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UK Spirituality

By: Yewtree โ€”
UKSpiritualityUKSpirituality is the most diverse and inclusive listing of high quality spirituality programmes and events currently happening across the entire United Kingdom. They vet each contribution to ensure it is non-dogmatic and participative and open to everyone regardless of age, race, ethnicity, ability or sexual orientation. Spirituality without conformity for people of all perspectives!

UKspirituality is an interfaith not-for-profit association dedicated to helping people live more enlightened, compassionate, mindful and joyful lives.

The network was founded by Unitarians, who take an eclectic and open-minded and inclusive approach to religion and spirituality. Because of this Unitarian inclusiveness, they are now an interfaith network comprising leaders, programmes, and events associated with many different religious, spiritual, and philosophical traditions.
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Sermons and addresses

By: Yewtree โ€”
Unitarian churches have a free pulpit and free pews:
There are two time honored institutions in Unitarian Universalist churches that are, or should be, guarded by clergy and laity as if they were the Holy Grail. They are the free pulpit and the free pew. Succinctly stated, the free pulpit means that when a congregation lends its pulpit to a minister by calling that minister as its spiritual leader, the congregation pledges complete and unencumbered freedom of speech to say anything from that pulpit that he or she believes to be true. But that freedom is not something the preacher is born with, but originates in the bond of affection, the covenant established between the congregation and the minister. The free pew means that when a Unitarian Universalist congregation is gathered by a bond of affection, a covenant that makes it into a spiritual community, the most sacred agreement made is that no theological test will be given for membership in that congregation.
A number of churches and ministers put their sermons and addresses online - it's a fantastic spiritual resource and a way to understand Unitarianism better.
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Wordle tag cloud tool

By: Yewtree โ€”
A tag cloud is a collection of keywords from your website or blog, or about a topic.

There are many tag cloud gadgets, but Wordle will create a tag cloud with both vertical and horizontal words, and offers customisation including changing the colours and the font.

Here is the tag cloud for the Unitarian Communications blog:
Wordle: Unitarian Communications

Wordle also lets you create a cloud of words that you have entered into a box, so you could create one with Unitarian values, or famous Unitarians, or whatever.
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Usability testing tools

By: Yewtree โ€”
W Craig Tomlin at Useful Usability has compiled a list of 24 web site usability testing tools, starting with a pencil and paper, through to web statistics software, heat-maps, desktop software and online card-sorts. He gives a detailed explanation and evaluation of each tool, together with its pros and cons.

Many of these tools are free or reasonably cheap.
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Unitarian leaflets

By: Yewtree โ€”
A series of leaflets is available about Unitarian views of various issues.
More leaflets on other topics will be published on the web soon.
  • Unitarian Views of Earth and Nature
  • Unitarian Approaches to Worship
  • Women in the Unitarian Movement
  • Unitarian Views of God
  • Where We Stand: Gay and Lesbian Issues
  • Could you become a Unitarian Minister?
  • Could you become a Unitarian Lay Leader?
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Accessible graphics

By: Yewtree โ€”
Most people know that you must add alt text to images, for example:

<img src="http://www.blogger.com/myphoto.jpg" alt="The Nightingale Centre" />

But there are other things you need to add for full accessibility and usability.

You should set a height and width for your image (and this should be no greater than the actual height and width of the image).

<img src="http://www.blogger.com/myphoto.jpg" height="240" width="360" alt="The Nightingale Centre" />

If an image is very high resolution, it will take a while to download, so you should resize it to a smaller size in your graphics program before uploading it (don't just set a smaller height and width in your HTML).

Internet Explorer uses the alt text as a tooltip, which is actually incorrect. Firefox uses the title attribute as the tooltip text, which is correct. So, if you want the title of your image to be displayed when a Firefox user rolls his/her mouse over the image, you need to add a title attribute.

<img src="http://www.blogger.com/myphoto.jpg" height="240" width="360" alt="The Nightingale Centre" title="The Nightingale Centre" />

You should also ensure that you use the correct format for your images. JPG format should always be used for photos. PNG or GIF formats should always be used for other graphics, such as logos.
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Accessible video

By: Yewtree โ€”
So you have produced a shiny new video for your website - but is it accessible?

