[anderriter]

I'd appreciate some input on this:

I was recently elected president of our local pan-Orthodox association. This is in a large metropolitan area with more than 30 Orthodox parishes of various jurisdictions. It's a daughter of the clergy association.

I've been the webmaster for two years. When the website was originally set up (and we use Orthodox Web Solutions, which has wonderful, easy to use templates), a listing of all the area parishes was included. Individual parish listings include aside from the basics of parish name, address, and telephone number, the parish priest, maybe deacons, and website. This has become unwieldy and an absolute headache to maintain. We already have a link to the excellent Orthodoxy in America website with its great parish search feature.

I'm thinking about ditching the entire parish list we have now, which is difficult to maintain properly with all the clergy transfers and such - leaving just the link to the Orthodoxy in America website, as well as links to the individual jurisdictional online parish directories.

These are very effective tools and reinventing the wheel with our text list of parishes has just become a major hassle (and something I simply don't have time for).

If you came to our pan-Orthodox association's website looking for a parish in our area, would you scroll through a text list of parishes until you found one you THOUGHT was near you, or would you follow the link to a website that would allow you to search for a parish by zip code?

I 'm thinking the latter, myself!

[bmwservis]

Hi Theodora,

Try this site out. It is what we use here in Houston. You might also contact Fr. John, the webmaster, and get his thoughts on your situation. I think we have a pretty good way of finding parishes in the Houston area though there are several options of doing so. It is not all that active of a site, more static than anything else, but it does list all of the clergy and where they are located. Once they are in the system, they don't move around much (ever) so there is not much to update on it.

Paul

[OixKKcj1]

Hi Theodora,

Try this site out. It is what we use here in Houston. You might also contact Fr. John, the webmaster, and get his thoughts on your situation. I think we have a pretty good way of finding parishes in the Houston area though there are several options of doing so. It is not all that active of a site, more static than anything else, but it does list all of the clergy and where they are located. Once they are in the system, they don't move around much (ever) so there is not much to update on it.

Paul

Thanks. I've actually seen your website before, from a link through the Orthodixie blog, ages ago.

You've got so few parishes compared with my metropolitan area! Unlike the clergy at the parishes in your area, we have a lot of clergy changes in my area.

Our site is trying to become a clearing house for parish events in the area, but trying to get parishes to send us the info is something the clergy association president is working on.

Theodora

[steevytraunse]

Well then I agree you don't need to reinvent the wheel. Perhaps ask the fathers of the council what their vision for the site is and then ask them to provide one person (a dependable person) to be your liaisan to their parish. I have linked to this site before but this might assist you.

And yes, I love Fr. Joseph's Orthodixie blog as well as his Ancient Faith Radio podcast.

Paul