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17 June 2008
[updated]
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What do you specifically do in
the Web Site Office?
…a self-interview by Chris Cumming
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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Your Daily Start |
Publish M-F and
e-mail 327 a day to subscribers.
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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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Love to all,
Chris Cumming
At the Web
Site Office
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