Deaf viewers require captioning; blind users require audio descriptions, and mobility-impaired users require keyboard shortcuts for video controls.

The best free tool for making videos accessible is Media Access Generator (MAGpie) from NCAM.

Another option is to provide a transcript of your video content.
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Accessible tables

By: Yewtree โ€”
If you're using a table to present information, you need to make it readable from left to right so that it won't be inaccessible to people using screen readers.

Here's an example of a good table:
NamePhoneEmail

Joe Bloggs

0208 123 4567

jbloggs@gmail.com

Ann Other

0208 234 5678

annother@gmail.com

Fred Smith

0208 345 6789

fsmith@gmail.com
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24 ways

By: Yewtree โ€”
24 ways is the advent calendar for web geeks. Each day throughout December they publish a daily dose of web design and development goodness to bring you a little Christmas cheer.

Now all they need to do is find a way of sending chocolate through the internet...

There are two interesting Unitarian and UU blogposts about Advent:
And Stephen Lingwood has posted a video: Advent: How long shall we keep God waiting? It's very good.
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Accessibility

By: Yewtree โ€”
Making your website accessible is very important. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are the definitive guide to making your site accessible. There is also a checklist based on the guidelines produced by WebAIM.

Making your site accessible helps everyone, but especially users with visual or hearing impairments, and people with slow web connections.

A useful resource for understanding accessibility issues is Dive into accessibility, which presents a series of things you can do to make your website more accessible, and some case studies of people with disabilities.

There is also a selection of tools you can use to analyse your web pages for accessibility. These make the process very much easier - but they are no substitute for understanding accessibility and learning the basic accessibility guidelines.
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Writing for the web

By: Yewtree โ€”
The first thing to realise about writing for the web is that people tend to skim-read pages, looking for the salient facts. Therefore it is best to write in an inverted pyramid style, with the most important information and a summary of the article first. Another important guideline is to avoid information pollution (the inclusion of redundant information, like "don't use your hairdryer underwater").

Since people only skim-read on the web, it's a good idea to break your page up with headings, bullet points, and the use of bold to emphasise key points.

Stick to the main topic of the page (don't digress) and include only one idea per paragraph.

About.com has ten guidelines for web writing.
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Using Plain English

By: Yewtree โ€”
The importance of clear communication is obvious. But plain English is a specific style which can be learnt. The Plain English Campaign have a series of guides to writing plain English.

Some of the key guidelines are:
  • avoid passive voice
  • avoid long sentences with dependent clauses
  • avoid jargon and non-literal phrases
  • avoid excessive formality
  • Try to expand acronyms (e.g. GA) and explain unfamiliar jargon the first time you use them
  • If you are explaining a procedure, try to set it out in small steps in the same order as the person will need to carry out the procedure.
  • Use numbers not words - it's better to use "23" than "twenty-three" as it stands out more
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Web statistics

By: Yewtree โ€”
The easiest way to obtain accurate web statistics is to use Google Analytics.

The best place to start is the Get Started page on the Google Analytics site, which explains how to install tracking code and how to view your reports.

Once you have installed Analytics, all you have to do is check back every so often to see which pages are the most popular, and the number of visitors from different parts of the world.
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Information architecture

By: Yewtree โ€”
What is information architecture?
  1. The structural design of shared information environments.
  2. The art and science of organising and labelling web sites, intranets, online communities and software to support findability and usability. ยป More
The information architecture of your website makes it easier for visitors to find information. A typical church website will have times of services, contact details, how to find the church/chapel, sample sermons, profiles of the members and the minister, newsletter articles, and so on.

There are several different models of information architecture.
The information architecture is mainly represented by the navigation (menus).

