Archive by Author

The Vatican has a widget for you

If you operate a Catholic website, whether for a parish, a ministry, or yourself, you might be interested to hear that the Vatican is now offering a website widget to give your readers the latest news from the Vatican, the Pope’s Angelus or Regina Coeli address, recent speeches and the daily Press Office bulletin. Once [...]

Continue Reading →

The Case for Catholic Teaching: Women, Sex, and the Church

On May 2 and 3, the Catholic Media Secretariat in collaboration with the the Secretariat for Faith, Formation, and Evangelization; the Secretariat for Parish Life and Leadership; St. John’s Seminary; and the Theological Institute for the New Evangelization are conducting two seminars–one for clergy and one for laity–with some of the contributors to the groundbreaking [...]

Continue Reading →

7 Characteristics of a Great Parish Domain Name

Choosing your parish domain name (i.e. the church’s website address. For example, www.example.com), Facebook Page address (www.facebook.com/example), Twitter handle (@example), and so on is a critical part of creating your parish’s new media presence. The right name/address could be the difference between parishioners and newcomers regularly visiting to read what you have to say and [...]

Continue Reading →

OSV’s Faith In Action websites debut

Pilot New Media collaborated with Our Sunday Vistor in the creation of their new “Faith In Action” websites solution. This was the same product we presented at our Forum last October on parish websites. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 2, 2012 CONTACT: Terry Poplava Director of Marketing, Sales and Customer Service Phone: 800-348-2886 Email: tpoplava@osv.com OUR SUNDAY [...]

Continue Reading →

Your Parish Website Needs a Call to Action

While evangelization is not the same thing as sales—we’re not trying to sell Jesus to anyone—we can’t ignore the fact that there are elements of human nature that both sales techniques and evangelization share. The “call to action” is one of them. As we’ve said before, too many parish websites function too much like bulletin [...]

Continue Reading →

The new Facebook Timeline is coming to Pages

Several months ago, Facebook introduced the new Timeline for personal profiles. Among the big changes were the very large cover photo at the top and a re-ordering of how your content shows up below. The idea, they said, was to make your Facebook profile more a chronicle of your life, and even suggested that you [...]

Continue Reading →

Google Apps, now for Parishes

Google offers a variety of its online applications available in a package called Apps for Domains. They give users access to email, calendars, word processor, spreadsheets, address book, and more, all under your very own domain name, like pilotnewmedia.com. Normally these services cost $50 per user per year, which is reasonable for most companies, but [...]

Continue Reading →

Silence and the Word: Pope Benedict’s message for World Communications Day

Each year for the past 46 years, popes have issued a message for the World Communications Day. In recent years, the messages have focused on the revolution in communications caused by the Internet and have included references to blog, websites, social media, smartphones and more. Today the Vatican released the Holy Father’s 2012 message and [...]

Continue Reading →

DREs power-using the parish website

Loyola Press has a nice post today on its DRE Connect blog with a number of suggestions for how Directors of Religious Education can use the parish website for effective communications with the parish. Some of my favorites: Add religious education events to the online calendar. Include all registration forms, parent permission slips and releases, [...]

Continue Reading →

Find us on Google+

The new and upcoming and cutting-edge social network out there now is Google+. It’s in beta test mode right now and people have been signing up since mid-July. Now, as of November 7, businesses, organizations, and brands can now sign up for pages as well. And since it’s our hope to bring the Gospel to [...]

Continue Reading →