Website Content
Good morning Nichol,
We discussed maybe being able to pull a text copy of your current website. I talked to Mary and she was able to pull a CSV of all of your page titles, as well as your page's content (text only). We can pull a copy of this right before launch so that you can use it as your backed up copy for reference.
Also, here is our to-do list of items that you mentioned during our meeting. Be sure to check the link again as the week progresses to see what we have completed:
https://public.3.basecamp.com/p/CaNsgtpFTZziWWySvpor2cHa
Other than that, we should be sending you the same link to your website when we are done making the changes we discussed. At that time, we will set up your first training session.
Let me know if you have any other questions,
Veronica Alvarado
Web Department, Diocesan
877-923-0777
877-923-0777
That all sounds wonderful, thank you. What was the name of the website you recommended for icons?
Blessings, Nichol
Hi Nichol,
The site was https://www.flaticon.com/.
You have to create a free account to change the colors of the icons, but there are a LOT of free ones (icons without the gold crown above them).
Here are the steps to choosing an icon and making an icon white:
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Good morning Nichol,
There is no need to add anything. We have added an attribution credit to flaticon into the website's hidden theme code.
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Can I have a status on our website please? It has been quite a while.
Thank you, Nichol
Hi Nichol,
In July, our developer went through and made all of the updates we discussed.
The only items that we were unable to complete was the changing of images for the Daily Readings and Saint of the Day. I was unable to find any RSS feeds that had images, something out of our control.
Other than that, we are ready for a training session whenever you are!
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Nichol,
I am so sorry about that! We completed all the tasks the same week you and I went over them. I normally mention when we plan on completing items in the initial phone call, but I realize now that I should have sent a followup email as a confirmation.
The link is the same, although you may have to hard refresh (hold down CTRL and click F5) to see any cached items: https://stgg.diocesanweb.org/
Thank you and, again, I apologize for not letting you know.
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Let me know if you have any questions,
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Good afternooon Nichol,
I just wanted to catch up with you and see if you had any questions or if you'd like to schedule a training session soon.
Just let me know,
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Could I please have the embed code for the inspire daily? I would like to test it on our current website. It’s always a day behind on our app, and if it’s to be like this on the website then I’ll choose another reflection that is accurate.
Thank you, Nichol
[cid:75C58C66-6117-4399-A679-D71E90F3F745-L0-001]
Hi Nichol,
The RSS feed link for Diocesan's Inspiration Daily is as follows:
https://diocesan.com/category/inspiration-daily/feed/
It is already currently added to your website's homepage under Daily Meditation.
I just checked the feed and the Diocesan website, and there is not an October 28 blog post.
Another one you may be interested in is Franciscan Media's Minute Meditations:
https://blog.franciscanmedia.org/minute-meditations/rss.xml
Viewable Posts: https://blog.franciscanmedia.org/minute-meditations
If you'd like we could update this on the website.
If you'd like to update it on the app as well, you would have to change it either within your app dashboard or speak to someone in the app department (1-800-997-8805 or myparishapp@diocesan.com).
Have you had a chance to look at dates for our first training session?
Thank you,
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Thank you for the RSS feed options. I made a test page on our current website so I could see how it looks. Is there something missing from the feed that prevents it from displaying the whole article? The Franciscan Media feed works reasonably well. But yours is merely a link to the website. See this page: https://www.stgg.org/home/grow-in-faith/daily-readings/diocesan-inspire-daily
There was an October 28th post, it’s just not posting until later in the day. If it doesn’t post in the morning, it’s not going to be read by most people. This seems like a simple fix, but I’ve asked the app tech support many times to post them early and they can’t seem to get it together. I don’t want the home page of our website to look outdated, so that’s why I’m rethinking the Inspire Daily.
I haven’t looked into training yet. I need bugs like the above worked out first, before I want the site to be released to me.
Thank you, Nichol
Hi Nichol,
We have all of the necessary items in the RSS XML, so I am not really sure why the RSS feed is doing that.
For the Diocesan blog, We ask that our volunteer authors submit their article at least 5 days in advance so that we can schedule it to go out at 5:00 am, EDT. If they submit them on time, the article will publish at 5:00 am, EDT, on the correct day.
However, if the author does not send their article until 1-2 days before the day it goes out, it is uploaded to the website later in the day (typically after noon) and, therefore, not at 5:00 am, EDT.
My suggestion is to simply remove Inspiration Daily from the site altogether and replace it with Franciscan Media since they post between 9-10:00 am each morning.
If you would like me to do this for the development site, just let me know.
Thanks so much,
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Something we have done before has been to develop a Default Featured Image Rotation so that you determine what photos the Daily Reading rotates between. So you would select, let's say 10 photos, and the next 10 Daily Readings would use those photos, one per day. So, if you wanted, you could keep replacing those 10 photos with new stock images of bibles, or you could let them rotate through those 10 images.