Here are some examples.
  • New Unity (Newington Green and Islington Unitarians) has a strict hierarchy model.
  • The Bristol Unitarians website has a multi-dimensional hierarchy (you can browse by category or by date). This is mainly due to using a blog with labels to build the site.
  • The York Unitarians website has an index structure.
Which of these models you choose for your website depends on how much content you have or plan to add to your website.
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Evaluation of Google Sites

By: Yewtree โ€”
The JISC Access Management blog has a useful evaluation of Google Sites, which they used to manage a website for a conference.

Key points to note: Ease of use and Look and feel.
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Heal your church website

By: Yewtree โ€”
Whilst Heal your church website is written mainly for evangelicals, it still has lots of great articles and information.
You can also feel really really smug that Unitarian websites don't have animated spinning gold crosses, or Jesus Junk. Though we probably do have some inaccessible features like using tables for layout.
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Internationalisation

By: Yewtree โ€”
In computing, internationalisation and localisation are means of adapting computer software to different languages and regional differences. Internationalisation is the process of designing a software application so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes. Localization is the process of adapting software for a specific region or language by adding locale-specific components and translating text.
~ Wikipedia, Internationalisation and localisation

What to avoid
  • Colloquialisms (slang)
  • Non-literal phrases and expressions, e.g. "keeping us on our toes"
  • Phrases from other languages such as Latin, French or German, e.g. lingua franca, Schadenfreude, viva voce, double entendre
  • Excessive formality and convoluted sentences
  • Passive voice
  • Dependent clauses in sentences
What to consider
  • If you're writing about "local" events or information, it's OK to use British English
  • If you're writing about "international" events or information, it's better to use more generic English
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Learning styles

By: Yewtree โ€”
There's an interesting post over at Yet Another Unitarian Universalist about the best way to treat different learning styles (visual, auditory and kinaesthetic) when teaching - the best way is to use the most appropriate modality for the material being delivered. This is interesting news for anyone who works in religious or other education, with adults or children.
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When to use PDFs

By: Yewtree โ€”
When not to use PDFs
  • If the information is intended to be read online
  • If another content type could be used instead, i.e. a normal HTML web-page
When to use PDFs
  • When a document needs to be downloaded, read offline or printed
  • If a document is more than 5 pages long. But consider whether it could be broken down into smaller sections and presented as HTML
  • When attaching a document to an email
  • As an additional alternative to online content - e.g. this set of tutorials could also be provided as a single PDF document
  • When formatting needs to be preserved - e.g. a PowerPoint presentation
  • Instead of Microsoft Office documents. But HTML is better most of the time
  • See the definitive list of when to use PDFs by Joe Clark
What else to include with your PDF document
  • An online HTML version or summary of the document
  • A link to download Adobe Acrobat Reader
  • A PDF icon to indicate that it is a PDF document (see an example on the BBC website)
See also
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Why "click here" is bad

By: Yewtree โ€”
Why "Click here" is bad linking practice (by Jukka Korpela)
  • "Click here" just looks stupid.
  • "Click here" looks especially stupid when printed on paper.
  • "Click here" is useless in a list of links or when in "links reading" mode, or whenever a link text is considered as isolated from its textual and visual context.
  • "Click here" is bad food for search engines. If you say "For information on Unitarianism, click here", search engines won't know that your document contains a link to a document about Unitarianism. Some important search engines use the link text in estimating the relevance of a link. Using descriptive link texts thus helps users in finding documents they're interested in, potentially including your document due to a link text with some key word.
  • There's usually a fairly simple way to do things better. Instead of the text "For information on Unitarianism, click here", you could simply type "About Unitarianism".
  • "Click here" is device-dependent. There are several ways to follow a link, with or without a mouse. Users probably recognize what you mean, but you are still conveying the message that you think in a device-dependent way.

Describing links correctly

Bad Good
  • Click here for information about Unitarianism
  • You can access information on Unitarianism by clicking here
  • More information on Unitarianism is here
  • More information on Unitarianism is available by following this link
  • More information on Unitarianism is available by following this link
  • Follow this link for more information on Unitarianism
  • www.unitarian.org.uk/
  • To book a place on this course click here
  • About Unitarianism
  • More information about Unitarianism
  • Find out more about Unitarianism
  • There have been a lot of news items about Unitarianism recently
  • Book a place on this course
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Cool tools

By: Yewtree โ€”

For people who want to bring together different services to create a unique blend (also known as a mashup), there are some really useful and easy to use tools out there.

