| Middletown shul gets set to unveil new online look...thanks to ShofarSites |
 |
 |
|
July 30, 2008 By STACEY DRESNER, The Jewish Ledger GREENFIELD, Mass. Until recently, the website for Temple Israel of Greenfield, Mass. was, shall we say, a bit outdated.The website’s “wallpaper,” the background design that can be seen on the website’s homepage, depicted a faux-wood wall and the website wasn’t very user-friendly. Temple Israel now has a new website, courtesy of ShofarSites, a company dedicated to updating and making more user-friendly websites for small Jewish organizations. A division of TnR Global, a Greenfield-based firm that specializes in enterprise search integration or high-end web development, ShofarSites was the brainchild of Tamar Schanfeld, one of TnR’s computer pros. TnR works with the content management system, Joomla. “Joomla is a system where you can basically build fairly complex websites with lots of features very easily, and you can also update it very easily without any technical knowledge once it is in place,” Schanfeld. “We were thinking about who could really benefit from Joomla-based websites. And I said, ‘Synagogues and churches could use this n they are small organizations for the most part that don’t necessarily have a technical staff…They have a real need for interactive features because part of their focus is on building community and reaching people.” The firm ended up concentrating on synagogues because of Schanfeld’s own Jewish background. ShofarSites’ first act was to create an unsolicited mock up of a new website for Temple Israel, also located in Greenfield. “We went to Temple Israel and said, ‘Listen, we have this thing we have done. We would like you to take a look at it and see if you can use it.” As it turned out, the powers that be at Temple Israel were all for it. “The old website was pretty much managed by one person and it wasn’t kept updated and it didn’t have the bells and whistles and accessibility and some of the wonderful attributes of the new site,” said Rabbi Efraim Eisen of Temple Israel. Those attributes include a way for users to listen to the weekly Torah portion n trope and all n candlelighting times, and some samples of Rabbi Eisen’s music cds that people can download. The temple also is set to have a video link to a recently videotaped Monday morning bar mitzvah held at the temple. Rabbi Eisen is also looking forward to being able to update members on time changes or cancellations right on the website. ShofarSites is now working on the website of Congregation Adath Israel in Middletown, Conn. “We had a site that was very rudimentary that was developed two or three years ago, but it wasn’t very interesting and there weren’t any reasons for people to go onto the site,” said Adath Israel Vice President Ron Rubel. “We wanted to have a site that was more dynamic, that would be up-to-date with calendar events that are not two years old. The old site had no real way of keeping things updated, particularly in the calendar.” Rubel was considering using an Israeli firm to help redo the website, but that firm would not give him a prototype of what the new website would look like n a philosophy that did not sit well with Rubel. A member of Adath Israel learned about ShofarSites and Rubel looked up Temple Israel’s new site. “I said, ‘Now I have my new prototype.’” Schanfeld began working on a new website for the Middletown synagogue and it should be up and running by the end of August. Schanfeld explained that websites can be useful tools for synagogues. “A lot of synagogues would like to attract younger people. The younger generation uses computers, so they look for information there and that is how they communicate with others,” said Schanfeld, who added that updated synagogue websites can include youth and teen pages with links to sites like MySpace or other age-appropriate links. Attractive websites can also attract people moving into an area who are looking to join a synagogue, she added. “If you use it right, there are a lot of opportunities to let people know what is out there,” she said. For more information about ShofarSites, visit www.ShofarSites.com . |
Contact Us
1-413-425-1499
1-866-513-2605
E-mail Us