alerts that we
send when substantive additions are made to the site [video,
audio,
Word froms, etc.]. This is
an on-going process of adding names and deleting others.
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