Busy marketing manager Deb Chen now has a one stop desktop item that will give her all the latest updates on the Your.sydneyanglicans.net website.
The new item is called a widget, a downloadable interactive tool that provides services straight to your desktop.
The new Your.sydneyanglicans.net widget will include regular updates of the latest news, feature and culture articles from the Your.sydneyanglicans.net website as well as the current weather.
It will be available for download this Monday morning (April 30) at one minute past midnight when the latest update of Your.sydneyanglicans.net is launched.
"We realised we were generating more and more really good original content, but getting it to people needed more tactics than just designing a great looking site," says Your.sydneyanglicans.net editor Mark Hadley.
"So we asked ourselves what other ways there were for people to access this site. Hence, the desktop widget."
More ways to connect
The widget is just one part of a raft of new tools designed to increase the accessibility of Australia’s leading religious news site.
Web users will be given the opportunity to sign up to an email service that will deliver the site’s newest articles and news stories straight to their inbox.
This service will be customised over the coming months to allow users to further define which material they would like to have delivered to their personal computer.
Version 2.1 of the website will also allow people to include feeds of the latest Sydney news and articles for their church website or personal homepage, ensuring their own communities are kept up to date.
In addition to this Anglican Media will be releaing a revamped Find-a-church service through the Sydneyanglicans.net Portal.
Inquirers looking for churches will find that the entries for their local congregations will also include Google maps showing the location of the buildings to help them get in touch.
Advanced MP3 library and social bookmarking
Monday’s release of the latest version of Your.sydneyanglicans.net will also include a revamped MP3 library.
"The MP3 has been our site's biggest area of growth meaning we now have 100s of MP3s," Mr Hadley says.
"To make it easier for people to find what they want we now have a search function that gives you a better overview of what is available, meaning it should only take you one or two clicks to find a sermon on Romans or a sermon by Phillip Jensen, for example."
Users will also be able to notify friends and broader communities of their favourite Your.sydneyanglicans.net articles. There will be links placed at the bottom of each article allowing people to add them to popular social bookmarking websites like Del.icio.us and reddit.
"Our typical web user wants news, wants it now and wants it quickly," Mr Hadley says.
"Since the average Australian spends an hour or more online a day we wanted to make it so they could get everything need to now about their Sydney Anglican community in just a couple of minutes browsing."
