CLIFTON The mission of the Church is to evangelize and in today’s society, that means communicating with the faithful not just in the pews but also through their computers, tablets and mobile phones.
Last June, the Diocese launched an initiative to have every parish in the Diocese develop a new website through eCatholic, a faith-based website and design company in College Station, Texas, that the Diocese used to launch its new diocesan website on Dec. 8, 2014. These new websites are now allowing parishes to evangelize on the web by presenting visitors with attractive, mobile-friendly and easy-to-navigate designs with up-to-date content.
“I am very pleased that this project went so well, with dozens of new, clean and organized websites that our parishes manage with ease,” said Thomas Barrett, diocesan coordinator of special projects. “Communication and information are essential things that people need and this is about the Church responding to support the faithful. Websites are just one communication tool, we need to continue to find ways and use more tools to connect with our parishioners as people’s needs evolve. The parishes saw the need for power and simplicity and ran with it. Now a lot of important information from the Diocese, The Beacon and parishes are connected and shareable.”
Because of the diocesan partnership with eCatholic, 67 parishes and agencies now have eCatholic-based websites. With more than half the parishes of the diocese using eCatholic, the diocese is encouraging the rest of the parishes to set up a new website through eCatholic. There is no cost to the parishes, because the entire cost of their website is being absorbed by the Diocese.
SOLT Father Derek Anderson, pastor of St. Mary Parish in Dover, and diocesan director of catechesis, said, “eCatholic helped move our parish website from somewhat functional and chaotic to easy-to-use and beautiful. With its drag-and-drop features and other intuitive tools, eCatholic accomplishes its mission of helping parishes spend less time on website development and more time on the great mission of evangelization.”
Through eCatholic-hosted sites, parishes can personalize their sites with any logos, images or color patterns of their choosing. Also, these sites are mobile-friendly, accessible from a tablet or smart phone — especially handy for someone traveling who is looking for Mass times of a local parish. The parish websites can enable staff at the parish to edit content directly on a page by adding, removing or changing text, images or video through a “drag ’n’ drop” method. For security purposes, eCatholic also creates a “publishing workflow” that permits various members of the team to have various levels of access to edit web pages. Because the parish is in charge of setting up the content, websites are more up to date because a consultant isn’t involved. Using eCatholic also allows parishes that were paying a consultant to design their web pages and update them to eliminate that cost in their budgets.
One of the parishes in the diocese that is currently using eCatholic is Notre Dame of Mount Carmel in Cedar Knolls, which has changed the way the parish communicates with its members. Cristina Folan, who does communications support for the parish, said, “Using eCatholic has allowed us to improve our presence out in the world. The platform is very easy to use and much easier than other platforms. It allows us to maintain our own website. This is the way to evangelize in the world today. We evangelize through a picture, article or news item.”
At Notre Dame, the website has allowed visitors, no matter what stage they are in their spiritual journey to seek information. Folan said, “Whether it’s a new parent, looking for information about baptism, a person looking for a place of worship or someone wanting to be closer to God, they can find the information, quickly, effectively and in a way that makes sense.”
Together, these parish sites — in conjunction with the diocesan site — will create a consistent design and way of navigating that will alert visitors that they all belong to the Church of Paterson. Also, the Diocese can create content on its website (www.rcdop.org) that parishes can “drag ’n’ drop” onto their sites. In turn, content on parish sites, such as Mass times, can be automatically updated on the diocesan site, said Simmons, who emphasized that parishes — not the Diocese — maintain full control of their sites.
To engage their visitors, the parish sites integrate content from various Catholic websites and interface with social media, posting items on or pulling content from FaceBook, YouTube or Twitter — often automatically without users even thinking about it. Parishes can set up registration for events, allowing visitors to fill out forms online and submit them with ease.
When the Diocese launched its new website through the eCatholic platform, it quickly drew acclaim, so much so the Diocese decided to offer eCatholic websites to all its parishes
Luke Tristani, a Diocesan Specialist at eCatholic, said, “We are embracing the New Evangelization and helping parishes take that next step. We are here to help parishes and ministries transform the way they communicate, inspire and evangelize. We want to help them focus on their mission, not on technology."
Parishes interested in an eCatholic
website should contact Tom Barrett at (973) 777-8818, ext. 231.