I re-read that post this morning and have a few red flags to add.

Just a quick announcement.

As of today, Boyink Interactive will no longer be providing quotes for church website projects.

This decision comes after much deliberation and realizing that in six years of being in business I have talked with literally dozens of churches and have only ended up doing one site.

One.

As conversion rates go, that’s abysmal.  And not at all what my experience has been for projects coming out of the business world where my success rate is much higher.

And yes - it usually boils down to an issue of price.  I’m just not able to build sites with the level of design, content and functionality that churches are after for the budgets that I’m seeing churches come in with. 

Don’t get me wrong - I still have a passion for seeing the big “C” Church use the web in better ways than in the past.  But it’s clear that the way for me to have the most influence on getting the Church there isn’t to build better websites for a large number of (little “c") churches.  So rather than attempting to hire myself out to find fish for churches, I’m going to focus on teaching to fish instead—which currently will be through the Building a Church Site on ExpressionEngine series on Train-ee.com.

If you represent a church and are seeking a web designer or developer, I’d suggest registering and posting in the Godbit Forums for some leads on help.

We’re looking for a Creative Writing Tutor for my 9 year old daughter.  Ideally we’d like someone experienced in working with kids, accomplished as a writer of fiction, comfortable with technology (email, Skype, blogs, etc), and available on a flexible schedule. 

If this is you or someone you know please Contact Me.

I’m sorry.  I really am.

But I am fresh out of energy to pick yet another username, fill in another profile, again list out my interests, find and choose “friends” or otherwise participate in your new “community”.

I know - I know.  It’s really cool.  It’s the latest thing.  It’s Web 2.0, it’s community-generated something or other.  It’ll add so much value to my life—I’ll know what my friends like and dislike, I’ll find people that share my interests, other people will find and adore me, I’ll be engaged, energized, actualized and empowered by using your....thing.

It’s just that—I’m already on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace (yes, in a moment of social networking weakness), Pownce, del.icio.us, ma.gnolia, Rollyo, YouTube, Flickr, Skype, three different discussion forums, a couple of IM accounts, plus a few sites that I know I signed up for but can’t remember the name.

I’m just. so. tired. of having to re-define myself to every new web site/service that comes along.  Seriously - enough already.  Either figure out how to connect to a place where I’ve entered all that data, or be gone.  I just can’t find the energy to repeat myself that much.

And - I’m concerned that with all the meta-data, tagging, commenting, bookmarking and sharing going on that I’m forgetting the more important piece—creating. 

Sincerely,
Becoming Antisocial
Holland, MI

When I first started Boyink Interactive some six years ago now, Burco was one of my first clients.  The site was done - by client request - in MS Frontpage.  Their hope at the time was that they’d be able to make changes to it internally, but as time went on that never really happened.  The intermingling of content and design in the FrontPage interface was both overwhelming to get through and risky - one wrong mouse click and you could delete the entire navigation bar from that page.

So I was happy to re-pitch the project and catch them up to current technology when it comes to small business sites, and get them implemented on a database-driven site using ExpressionEngine.

The design was provided by Burco’s current graphics designer, and Boyink Interactive did the ExpressionEngine implementation.  The site is driven by 8 EE weblogs, and all navigation is created through the use of EE’s relationships.  The locations functionality and the online catalog are handled through the use of an iFrame - this approach let us build and host the site externally while leaving some current business applications and work processes in place.

Currently in development is a consumer-oriented version of the site, which will use ExpressionEngine’s Multi-Site Manager to allow Burco to manage both sites from one EE install.

I’m considering a more detailed writeup of how it works down the road - but in a nutshell the select-boxes are dynamically populated by weblog:entries tags, a bit of Javascript assembles a URL from the entry_id of the selections, and the results are constructed with weblog:entries tags reading the entry_id’s from URL segments.

The nice part is that the results pages don’t use any cookies - and hence are able to be bookmarked by users, or sent via email by Espec sales people to prospective clients.

But between twitter and the new blog on Train-ee.com I’m actually a bit unsure what to use the Boyink.com blog for anymore.

So today it’s on taking long road trips with kids…

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve added a blog to Train-ee.  The Train-ee.com blog will be the home of a new Building an ExpressionEngine Site Series, this time covering the build of a church website.  You can read the full announcement over at Train-ee.com.

If you’ve looked over the changes and watched the preview video you know the biggest changes are that EE 2.0 is based on CodeIgniter and that the control panel has been reorganized and redesigned.

So first I thought of describing it like a sandwich - where the meat is the same but the bread is different...but that doesn’t quite get it.

I often think of houses and architecture when it comes to websites and applications, so next I thought about a house where the foundation is being revamped.  But EE 2 has more than just redecorating happening in the control panel - it’s also been reorganized which doesn’t quite map to the house metaphor.

So my working metaphor is that EE 2.0 is like taking your current CD/ DVD collection, buying a much nicer/sturdier/more expandable rack to store them in, and then re-organizing them while moving them into the new rack.  Same music that you love - just better organized in a better environment.  And maybe a few new CD’s to boot.

That’s better...but it still seems like there should be a better way to describe the changes that EE 2 is bringing.  How about it - any better metaphors out there?

These are mainly for myself - so that if the opportunity comes up again next year I can look back and see what I’d do the same or differently.  These are going to be somewhat stream-of-consciousness - so just be forewarned.