Mustardseed Media Inc.

Moving Beyond The Web

By this time, we've all heard the phrase "Web 2.0". It's a buzzword that basically describes the current state of the internet: Websites that are more simple, more useful, and more functional which seek to enhance our lives (and our ministries). But what if I told you that very soon (if it hasn't already) the time of Web 2.0 will pass. We'll be talking Web 3.0...
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"I Want It GREEN!"

Often times we get distracted by color. Color is important and color is emotional, but color is not the only element in a website design that we should be concerned about. There are many other concerns such as typography, layout, and functionality which too often take a backseat to color, and I think it damages the potential which church and ministry websites have to impact their visitors....
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A New Video Podcast

Here at Mustardseed Media, we're all about helping churches and ministries...even if that means giving away some of our web design and development secrets. Ok...maybe they're not quite so secret, but still......
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Develop Fast? Develop Slow?

In a recent episode of The Geeks and God Podcast we talked about church website pre-production. In this episode you'll hear alot of talk about what you should expect when creating a reasonable timeline for developing your church website. We suggested (as is the policy at Mustardseed) to figure on about 2-3 months of development time. However, a recent project experience shed some more light on this issue, creating a new wrinkle that I never thought about....
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Online Church Communities

Churches are communities of people...are they not? Sometimes we forget this. Sometimes we think they're more like corporations than like Small Groups. Church leadership starts to become more like a board of directors or employees of a large company and congregation members begin to have a 'customer' mindset. Am I the only one who has seen this?...
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When You Outsource, Be Involved!

Whenever we at Mustardseed get involved with a church, it means they've decided to outsource something. Whether it be web design, print design, video production, or audio recording, that church has come to us because they need some help outside the expertise that lies within their ministry. I think this is a good thing (not just because it pays my bills) but because it recognizes that a ministry can't be an expert at everything and they're willing to ask for help. ...
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Add Content Not Pages

As most of the world begins changing from traditional static websites to CMS (Content Management System)-driven websites, the way we think about these websites must change as well. This is especially important for people who are new to CMS concepts in general, or who are in transition from a static site to a CMS site....
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When To Use Offsite Services

When I begin a new project with a client, I always take time to ask about the current state of their website and try and see where it can be improved or streamlined so it makes more sense to their visitors. Sometimes, this process is easy and obvious. Maybe they're just using Front Page or Dreamweaver to create static html pages and don't really have any dynamic content. In that case, we'll be changing the approach by adding dynamic content which didn't exist before. No problem. ...
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Adding Inline Images in Drupal

I've found that the holy grail for an easy-to-use, non-techie drupal website is the ability to add inline images, wherever and whenever a properly-permissioned user wants. This is the request I get most often from my clients, and until today I never had a good answer. I've finally found, what seems to be, the best, most compliant, and easy to use way to add images for the average joe. Here's the method I'll be using from now on:...
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Web 2.0 For Churches

That's the question that is silently being asked inside church communities around the country. Why silently? Well, we all know how embarrassing it is to sound like you're "behind the times". So, rather than a bold question, the church is asking it in a whisper. However, the question is so important, that they should be asking it from the mountaintops....What is Web 2.0 and does my church need to know about it?...
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Three Pillars of Web Development

We really want it all these days, don't we? We want a nice house, but we don't want to pay too much. We want fast food, but we don't want it to make us fat. We want 1,000 rolls of paper towel for $6.99. The marketing schemes of today tell us we can have anything we want, quickly and painlessly. But as we all know: Advertising lies. (we do all know that, right?)...
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The Importance of PreProduction

Over the years, I've learned that the web developer and the client who is commissioning the building of a website have radically different perspectives on the site that's being constructed. One one hand, the web developer has probably built a site like this many times before. He knows his process. He can foresee the steps that are coming next. He understands all the ins and outs of what is happening at each stage of the game. ...
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