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The Pixel Punk Diaries |
Lifeteen.com Summer Wrap-Up
It is utterly embarrassing that I run this website, and I haven’t updated my own section in almost three months. Part of the reason is that I’ve been traveling to speak at many summer camps and conferences: Covecrest, LTND, Tepeyac, Proud 2B Catholic, and Steubenville West. It's been a thrill ride, but I am happy to be back in the studio making the site better.
Let me introduce you to Adam Robezzoli, our new full-time Intern here at Lifeteen.com. For the past four years, it’s been just me managing this monster, and now I finally I have some help. Adam is a graduate of the Franciscan University of Steubenville and is an experienced Flash animator, writer, and Internet dude.
Let me give you an insight on what we’ve been up to this summer on Lifeteen.com:
The Lifeteen.com goal for the 2005-2006 school year is this: Build Community. 1. Photo Albums – In the past three months, we’ve added 76 photo albums from our conferences, camps, and special events. When you add all those up, you get over 8000 photos.
2. Online Store – This website costs a tremendous amount of money to run everyday. To help pay for the site and to get people the resources and stuff they want, we’re adding an online store to the site. Although we had an online store ready to go six months ago, it wasn’t intuitive or user-friendly. We’ve worked with Net Fusion (netfusionservices.com) to upgrade that store so that it is secure, easy-to-use, and effective. We’re now finished shooting photos and taking inventory, so I hope we’ll have the store up in the next few weeks. When it’s up, please spend all of your money right here.
3. Reviews – This section has massive potential to help people discern what types of media they expose themselves to. For the first four months of this new website, our part-time intern Ian Manning wrote many of our reviews. The others were written by local people in Catholic youth ministry.
Now that Adam Robezzoli is full-time as our Reviews Editor, we are able to make this section what it should be. Adam spent the past two months working closely with the promoters of video games, books, movies, and new music. Now we’re getting new games, books, and CDs in the mail, and invitations to advanced screenings. This helps us quite a bit because it saves us money and it gives our writers more time to put together a quality review. Adam works each day to recruit and train new writers. I hope you’ve noticed his handiwork.
4. Teen Talk – This section has become more popular than we ever could’ve dreamed. To give you an idea, on our last version of Lifeteen.com, we averaged 115 Teen Talk posts per week. On the new site, we average 3,500 posts per week! Most message boards close after a couple months because of unruly regulars and creepy posts. Keeping Teen Talk safe, fun, and informative takes a lot of volunteer hours from our Moderators. Afro Greg has spent countless hours finding, training, and managing our Moderators. I am infinitely grateful for their work!
5. XLT and Media - We converted all our Webcasts and Videos from Digital Video (DV) to Windows Media Video. We spent three days uploading each of these to the server, and then scheduled them to go live on the site each week. It would’ve taken us at least a week to do this with our old Internet connection. But now we have faster Internet and we can work more quickly. We can now upload XLT by the following afternoon.
6. Community News – This new yellow box on the right column of every page has become quite popular. This is where I let the world know what’s happening with National LIFE TEEN, local parishes, and here on the website.
7. Jobs Page – In the past, we’ve published job openings three times each year in our newsletters. We’ve flirted with the idea of having a Youth Ministry jobs page for the last year, and I finally dove in and did it. This new page will help parishes connect with the right people to make their youth program stronger.
8. Music – This section for Music Ministers has tremendous potential, but we just haven’t had the time to bring it to life yet. But we are gaining momentum: each month we feature a new interview with a Catholic Musician.
9. Features – On our old website, a Feature gave different perspectives and information on a single topic. Whether it was “dating” or “parents”, we tried to meet teenagers where they were at. Many of those old Special Features have been absorbed into different sections on this new site. Now we’re shifting Features to become anything new and interesting. We aim to have a balance of Features that follow the teenage school year, the Catholic calendar, and what’s new in society and pop culture. We’ve interviewed several Christian artists, and have scheduled many more. This section will really grow in 2005 and 2006.
10. Find Parish / Parish Username and Password – Since day one on this new website, we’ve had trouble with the Parish Username and Passwords that allow Priests and Youth Ministers to login and download resources (LIFE Night Planning Guides, Liturgy Planning Guides, Retreats, etc.) This same chunk of code allows people to click “Find a Parish Near Me” at the bottom of the page. Fixing this problem was an intense project that involved professional help, volunteers, and a lot of luck. We’ve solved 99% of the problems.
11. Version2.1 – I know we just launched Version2 of Lifeteen.com in February of 2005, but this month we met with Net Fusion to begin planning for Version2.1. This new version isn’t a complete relaunch like Version2, but a combination of upgrades to our existing site, and some additional sections to make room for new content that will come over the next year.
The Lifeteen.com goal for the 2005-2006 school year is this: Build Community. We have several projects unfolding throughout the year, and I know you’re going to love them. So I invite you to join the community by making Lifeteen.com your home page. We’ll have something new for you everyday.
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Matt Smith is the Director of Internet Ministries for Life Teen, an international Catholic youth ministry based in Phoenix, Arizona. He is the creative force behind Life Teen's cluster of websites that receive nearly 2 million visits a year. Since staring on MTV's "Real World" and MTV's "Road Rules Challenge", Matt has traveled the country speaking at colleges, universities, schools, and Catholic parishes.
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