Since just about everything in technology gets cheaper every year (except labor costs), multi-year hosting contracts allow vendors to lock in long term revenue without having to remain competitive. Labor based service contracts can be a good deal for the customer, but hosting and any other software and technology will certainly get cheaper every year. Why sign a contract to guarantee today’s higher price?

Some vendors offer discounts for annual prepayment, which can be a good deal if you have the spare cash. But beware of contracts for more than one year.

Personally, I don’t recommend you blindly upgrade every time a new version comes out – in any software. New software versions almost always bring new bugs with the new features. I like to sit back a while and let other people find the bugs on their sites.

But today we have a stable version in 2.8.4 and there are several security issues with many of the older WP versions. Bad guys have written worms to find sites running older versions and to do malicious things to them. Unfortunately, we regularly get calls to restore and secure hacked sites.

If your site (or your client’s sites) are not running 2.8.4 we would strongly recommend this is a good time to get “up to date” , before they get discovered by a malicious worm!

Before you update:

Remember to backup your site (and your databases) before updating and always check your plugins before updating a WordPress site. A plugin that is not compatible with the current version can crash your site.

Main Street is available to help you with upgrades or to do an audit of your plugins before you install the update.

At MainStreetOpen we have a new application that will ease some of this burden. Our Facebook Page App will create a custom tab with dynamic content from your web site on your Facebook Fan Page. Our app pulls data from your web site – both static content (about us, contact) and dynamic (via your RSS feed) — and generates a custom tab with this data on your FB Fan Page.

The best part is that this information is updated automatically when you change the web site content. You NEVER have to update the Facebook Fan Page data. Our app will automatically keep it in sync with you web content.

The Facebook Page App is fully customizable. We can configure the content and graphics to match your site. This works with WordPress sites and any other content manager that generate an RSS feed.

Two examples:

http://facebook.com/ministrycom (Latest News tab) — data comes from http://ministrycom.org
http://www.facebook.com/pages/MainStreetOpen/40320181025 (Web Site tab) — data comes from http://www.mainstreetopen.com.

MainStreetOpen’s Facebook Page App starts at $300 plus customization. That’s a one time cost that will keep your Facebook Fan Page current without any effort from you. Contact Main Street for details.

You work for web site firm and need to meet briefly with the church IT staff to discuss technical details of a new site launch. You are told the meeting can’t be on Thursday because the Food Services Director is not available then.

Question: Why was the Food Services Director invited to the meeting?

A)  He is paid staff, and all paid staff are invited to all meetings.

B)  He is related to [the senior pastor / elder / board / session member] and is interested in “all that computer stuff.”

C)  Food Services will have a page on the new web site, so they should have input on all decisions.

D)  Two of the board member still think the web site is a huge waste of money, and prefer to upgrade the kitchen instead.

What is the correct answer? Take your time, it’s not a trick question. Anyone who has worked with churches or non-profits should be able to answer this question.

The correct answer is, of course, (E) All of the above. Anyone working with churches knows that any church group asked to select from multiple options will always select an option not offered and then form a new committee to explore that option.

I love you guys. You make me crazy, but I still love you.

With over 340 million unique visitors for the month, it easily blew past EBay, Amazon, AOL and the entire family of Wikipedia sites.

If you’ve been waiting to see if social networking was a fad before getting involved — it’s probably time to jump in. With almost twice as many unique users as EBay, I think it’s safe to say Facebook is reaching more than just a bunch of college kids.

Is your business or ministry on Facebook? We can help.