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From: "Provincial USC"
Date: Mon, January 10, 2011 10:28 am

Chicago Province (USC) New Website Launch

Dear Confreres,

Barring technical difficulties, the new Chicago Province website will be live this Tuesday, January 11. Because of the way the technology works, some servers might not immediately recognize the change. It could take up to 72 hours for servers worldwide to acknowledge the difference.

The URL (www.divineword.org) will remain the same, but everything else is new. The production of the new website has been a long process, but we wanted to make certain that many Chicago Province voices could be heard when making decisions about the website.

Take a few minute in the coming days to check out the new website. You might even see your picture or read about your ministry or community! And encourage others – community members, parishioners, family, friends, alumni, confreres in other provinces – to check out the new website and tell others about it.

Theresa Carson, Province PR/Media Director, spearheaded the whole process, and special thanks go to her for her dogged determination to keep it moving through many and tedious steps. Tremendous thanks go to the ad hoc Website Redesign Committee which was composed of six SVDs – Lukas Batmomolin, Sunny Francis, Dan Holman, Janusz Horowski, Adam MacDonald and me – and three members of the Province Center staff: Ryan Alley, Theresa Carson and Renee Chvalovsky. This committee established the strategic plan that gives the website a strong foundation.

With the strategic priorities in mind, the committee constructed an initial website architecture—a map of the web pages. Some of you may have seen it on the wall in Theresa’s office.

The committee asked for input from Divine Word Missionaries throughout the province. After several revisions to the website architecture, work on the content began. All told, the new website has 463 pages, more than 750 photos, more than 200 links to outside sources, and more than 200 PDFs.

The text on more than 400 pages is original content. After Theresa drafted the pages, they went through an involved review process. A proofreader, at least one subject matter expert and I read each page. Some pages went through a dozen hands to make certain that the information is accurate and that the tone reflects who we are as Divine Word Missionaries.

Another round of thanks go to the beta testing team: Guilherme Andrino, Adam MacDonald and four members of the Province Center staff – Ryan Alley, Kathy Borresen, Renee Chvalovsky and Maria Wietecha. They combed through the website, looking for typos, broken links, compatibility with different browsers, ease of navigation and ease of use.

Now that the project is completed, a Website Advisory Committee, predominantly made up of Divine Word Missionaries, will consider changes to the look, feel and structure of the website.

Next week, I’ll send instructions on how to access the password-protected members section.

Peace,

Mark Weber, SVD
USC Provincial