Episcopal Church Web Hosting > About ECWH
> ECWH Overview
ECWH Overview
- Director and Chairman: Rev. Tom
Sramek, Jr. - Albany, OR
- John Ogden - Swarthmore, PA
- Paul Martin - Starkville, MS
- Weston C. Vogel - Allentown, PA
- *** Many ECWH volunteers! ***
Episcopal Church Web Hosting, Inc. ("ECWH"),
a non-profit North Carolina Religious Corporation, is an
independent, all volunteer servant ministry to assist
Episcopal churches, missions, and ministries in implementing
their web based content and applications. ECWH was organized,
according to its Articles of Incorporation, "specifically for the
advancement of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the
Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America."
We believe that ECWH represents the kind of complimentary
organization envisioned by the goals set forth by the Society of Archbishop
Justus ("SOAJ".) as well as a realization of their perception
that it would be necessary to have "other Societies similar to
ours but different." While SOAJ services the Episcopal Church at
the national level, our focus is on local churches.
There were five principal reasons that motivated the creation
of this initiative:
- The recognition of how poorly many church websites have been
constructed and maintained. The many problems include:
- Out of Date.
- Poor Layout and Design.
- Poor Usability.
- Slow Load.
- Incompatibility with Many Browsers.
- Lack of Adoption of Common Web Patterns.
- Unreliable and/or High Latency Networks.
- Weak Information Security Controls.
- Poor Content.
- Insufficient Functionality to Support Emerging "Virtual"
Congregations
- Many episcopal churches, missions, and ministries do not have
web sites. Offering free services is designed to help eleminate
some of the barriers for them to do so.
- SOAJ does not service episcopal websites below the diocesan
level.
- Church websites have specific needs that can be factored into
a common architectural framework. While a traditional ISP
attempts to meet the needs of many different types of
institutions, ECWH is a "Vertical" service provider specific to
episcopal churches (BTW, we do use ISP services).
- Not all Application Service Providers do things the same way.
Some very good ministries, such as ForMinistry, offer the VSP model
but only on a basic templated website. Others, such as ChurchSites, move
beyond the basic templated web page to more comprehensive web
applications, but you must pay. Of course none are
Episcopal-centric. Being episcopalians, we want to focus
specifically upon our unique needs as it relates to the 2020
Initiative and implement a specific technical solution that
reflects our own experiences.
Most Importantly, ECWH is YOU!
ECWH cannot exist without the many episcopalians who volunteer
to make this initiative happen. All are welcome.
If you feel called to this initiative, please contact us.
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WE NEED YOUR WISDOM on this and other
Episcopalian web initiatives. Please join our discussions in
THE EP_WEB USER GROUP
at Yahoo Groups.
Our Mission:
- To serve as a Vertical Service
Provider to Episcopal churches and missions that need domain
registration and FREE DNS and HTML hosting services.
- To implement Episcopal church brochureware, content
management, and church community applications within a common domain
application framework that will branch off of existing open-source
projects.
- To provide advice to Episcopal churches on how to effectively
position
their web sites in the context of growing their churches as part
of the 2020
Movement.
- To provide advice on effective Episcopal church web brochure
design and implementation.
- To provide advice on, and to implement, the highest measures
in information security.
- In the long run, to provide hosting services that can deliver
multiple 9's of uptime reliability.
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