The Right Way to Update Your Old Website

I updated a website several years ago for a church in Milwaukee. Basically, it had a website that was broken (and potentially hacker-dangerous) because it was built on Joomla 1.0 technology. The church assumed I would be building a whole new website, but when I saw that several articles were approaching 10,000 hits, I figured it was better to migrate the website. 

Male Fashion and Lifestyle: The $12 Perfect Suit

I am not a suit kind of guy, but I learned after one of my only failed interviews that suits are expected. (I was told later that I won the job on three of five categories, but wearing a casual outfit lost the position. That was two decades ago.) It might seem ironic that a teacher, who will not wear a suit again for the next 20 or 30 years, needs to don the traditional male formal attire just to get that job. But I'm OK with irony, since I teach English. Besides, a perfect suit doesn't have to be expensive. This "perfect" Dillard's suit cost me $12.

Dude, Where's My Church?

As a web designer, I know that it's a problem when you lose your website. I'm not talking about getting hacked. What I mean is when search engines can't find your site. It's kind of weird when it happens, since you'd think Google and other searches would be able to adjust to all kinds of changes online, but there are times when your site just isn't found. I'm going to discuss two scenarios like this that I've been part of in the past year, and maybe it will help you not lose your church or small business website.

Retiree Guide to JAX

Jacksonville just made the Top 10 in some list of places to retire. The only problem is that the city isn't really in the Top 1000 for people who are actually looking to retire, so maybe it's time New Jax Witty works on putting together a local guide for folks who no longer have to work.

Church of God the Mother at UNF

UNF sent out an email regarding at least one of the churches that shows up on campus to talk to students. I don't attend UNF, so I don't actually know much about the situation. But I went to college, and there were sometimes churches represented near the Union, and there were sometimes heated debates. I never got involved myself, and I was only approached one time, so I'm not taking a stand on Christians on Campus or Socialists or Republicans or White Nationalists. So I'm cool with anyone except Nihilists or The Eagles showing up on campus to discuss whatever with Millennials. I'm just wondering about the name "Church of God the Mother."

Grace Lutheran School Jacksonville Tuition

If you have kids and you live in Jacksonville, Florida, then you are considering private school. It's really that simple around here. I built the website for Grace Lutheran School in Jax, and I reminded the folks that one of the top searches is for the name of a school (Grace Lutheran School) and the word "tuition." People just want to know how much it's going to cost, but I totally understand the concept of selling what it offers rather than just giving out the numbers.

Sheriffs Live On-Site At Local Synagogues?

The news was discussing the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh and how it relates to Jacksonville when I thought I heard that two of the three main synagogues in Jax have JSO officers who live on-site. Maybe I heard it wrong, or maybe the news meant there's a house right next to these places of worship that's rented out to JSO.

Solutions to Potential Accidents

Jacksonville has plenty of potential problems on the road, especially the fast surface roads that are treated like mini-expressways. On my side of town, that's Beach, Atlantic, and McCormick. I decided to take one area of concern to me that I know well and suggest some solutions. While I know this has been looked at before and deemed un-fixable, I believe that the city might want to reconsider before someone gets into a major accident for lack of planning, which I would argue happens daily in Jax.

Sunday Funday Sounds Like Fun

I guess I should have expected something like this existed around here, but it was still surprising to hear about it. Sunday Funday. It's not hanging out with friends watching the big game or going to the beach. According to an interview on the news after an unfortunate injury, Sunday Funday is going to church, riding motorcycles, and shooting guns. A recent Sunday's shooting fun resulted in several homes and a person getting shot. Fun.

Luminaries: A New Old Christmas Tradition in Florida

When we exited our Christmas Eve church service this year, the walkways were lined with paper bags with candles inside. One of the other church members identified the objects as luminaries, but I was interested in the birth of this Christmas tradition. It was not something we saw in Wisconsin, and not something we noticed in Kansas, so I wondered how the tradition got started.