Widgetbox allows you to develop small applications for embedding in webpages. The easiest widget to set up is the blidget, which fetches an RSS feed (from a blog, news service such as the BBC or the University's News pages,del.icio.us tags, Yahoo! Pipe or Flickr) and creates a shiny widget for embedding in a web-page, or for turning into a Facebook application or Google gadget.

Yahoo! Pipes allow you to bring together (aggregate) several different RSS feeds, filter out duplicate items, add author information, and so on.

Flickr is an online photo storage site, where you can display your photos (either publicly or so that only friends and family can see them), and you can use advanced search to obtain photos for use in presentations and on websites under the Creative Commons licence.

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site, which means it is like bookmarking a favourite page in your web browser, but the bookmarks are saved on the del.icio.us website, and tagged with labels to make them easier for you and others to find. Each page on del.icio.us (whether it's popular tags, all tags, your bookmarks, or one of your tags) has an RSS feed associated with it, which can then be imported to a blidget or an RSS reader.

Jotform is the first web based WYSIWYG form builder. Its intuitive drag and drop user interface makes form building a breeze. Using JotForm, you can create forms, integrate them to your site and collect submissions from your visitors.

Google Scholar provides a search of scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources, including theses, books, abstracts and articles. You still need an Athens account to log in to many of the resources you can find via Google Scholar, but it searches across all of JSTOR, Ebscohost, Blackwell Synergy, the DNB, Google Books, etc.

Google Books - Google have digitised many books libraries around the world. If the book is out of copyright, you can download the entire book, and search all of its content. Books that are still in copyright only allow a limited search. ยป More information

These are just two of the many tools offered by Google.

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UK Unitarians on Twitter

By: Yewtree โ€”
Twitter is a micro-blogging service where you can post links, quotes and items of interest without the need to write a full-size blogpost. Quite a number of UK Unitarians are on there already.
I have also created a group list of UK Unitarians on Twitter.

There may be many others but I haven't found them yet - add a comment and let us know your Twitter address, and if you want to be added to the group list.


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International Unitarian & UU websites

By: Yewtree โ€”
The International Council of Unitarians and Universalists (founded 1995) is a body devoted to fostering connections between Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist groups around the world. There are about 500,000 Unitarians and Universalists in the world today. Many belong to large church organizations while others rarely meet another Unitarian face-to-face. The oldest groups, who are Hungarian speaking, have a continuous church history of more than 400 years. Some of the English speaking groups go back over 200 years. Many of the newest member and emerging groups have a much shorter history.

The International Association for Religious Freedom (IARF) (founded 1901) is a UK-based charity working for freedom of religion & belief at a global level.

European Unitarian Universalists (founded 1982) is a support network and community for Unitarian Universalists (UUs) and UU fellowships in Europe.

Unitarians in other countries
A - F
G - O
P - Z
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Unitarian Universalist blogs

By: Yewtree โ€”
Many Unitarian Universalists have blogs, and there is more than one blog aggregator for them. (A blog aggregator is a site that gathers content from other blogs - just a snippet of the text, the title and a link, and not the whole blog post, as that would be plagiarism.)

Unitarian Universalist blog aggregators:
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Unitarian websites

By: Yewtree โ€”
There are many Unitarian websites at national, regional and local levels. Here's how to find your way around them.

National level
The General Assembly website has recently been re-launched. It has resources for congregations and explains Unitarianism for inquirers. The General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches is the body in which all Unitarians unite.

Unitarians in the UK & Ireland is a resource about and for Unitarians. It also offers a free website template for Unitarian communities that don't currently have one. It explains what Unitarianism is and how to find Unitarians.

There are several Unitarian societies covering special interests such as music, earth spirituality, history, meditation, peace, all of which have their own website.

There are various commissions, including the Engagement Groups Support Panel, which encourages the development of engagement groups.

Regional level
Most districts have their own website.

