Tech Forum

I am the tech geek for my stake. I have been considering a blog to allow better communication between myself and the users in my stake.

In a recent conversation with the previous techie, he said that the church did not allow such things.

Is this true? Is there a better option?

Could the Facilities Issue Reporting system be bent to this purpose? I like this approach better as it inherently provides access control.

Thank you.

-Jim

There is specific guidance on this in Handbook 2 21.1.22. You may want to consider using the Stake Newsletter: https://ue.ldschurch.org/ldsapphelp/new ... r_help.htm

I don't mean to be picky, but terms like "tech geek" and "the users in my stake" make it a little unclear what you mean to do with a blog. So, are you the actual Stake Technology Specialist? Who are these users that you want to inform with the blog? Would it be all stake members using LDS.org or some specific, smaller group?

Without further information to make me think otherwise, I would also think the Newsletter tool will do the job for you. It has the added benefit of being attached to the LDS.org web site so that the users in your stake will easily find it.

The issue with using the Newsletter is that it is little more than notepad... If the newsletter had more functionality I don't think we'd see as many questions about this.

JohnShaw wrote:The issue with using the Newsletter is that it is little more than notepad... If the newsletter had more functionality I don't think we'd see as many questions about this.

Given the attachment ability, I'd say that's quite an understatement. I've successfully used Newsletter for all sorts of communications using the admittedly limited formatting for the body of messages, and then putting any more complexity of structure and formatting in attachments (typically PDFs).

My frustrations with Newsletter are with the lack of notification/subscription features. The formatting limitations are almost never an issue. For the purpose of this topic, I can't imagine that the formatting abilities would become the limiting factor in accomplishing the desired purpose.

quite true, I'd add that the difficulty of linking to the newsletter is also an issue. Most people aren't going to know that you should sign in first and then get frustrated because the link doesn't work.

In my stake those I've pointed to the Newsletter as a place to host their ward or stake blogs comment a great deal about the limited functionality. Their desire is to get away from using something like publisher to create a document that can be attached - it seems backwards to many that we've called to put out newsletters or put together posts on their areas of responsibility.

Most of these people with experience in these areas have moved on from creating documents to working with web pages and it seems a regression to them. That is my own experience.

For a place to put a document you can download, sure, it serves it's purpose well.

We've also creatively turned newsletter's into Images and published them in the Newsletter app to get around some of these limitations.

JohnShaw wrote:quite true, I'd add that the difficulty of linking to the newsletter is also an issue. Most people aren't going to know that you should sign in first and then get frustrated because the link doesn't work.

I've had no problem linking to articles and having it go directly to the article after signing it. When I first tested it I wasn't able to link directly to an attachment, but that is a easy thing to work around. I just always link to the article and reference that there is an attachment with the article.