The additional cost of development for the Default Featured Image Rotation would be 4-6 hours, or $200-300 (at the discounted rate of $50/hr).
As for the Saint of the Day images, we were finally able to get in touch with Franciscan Media and obtain the RSS feed URL for their Saint of the Day!
I have updated the RSS feed and it seems to be pulling in the image correctly!
If we are looking to redesign the homepage, I would like to wait until our lead designer is back in town (honeymoon until November 13) so that we can have a design discussion to see how much we are planning on changing before creating a new quote for design and development.
Is there a day after November 13 that works best for a 1-1.5 hour design meeting?
Let me know!
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Great news about the saint of the day, thank you.
Discussion about a redesign will be a last resort if the issues with these three blocks cannot be resolved.
Thank you
Currently, we are at our budgeted hours for content and development, so any updates and new features to each are in addition to the original quote. Of course, anything that would be additional will wait for your approval before moving forward.
Thank you,
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
If you or someone you know are able to find another Daily Readings site with images, please let me know and I can check to see if they have an RSS feed, or perhaps even ask them to set up their RSS feed for our use.
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Great reflection you did this morning! I did the assessment test too; apparently I will never be a missionary, haha.
Since the multiple default featured events would be something set up for the specific post categories, it would be specifically for any post category. So it could be used with any other post category, but not for other items. I'm not too sure how else it would be applied to other areas of the website. Was there something in particular that you had in mind?
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Hi Nichol,
I did not get that message, but I was able to open the email (see below this message)
We could definitely add a plugin that served as a slider on inner pages, but the slider on the homepage (currently says Join us for First Friday Adoration) already allows you to set the images, text, button text, and button link on the homepage. So there is no additional functionality needed there!
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
From: Nichol Swift
To: Veronica Alvarado (Basecamp)
Subject: Re: (Gregory the Great - San Diego, CA NEW) Website Content
Date: Monday, November 11, 2019 8:08:46 AM
It might be cool to have photo rotations on the upcoming events if I could use it there. Is that where
you mean?
Sent from my iPhone
Thanks, Nichol
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Nichol
Hi Nichol,
Here are some examples of sites using Metaslider. The first one is the only one that I could think of, off the top of my head, but I will ask around and see if anyone else has some other examples.
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
I was talking about the photos for the daily readings. How we could load up 10 or more images and have them rotate through them once per day to make it different each day. You said this was going to be an extra cost and I was asking if we could use this functionality anywhere on the website if we expended the cost, or was it only for the daily reading images.
The Metaslider could possibly work if you can make it small enough that it stays within the daily reading box, and if it could rotate/slide once every 24 hours.
To explain, the homepage main slider and the welcome slider use a custom-built slider so the styling is consistent.
The daily readings would work so that each new post uses the next default featured image in line, then start over. We have done this one before on St. Vincent de Paul with two default featured images: https://sumtercatholic.org/homilies/
As you see there, it automatically uses one then the other image as it automatically pulls in their YouTube homilies RSS feed.
We could make it so that any post category created would be able to set their default featured images, on a per-category basis. That would not be any additional cost to the original 4-6 hour quote since it does not add any time to development, but instead merely determines how it is developed.
(Image is backend view)
I did try seeing if MetaSlider could work for the Daily Readings, but MetaSlider has a limit of 10,000 milliseconds. a 24 hour day is 86,400,000 milliseconds.
Let me check with some of the other image sliders that we have used before to see if any of those have an unlimited, or daily, rotation time.
I will let you know what I find!
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Good morning Nichol,
I've set up a couple of plugins on a test site and now I have to wait 24 hours to see if they actually slide over once a day or not.
I will keep you updated!
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Also, this may be a bit random, but do you have any prayer intentions that you'd like me to pray for?
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
I ask that you pray for myself and all those going through heartbreak, to feel God's peace and trust in God's plan.
Thank you, Nichol,
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Also, I checked in on the slider tests and it is not going to work for us. Instead of sliding every 24 hours at a specific time (24 hours after saving the settings), it was sliding every 24 hours with the timer starting when a person visits the page. Since no one will be opening the website and having the window open for 24 hours, this will not work.
I'll keep brainstorming with my coworkers to see if there's anything else more cost-effective.
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Good morning Nichol,
I did not find a maximum on the seconds, but the timer restarts whenever someone visits the page. So if I visited, it would start counting to 24 hours. If I refreshed the page, it would start counting to 24 hours all over again. So it depends on the individual page visit.
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Any luck with the plugins? Could I please have the most current link for the website?
Thank you, Nichol
Good morning Nichol,
Unfortunately, I have not been able to find anything yet. I've got our support specialist keeping an eye out for something too, but to no avail yet.
Here is the link to the development site: https://stgg.diocesanweb.org/
I have also attached a guide on how to hard refresh your site, which will need to be done anytime you'd like to immediately see the changes we make to the development.
