Canadian Youth Worker
Canadian Youth Worker is a non-profit organization that exists to connect, equip, resource and equip youth workers across Canada.
The website allows Canadian Youth Worker to connect with youth workers and provide resources to them via the Ministry Exchange, Web Links, Podcast and Articles sections of the website. Website members can also add items to the above sections as well as have discussions in the forum. Furthermore website members each have their own profile page where they can add their twitter, linkedin, facebook, etc information.
Some of the website features:
- Podcast. Can be listed to online or subscribed to in iTunes.
- Permissions. Guests to the website (non-registered visitors) can view and download all information but cannot add anything until they register.
- Help Videos. Help videos were created to show people how to register, how to interact with the website and how to add content to the various sections of the website
- Forum. Allows guests to read them and registered members to add their own comments.
- Profile pages. Each member has their own profile page to which they can add their twitter and Facebook information and then their latest 10 status updates are shown on their profile page. They can also add a link to their LinkedIn or Myspace page. Each member also has a guestbook (like Facebook’s wall feature) and each profile page shows the member’s relationships (like Facebook’s friend feature) and if a member visits another member’s profile page they can see all relationships they have in common. Members can also add information to their profile page such as their picture, where they live, their profession, a little bit about themselves, their interests, etc. Profile pages also show the latest additions that the member has added to the website (such as latest posts to the forum, latest Ministry Exchange item uploaded, etc)
- Polls
- Users add content. Members of the site are allowed to add content to the various sections of the website and other members can provide comments.
- Dynamic logged in page. Once a member logs in the home page changes to show all the latest activity on the website such as latest forum posts, latest news, latest uploads, newest added upcoming events, etc. They can also see 7 randomly selected members that they might want to get to know a bit more about.
- Upcoming Events. The upcoming events section shows a map of Canada and how many upcoming events are in each region as well as a calendar showing when each event is taking place. The calendar can be customized to only show events occurring in a particular region. Clicking on an event in the calendar will present more detailed information about the event.
- Youth Ministry Feeds. The youth ministry feeds is an RSS feed aggregator that shows the latest youth ministry news and posts from various youth ministry websites. All items are categorized into sections so it is possible to only view items that are from Canada, for example.
- Product Reviews. This section of the website allows a member to review a product and for other members to comment on the review. The person creating the review enters the ISBN number of a product to automatically present the title and image of the product, a link to Amazon to purchase the product and other basic information about the product such as the number of pages, publisher, hard/soft cover, etc. Reviews are categorized into music, video, etc so that it is possible, for example, to only see all the reviews for videos.
- Newsletter. Members can choose to sign up to the newsletter when they register on the website and they can opt in/out on their profile page. When a new newsletter is added to the website an email is sent out to all the subscribers with a short snippet of the articles in the newsletter from which they can read the full article on the website. Newsletter subscribers can also unsubscribe from the newsletter by clicking on a link in the email. Newsletters can only be created by selected members.
The Canadian Youth Worker website uses Drupal as its content management system along with various custom PHP scripts to provide additional or custom functionality.
Canadian Youth Worker also runs an annual conference called the Manitoba Youth Ministry Conference (MYMC). The MYMC website allows people to register themselves, or their group and to pay for their registration using Paypal. Different prices and discounts are given based on time of registration and number of people attending in a group. There is also an password protected administrative section that allows for generating a list of all registered people, viewing registrations, printing of receipts and updating of registration status (for those registrations paid by cheque or registration cancellations).
The MYMC website uses custom PHP scripts and Paypal’s API.
