On 10/9/25 07:33, Paul Heinlein wrote:
1. Assume that the church staff or another volunteer will at some
point take over site management,
I've definitely thought of that.
so document EVERYTHING and then
train at least one other person on site basics. Document all
questions raised during the training and their answers. Did I
mention documentation?
+1 on documentation. Not sure who else will be able to pick up on it. At
least one member has a son who works in IT, so he might be a good choice.
2. Make sure the documentation includes any and every customization
you configured into your site, whether it's installing a plugin,
changing variables in some PHP code, adding images or photos, etc.
Definitely understood.
3. WordPress and its plugins have a long, long history of security
vulnerabilities and exploits. Devise and document a plan for
keeping track of WP security issues and the exact steps necessary
for remediation.
Where do I keep up to date on those things? Is there a WP forum or some
such?
4. Once more: document and train. Document and train. The number of
congregational IT projects setup by well-meaning volunteers that go
orphaned and unmaintained when the volunteer becomes unavailable
exceeds the number of dead Assyrian soldiers left outside Jerusalem
during Hezekiah's reign. If you care for your congregation enough
to get this site up and running, then also take care that it can be
well and lovingly maintained when you are (for whatever reason)
unavailable.
Understood. Back before 2016 I produced a site with mostly hand coded
PHP and HTML. Then someone decided to have an outside party do the job.
She just decided she's no longer doing websites, which is why I'm
looking into learning WP. Plus, we need to figure out what the look and
feel needs to be, and produce a bunch of new photos. Big tasks. Sigh.
Thanks for all your recommendations. I made some progress yesterday, and
have a little bit better understanding of how to proceed.
--
Regards,
Dick Steffens
