I’m half way through a fortnight off. I’ve been doing a little bit of a lot of things: catching up with friends, mountain biking, bush walking, leave-your-brain-behind movie watching . . . (If you’ve never seen Salt yet, you should watch it!)

I haven’t been online much, which is why this blog hasn’t exactly seen a flurry of activity. It’s triumph enough just to get it back online. But I have found the time to finally finish St Mary Star of the Sea’s new parish website. The content itself needs updating, but the design is complete.

I heeded the advice of readers of this blog – given many months ago – and added a bit more colour to the original WordPress version. I think the final version is, aesthetically speaking, now a worthier successor to the old Joomla! site.

There’s no doubt it is much easier to update. The new site is basically a collection of different blogs, drawn together to resemble a website. So there’s a blog on weddings, another one which archives the Sunday bulletin, and another which relates the parish history. (I haven’t published that one yet.) Website purists generally shake their heads at such antics, because blogs and corporate websites are really quite different things. But this sort of adaption makes for a much more easily updated website, which can be maintained by a team of people with varying web skills.

I’m now working on something similar for my own parish, St Mary’s, Hamilton. It’s still early days, but a few of us are working on it, and we’re making fast progress!