Orthodox Biz Blog

Content Management Systems are growing in popularity as a framework for running Websites. A Content Management System (CMS) automates many of the repetitive tasks associated with running a Website. Using a script framework and a database, a CMS lets organizations sponsoring Websites focus on publishing content to the Web. A CMS framework also comes bundled with all kinds of capabilities such as interactivity (discussion forums, comments, blogging), membership, syndication (RSS feeds), podcasting, and a whole lot more.

For optimizing Search Engine Placement and driving referral traffic, getting links to your business or ministry site is absolutely essential. Unfortunately, despite the critical need for this, many Webmasters don't even know how to check the links they currently have, much less how to get more.

MIT did a study of 500 International Companies looking to figure out the key ingredients to success in the global economy. The results of this study were summarized in a book by Suzanne Berger called How We Compete: What Companies Around the World Are Doing to Make it in Today's Global Economy.

The book itself makes interesting reading, if you like this kind of literature, and I highly recommend it. For those that don't go in for that sort of book, let me summarize the key findings.

Modern businesses and ministries run off software. We need it to do everything from sending emails, to preparing presentations, to finding new members/customers online.

In this blog, I would like to take a moment to recommend some great Open Source Applications which can really make your business life easier, and which won't stretch your budget.

When a European journalist based in Ammam Jordan calls a writer in Central Florida for a comment on church bombings in Mosul, only to end up on a conference call with an Assyrian activist in Beirut - you know things have changed. The world is just not the same.

According to CIO magazine, a recent survey of over 200 CIO's for medium and small enterprises revealed that 83% of them were leveraging some kind of Web 2.0 technology. That is excellent news for those of us who are into the Web design space and don't care much for static Websites.

Unfortunately, many business professionals and Christian ministers will read that statistic and ask, "What is Web 2.0?"

I got to do something really nice last week. As an Orthodox Christian and Web professional, I'm always thrilled whenever I get to help out new ministries get started. That is why being able to help the online presence of a new ministry dedicated to helping our missionary families was such an honor.

If I say the phrase, Orthodox author to you, what name comes to mind? Tolstoy? Dostoevsky? Perhaps a Theological writer like Bishop Kallistos Ware or Father Alexander Schmemann?

But, if you searched for the phrase Orthodox author using Google for the first few weeks of December 2007, you wouldn't find any of those famous authors at the top of the search results.

Instead, you would find Heather Zydek and Father Leon Castner .

I heard my wife screaming on the phone. I ran into the room, thinking something major was going wrong. Like a home invasion, or a fire or something.

Turns out, she was yelling at technical support because she couldn't get the Website our umbrella school uses to track grades and attendance to take her recent updates.

I could hear the frustration in her voice as we talked. The head of a non-profit, she was upset about her Website. It hadn't been updated in a year, and she desperately needed to get control of it. She had fundraising product to sell, supporters to keep updated, and prospective member information to distribute.

Techies love acronyms. So much so, in fact, that we often sound like we're speaking a foreign language to normal humans. That's too bad, because a lot of times the acronyms obscure information about really, really useful tools.

As an Orthodox Parish Webmaster, 2006 marked the year that I wanted to take the parish's Web presence into the 21^st Century. First I did a Bulletin Board/Discussion Forum . Then I did a large-scale photo gallery. In the Fall of 2006, the next stop for the Web presence of the Orthodox Church of St. Stephen the Protomartyr was to go dynamic.

I speak frequently at civic clubs and political organizations on the subject of Christians in the Middle East. My undergrad background was heavy on Balkans studies, and so I spent a lot of time studying the life of Christians under Muslim rule. Little did I realize, of course, when I was taking classes like Ottoman History and Arab Politics back in the early 90's, that someday the topics of Jihad and Dhimmitude would be paramount concerns in the 21^st Century.

Images are important. Orthodox Christians know that better than any other Christian community, which is why we struggle to keep our churches adorned appropriately. Many of our icons, of course, depict scenes from the life of the Church. Great events in the Christian past are rendered in gold leaf and hung for all to see and venerate. We understand how important it is to visually chronicle our past as a community, and to honor that past.