Staten Island parishes: come into the 21st century...

ParishSoft, a website which sells software packages for liturgical churches (Catholic, Orthodox and Episcopal), is having a conference on Staten Island on June 9th. I'm not sure if they do websites, but I would assume that's part of the package. So many Staten Island parishes are in dire need of something like this. Take a look at some of the parish links on the right hand side of the page here. A few parish websites are very good. They are attractive, easy to navigate, and "sell" their parish very well. One notable examples is St. Clare's. Most of the others are ugly as sin, antiquated, rarely updated, bizarrely designed, and confusing. They look like they were designed around 1997, the Stone Age of the Internet. And even worse are the parishes that don't even have websites. Parishesonline.com, a parishsoft product, lists the basic info (address and Mass times) for all U.S. parishes, so at least there is that bare-bones web presence for derelict parishes. In this day and age, a public organization seems unprofessional and disreputable without a professional web presence. The good news is that I don't think your average parish needs to spend a lot of money with this company in order to put up a web site. If you have any parishioners under 30, they should be able to put up a website with ease and at minimal cost. (Doteasy.com provides free web hosting. Domain name registration costs about $15, sometimes cheaper). If you don't have any parishioners under 30, or think that you don't need to communicate with the world through modern forms of communication, then maybe your perspective is in need of updating and your priorities need to be reviewed.