Hi gang,

Love the community, love the ministry, love everything about WEC thus far.

I am preparing to begin the process of teaching our staff and certain volunteers how to use the new website our church is creating, and am putting together training materials.

The how-tos and training sections on the site are fabulous, but I was wondering if anyone might be willing to share any additional training materials/procedures/guidelines they may have created for their church or ministry uses?

It would be a wonderful resource for the WEC community to have access to, and it would greatly assist those who are to come along behind us in implementing WEC quickly and efficiently teach their technologically challenged counterparts to use these incredible tools.

I would love to be able to learn from your trials and tribulations so I don't make the same mistakes as those who came before me.

Peace,
David

David,

I am new to using WEC and TYPO3 myself, and I enjoy the How-TOs and training as well. The accompanying video tutorials are also nice... I do wish there was a little more explanation myself. For example, a little message that tells you what a button does when you hover the mouse over it. It would also be nice if the video tutorials were narrated.

I think someone at WEC would use their Flash Presentor extension to create training sessions that are what you are asking for... it would show off the capabilities of the extension.

Good luck with your training people in your church. I don't know if it would be more or less helpful, but I would suggest maybe training a few people to do just one thing at first. Like start someone off with access to edit on ly the calendar, or only one section of the site. Then as they get more comfortable, expand their admin powers.

-Jason http://cokesbury.vinehosting.com

David,

Thanks for the encouragements and welcome to the WEC community!

For additional training, are you looking for basic training on use of a computer and web browsers? We have considered pointing people to something that might help them learn the basic computer skills needed before they ever begin to work with WEC. I am not sure what those resources are but I am curious to know if that is your need.

In Christ,
Mark

Mark and Jason,

Thanks for the replies.

I was referring to training people specifically to use the WEC/Typo3 software, although general webby/computer training is always beneficial as well. Jeff and I were discussing this lastw eek, and he had said that he knew of a few users/churches that had created and implemented their own training documents, and that is what I was hoping someone would be willing to share.

For example:

Does Ginghamsburg(or any other church) use only the How Tos in their training of volunteers and staff, or are there other materials/worksheets/etc that could be shared with the community? More of an A,B,C step by step task oriented approach for people completely unfamiliar with typo3; and something that would be much simpler than taking them through all of the how tos.

Obviously, it would be incredible if I could lock them all in a room for a weekend or a month until they can understand it, but given time constraints I feel sure there are some churches and/or ministries that have broken everything down more than it already is here on the site.

If not, that would have to be something I would add to the wish list for the future. In the CMS war, at least in the many people I talk to daily for hosting projects, Joomla wins for novice users because it is extremely easy to jump into and start using. TYPO3 beats it's functionality and expandability hands down, but the challenge is to make the training simple enough that someone who would normally pick Joomla for ease of use could understand it and feel comfortable using it without feeling quite as overwhelmed.

Hopefully this will resound with somneone and actually make sense :-)

peace,
David

David,

For documents, have you looked at the WEC 101 document. It has a setup section at the front that is not needed, but after that it attempts to be a step by step approach to teaching. It starts with pages and then text elements. That is what we use currently.

In Him,
Mark

David,

Also, at the risk of speaking too soon, in a few months we plan to release a new feature that will greatly simplify basic content entry. It has been a difficult development, but I think it will be very valuable. I think it will be easier than Drupal for editing the text and graphics on pages. Now at least you know that we are working on something to address this.

In Him,
Mark

Mark,

That is good news!!!!

Ease of use and the learning curve are key factors to explosive growth, in my opinion. I'm glad to hear that is being addressed. I'll check out the WEC 101 too!

Thanks again,
David

David,

We agree with you completely. The challenge is delivering the most powerful church web ministry system in the world and making it easy to use for regular people. It is a tough challenge but that is what we are called to do, and with His blessing and guidance, we are making it happen.

In Christ,
Mark

even still, what if we could come up with easy to understand tutorials, and do this on a grass roots level. I am a new user, and somewhat a novice at webdesign. Can we organize a task force group to begin talking about what is needed and see what we can come up with?

I'm sure the WEC has a team working on this. But if not, I'd be willing to work on a focus group with others for this