The History of This Web Site!
I wanted to use this space to give my thanks to the many people that help make this site possible. I thought I would start with a little history of this website. This site started in 1998 by Ross Hanshew who wanted to get the valley church of Christ online and get the bulletins online to share with people. In 2006 while I was in winter break I though it would be a fun project to play around with some web designing and surprise my father with a shiny new site idea. The project became a surprise to me when he asked if it could go live by the new year and on Jan 1st 2007 the new website went live. One of the biggest changes was the idea of placing recorded sermons online.
In the process of learning about various web designs and methods I eventually figured out how to create a web database and setup an online form or bulletin board. Mid March 2007 I launched the Valley Church of Christ Bulletin Board. The youth and young adults of the church started joining in and within 10 months there were over 50 members and over 10,000 posts on it. The excitement of the bulletin board and the busyness of school caused a lack of focus on the website portion of the site, and it was left un-updated for quite some time.
The next big step in the website came in mid 2007. The web address had been until then located at www.akvcoc.org and was hosted by our local phone company. The host needed to change due to a lack of space but we left the web address with the old host. Thus www.alaskavalleychurch.com was born. This move increased our usable space by a margin of 30,000.
The website was active and was full of content, but it faced one big problem. I didn't have the time or energy to continually re-code web pages every week as new sermons and bulletins came out. See at this time the site was all made up of separate pages each one laid out and coded every-time I made a change to it. This caused me to search out a content management system for the site. Content management is means that you create the look and layout of the site, and then input the information and it formats its-self. This meant that lots of people could be involved in filling out the content on the site.
After countless nights trying one product after another and almost giving it up, I stumbled upon Joomla!, almost on accident. The word Joomla is Swahili for "all together". Joomla! is a free open source content management system for publishing content online and nearly exactly what I was looking for.
It was a whole new world of online web making and it was thanks to the experience of working on the bulletin board that allowed me to eventually figure it out and again create a new site and completely change the look of the Valley church of Christ website. The new Joomla! site was rolled out and replaced the previous website on Feb 2008. This new site has allowed us to reach so many new heights in website development
I can't count the hours I spent trying to learn and troubleshoot the website. But my time pales in comparison to the countless hour, days years spent by all of the programmers and developers that created or helped create the various components I am using all through this website. I would like to write their names now here as recognition to there efforts of creating free material for people to use.
This new website redesign wouldn't be possible without the use of Joomla, a free, open-source, web content management product. I would like to thank all of the hard workers that are behind making Joomla possible.
I would also like to thank the many authors that are behind the various extra components I am using in Joomla.
- Martin Hess
For his awesome work on Sermonspeaker the program that helps us organize and play the sermons.
This site really didn't take off until there was a Bulletin Board. I would like to thank the developers of phpBB for creating and supporting an awesome free bulletin board system.
- Spenser Hannon
For his personal creation and direct assistance in the Arcade on the Bulletin Board.
Site Change Log
03/05/10
-WAY TOO MUCH TO TYPE
03/01/10
- ADDED: Comments to articles feature
- ADDED: Recent Comments to Front Page
- ADDED: Verse of the Day
- Updated: jFusion on the backend.
02/24/10
- UPDATED: The template from vs 2 -> 3.
-FIXED: Some Bugs
-ADDED: New Menus from the side.
-CHANGED: All of the menues.
02/15/10
- FIXED: Issue with some sermons not playing.
01/05/10
- UPDATED: jFusion on the backend.
09/27/09
- TESTING: New Bulletin manager
- ADDED: Donation thermometer on new building page
09/26/09
- TESTING: Corner fold on credits page
- TESTING: Flash version warning on credits page
09/20/09
- FIXED: Broken Google Maps API on Located Page
- REMOVED: Background music on various pages
09/18/09
- FIXED: Broken calendar module on front page – Crashing site due to duplicate article.
09/12/09
- FIXED: Missing ladies retreat files.
09/11/09
- Replaced the current RSS component with a new one. - I am testing both.
09/08/09
- Removed the Facebook box from the front page, as it seemed to prevent IE7 from opening the homepage.
- Added VBI schedule calendar to the VBI page.
09/07/09
- Converted the header modules into article modules so they could be more easily edited.
- Created category “module”
- Added Calendar Events to Mens, Womans pages.
- Added background music to several pages.
- Fixed a few bugs.
- Changed the Poll to Grey
- Uploaded the Ladies 2008 Lessons.
09/06/09
- Removed the ladies retreat TEST player
- Uploaded Ladies retreat ‘06 & ‘07 lessons.
- Added Ladies Lessons as a permanent bottom of the page player.
- Added Poll on front page.
- Bolded the dates in the change log.
- Added the PDF link to the change log.
- Disabled several site components that are not in use.
09/05/09
- Split resource menu in half
- Added Link to “Other Church Locations” various pages.
– Fixed the broken Google maps pages
- Removed Page. “Where we meet” and added page “Where We Are Located”
- Added Page “Churches in Alaska” and added page “Other Church Locations” and moved to resource menu.
- Made the Change log post, changed the layout and title of the credits page.
- Added more Church locations on the Map
09/01/09
- Added the Facebook Fanbox to the front page.
08/25/09
- Changed the front page layout.
- Added four latest's articles summery.
- Removed the Tabbed Sermon/Bulletin chooser.
- Renamed “Main Menu” with “Information”
08/20/09
- Created and RSS feed on each category page.
- Changed the site so users could use Windows Live Writer to Post to the site.
08/15/09
- Updated the site from Joomla v1.5.10 to v1.5.14
07/23/09
- Added streaming sermon ability to the site.
Last Updated on Saturday, 06 March 2010 00:43