Careful What You Ask For…

I just got back from the initial meeting with the webmaster at church, and I think I’m going to be a busy guy, here, for a while.

I don’t want to get into too many details right away, but the things the webmaster has in mind are things I know a lot about, and enjoy doing.

The webmaster has been maintaining the site for quite a few years, and has seen it through several iterations from mostly-placeholder static HTML through the current database-backed site. He’s done a wonderful job, I think.

Part of the current “problem” is that our church has so many ministries (from the nursery folks and the youth group to the men’s group and – my favorite – the pie ministry*) it’s quite a task to make something they all can use on their own. It’s easy to build something where you e-mail stuff to the webmaster and he takes it from there. Easy to build, but hard (for the webmaster) and frustrating (for the users)(…and – let’s be honest here – the webmaster) to operate.

But! I have some ideas and experience that fit very well with the immediate needs. I have to brush up on my PHP, but that’ll be fun. And it’s always easier for me to learn something when I have a concrete and real task that depends on it. (And I think God’s cool and everything, so He’d cut me some slack if I hosed up one of His websites a bit while I learn, but I so don’t want to be that guy.) Apart from that, the needs are of the sort that I work with every day – some of the fun and engaging parts of my real job, and some of the stuff I do just because it’s interesting.

How exciting to be able to help out with something I think is important, and by doing stuff I think is fun. Followup meeting’s in two weeks.

I have homework!

*The pie ministry: they don’t just hand out pies willy-nilly. They make pies as gifts to give throughout the community; fire and police stations are frequent recipients. The only thing that would make it better is if they actually did give out pies willy-nilly.
To me, I mean.