Local level
Most churches have their own websites, and you can find these using either the congregation finder on the General Assembly website, or the map of congregations on the Unitarians in UK & Ireland website.
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Unitarian videos

By: Yewtree โ€”
The National Unitarian Fellowship are hosting an excellent series of videos about Unitarianism, introducing it, explaining Unitarian values, the Unitarian relationship with the Christian tradition, what a Unitarian service is like, Unitarian social responsibility, and how Unitarianism is organised.

There are also personal views of Unitarianism from Tony McNeile, Jane Barraclough, Hazel Clarke, Stephen Lingwood and Jef Jones.

If you want to write about these in your local newsletter, here are shortened versions of the web addresses: http://tinyurl.com/unitarianvideos and http://tinyurl.com/unitarianviews

There is also a UK Unitarian channel on YouTube.
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Unitarian blogs

By: Yewtree โ€”
There are many Unitarian Universalist blogs and several blog aggregators (sites which bring UU blogs together). There are also several Unitarian bloggers in the British Isles.

Bill Darlison has a blog where he posts his sermons (he updates it regularly but he is using it more as a website than a blog); Stephen Lingwood blogs at Reignite; Andrew Brown blogs at Caute, and Yvonne Aburrow blogs at dance of the elements. If there are any other British or Irish Unitarian bloggers out there, let us know and we'll add your blog to the sidebar.
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Gadgets for your website

By: Yewtree โ€”
Belief-O-Matic
Many Unitarian websites link to the Belief-O-Matic questionnaire. This is a questionnaire which asks about your views on life, ethics, spirituality, religion, the divine, and so on, and works out what religion you are by comparing you to other people who have answered the questionnaire in the past. One example of a church with a link to the questionnaire is Rosslyn Hill Chapel in London; another is Bristol Unitarians.

Photo-sharing
Another useful gadget is the Flickr badge, which enables you to display photos uploaded to Flickr (a photo sharing website). Of course you will need some digital photos and a Flickr account first. Once you have joined Flickr, be sure to join the UK Unitarians group and add your photos to the group pool. You can also use photos from Flickr for your website, as long as they are shared via Creative Commons.

Interactive maps
The Unitarians in the UK & Ireland website has a map of all the Unitarian congregations in the UK, and you can zoom in to a region and see all the chapels in that area. You can also embed a chunk of Google map in your website to show where your chapel or church is. See the Bristol Unitarians 'how to find us' page for an example, and Google Help for instructions.

Who has visited
The best tool to use to find out how many people have visited your site is Google Analytics. This is not a web counter, it is a proper statistical application which is very easy to use and produces maps and graphs of your visitors. Don't use web counters - these are notoriously inaccurate, and make your site look amateur.

Another tool that is quite nice is the MyBlogLog Recent Readers widget. This shows when registered MyBlogLog users have visited your blog or wiki. I wouldn't recommend having a guestbook as these are highly vulnerable to spam.

Video
Youtube Videos - Some congregations have created videos and slideshows that have now been put onto Youtube. You can embed video in your own website.

Creative collaboration
Another option is to have a wiki where people can post church-related discussions, activities such as engagement groups, coffee rotas etc. Cambridge Memorial Unitarian Church has a wiki (NB this is not intended to replace their main church website).

Some churches (such as Bristol Unitarians) use a blog as a "poor person's content management system"; others use Google Sites (such as New Unity). This enables multiple contributors to the website, and doesn't necessarily mean that editors need to know HTML, though it does mean they need to be confident with online editing tools (which are usually WYSIWYG).
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Introduction and welcome

By: Yewtree โ€”
The Communications Commission met yesterday and decided to have a blog to share good practice and useful resources. Blogging is a great way of communicating and sharing ideas, and we want to encourage more Unitarians to start blogging. Blogging is a way of sharing ideas and thoughts, poetry, sermons, and conversation.

There are many people out there who may well be Unitarians without knowing it - in other words, they already share our outlook on life, the universe and everything, and may be looking for a community to share their spiritual life with, but have never heard of Unitarianism.
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