New-Website-News Post #7

Temple Beth El’s website is celebrating its second anniversary! Like many toddlers, it has gone through some rough and tumble times, none perhaps more tumultuous than the present coronavirus pandemic, although it is fair to say that this is nothing compared to the impact these recent events have had upon all of you, our congregants, clergy, and staff. Clergy and staff have worked diligently and tirelessly to move all our activities, from services and Torah school, to events, meetings, and programs, to the virtual world with Zoom meetings and Facebook live sessions almost too numerous to count. In addition, the Temple has striven and continues to strive to connect with anyone with special needs, whether that need is for shopping or other tasks, or just a few words of concern to stay in communication and know that your friends are here for you.

Our clergy has found new ways for us to meet virtually and we all have been busy on social media getting the word out and staying in contact with one another. Our weekly emails, the bulletin, our social media postings, and the website continue to supply the news and information you need to know about your synagogue and our programming.

It is perhaps a useful juncture to review a bit about the website in terms of how it is organized, what it contains, and what you might find there if you have not looked around that much yet. I think it is almost a given nowadays, especially with our sheltering-in-place, that all of us have learned much about how to get done what we need to do in the online world, with the exception of finding toilet paper. On our website, like other synagogue websites, you will find an explainer about who we are, some of our history, an introduction to our clergy, listings of upcoming events and programs, and links to our umbrella organization. We do all of this on the home page, so that new visitors do not have far to go to find out what they might need to know. Also, you may be interested to learn that we were selected as one of the 22 best Reform synagogue websites for 2019 by a well-known web design and web services company.

First item to note is the menu bar on top of every page. Each action word will take you to the corresponding hub page with links to a series of subsections.

Next item of note is the sidebar on the right side of every page except the home page and the calendar page. The sidebar lists several sections such as Everything, Updates, Recent Articles, Archives, Everything (Select Category), Tags, On the Other Hand Weekly Podcast, Tweets from @tbesanpedro, and a TBE Facebook post. You should be able to find anything you want here.

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Note that you can search the entire website by month (Archives), by category (Everything – Select Category), by tag (by Parashot and Hebrew year, applies only to the Parashot of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks), by most recent (Updates), and Everything. The Everything sidebar box takes you to a hub for all major categories of posts (articles).

EXPLORE takes you to About Us, Our Professionals, and Contact Us, as well as a form to use to sign up for our weekly emails.

CONNECT takes you to Updates, Community, Everything, Sisterhood, Book Club, Sisterhood Activities & Articles, Special Events & Programs, Youth Groups, and Congregation.

CALENDAR takes you to a single page with 2 sections; the first section is a box of announcements to leaf through, and the second is our official Google calendar, which for the time being is our Virtually TBE calendar.

PRAY takes you to Worship, High Holidays 5780, Hanukkah, Passover, Some of Our Special Services, Parashot, and Podcasts.

LEARN takes you to Torah School, Torah School 5780, Curriculum, and Adult Learning.

GIVE takes you to Yahrzeit Plaque Dedications, Rabbi David Lieb Endowment, and Other Ways to Give.

ACT takes you to Social Action and Our Activities.