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Thank you, that’s fine let’s just go ahead and make the block so that I can load up a whole bunch of photos and have them cycle through it once per day. We will pay the extra money to have you create this. I would love to be able to use this option throughout the site if that’s possible?
Is it still possible to tweak the scale of things on the homepage? I think the main photo rotator would be better if it was taller; the same scale as the very bottom block (on my screen it’s about 6 ¾”). And the dark red bands that hold the Mass times and the Quick links would be nice if those two were scaled the same – maybe make the Mass times slightly bigger and the Quick links slightly smaller.
Can you also shrink the gap between the words and the read more? I would like it to be obvious that the read more is for the text and not the photo below it.
Thank you, Nichol
[cid:image002.jpg@01D5B4B6.2A19A930]
Hi Nichol,
For the slider, what you are wanting is a slider that rotates every 24 hours, correct? So it would rotate through to the next image every 24 hours.
Would you like it to rotate at midnight (PT) or is there another time you had in mind?
I think we should be able to make it an option for the homepage Daily Readings and other places on the site.
When editing the homepage (I'll go over it during your first training), you'll see that the homepage slider has the option of being Short, Medium, Tall, or Very Tall. It was set to Medium. I have changed it to be Tall.
Please hard refresh to see the updates (see attachment on how to hard refresh your browser window)
Let me know if this works, or if you'd like us to change the Mass Times to be as tall as the footer Quick Links bar. I'm trying to work with what we have so as to not incur additional costs.
I have added a developer to-do to update the line spacing/height between the description and the read more button.
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
~~
How to Hard Refresh
24 hours is great at midnight PT.
Thank you!
The height of the quicklinks is set to fit the logos. If we removed the logos, then the QuickLinks would the same height as the Mass Times, but not stand out as well. I have attached mockups of each.
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
The logo size/heigh is preset by the theme, but the logos themselves you can add/remove as needed.
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Hi Nichol,
The developer has updated those logos to be 50px.
Please be sure to hard refresh (not normal refresh) to see the changes.
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Be sure to hard refresh to see the changes.
Thank you,
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Hi Nichol,
Since we are trying to get it to look similar to the Mass Times bar, we've gone ahead and reduced the top and bottom padding to 5px.
Here is the comparison of what it was, versus what it is now. Please hard refresh to see the newest update:
Let me know what you think,
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
[cid:image002.jpg@01D5B5A7.10D52E30]
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Happy New Year! Could I please have a status update on our new website? Are they almost finished developing the last enhancement to be able to load multiple photos and have them rotate each day?
Thanks a million,
Nichol Swift
Stewardship
[St]
11451 Blue Cypress Drive
San Diego, CA 92131
Office 858.653.3540
Direct 858.653.3546
Fax 858.653.3550
www.saintgregorythegreat.org<http://www.saintgregorythegreat.org/>
Hello Nichol,
Happy New Year! I pray you had a wonderful Christmas and New Years' holiday and things are settling down there at the parish before gearing up for Lent.
When we had last discussed the slider/multiple images for the Daily Readings, we were waiting to see if we could find any other cost-effective options. We found one or two more leads, but nothing viable.
If you'd like to move forward with the 10 images for the Daily Readings to rotate through, I will send the quote estimate over for approval.
In the meantime, to save on time and keep the project moving, the developer has been going through and updating the mobile responsiveness (which is why you may see the menu looking strange), something that we normally do after your first and second training sessions.
Let me know if you would like me to send over the quote,
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Thank you, Nichol
Hi Nichol,
Unfortunately, Basecamp does not bring over email forwards.
Could you please send the forward to webdepartment@diocesan.com?
I will have our consultation manager go put together the official quote and get that over to you first thing in the morning.
Thank you,
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Good morning Nichol,
Attached is the estimate created for the new Daily Readings slider that we had discussed prior.
I know we had discussed 4-6 hours, but after working with the developer, I was able to get the 4-6 hours down to 3-5 and provide you with our now discontinued, discounted rate of $50/hr, which brought the total from $280- 420 down to $150-250.
Additionally, the timeline we are looking at for this slider is Friday, February 7.
Please have Father Nicholas or the business manager sign the proposal before returning it to us.
Please let me know if you have any questions,
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
Thank you. Just to make sure we’re on the same page, this will look exactly like the box that contains the daily inspire and the saint of the day, correct?
Blessings, Nichol
I have also let the developer know that the slider for Daily Readings will mimic any mobile responsiveness the other two will have.
Additionally, the February 7 delivery date is dependant on receiving the signed proposal by end of day Wednesday, January 29.
Let me know if I misunderstood the slider functionality or if you have any other questions.
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777
I have let the developer know so that he will begin working on this first thing on Thursday morning.
I'll keep you updated,
Veronica Alvarado
877-923-0777