Church Information Repository Administration
As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, members are asked to participate in the administration and support functions of local church congregations, which are termed wards. In Virginia one assignment, or calling as it is often referred to, was as the ward membership clerk. I kept accurate computer records using the church membership software and updated contact information. Since the congregation I am a part of is all young single adults, addresses and phone numbers change often as people move around to various apartments.
To ease my administrative burden I created a web site to hold the contact information. This was to make the information available to the ward members as well as to make corrections easy to submit for revision.
Features I incorporated into the site include:
- Consistent graphical layout
- Forms for submitting alterations
- Log in security to protect private information
- A dynamically generated and maintained email repository in a MySQL database using PHP scripts
The data obtained from the church computers is in a delimited text file. On my local computer additional scripting creates transition steps between the raw data and the web server.
- An ASP script parses the text file and creates a static HTML file with the membership information in a table.
- An ASP script parses the text file to create a static page containing links to forms that will make changes. The links include GET type parameters to a PHP script that fills current information into the form for simplicity. This page is also saved as a static file and uploaded to the server.
- An ASP script runs on my local computer and parses my email software for form submissions and formats the data in an easy to print format that I can take to church and update the records.
The web site itself is no longer available. The church established web sites on behalf of church units world wide and asked local units to utilize the provided pages. The old URL now redirects to the official page.
