Online Membership Directories

It all boils down to three questions 1. How do we handle protecting the data? Who would get a password to view the directory and do we change the password frequently?2. How would we keep marketers from sending mail or e-mail to everyone in the church with the on-line directory as the source of the name and address data.3. Would the people in the church want this information (and family pictures in our case) on the web?

Online Conversation

We have an on-line directory that is in a password protected folder for our leadership team to access. The directory serves the purpose of being able to get in contact with our members for ministry purposes. Basically, in the office we have a program called Shelby, which I'm sure you've heard of. Each week we have it run a report that generates a database with comma separated values (CSV) we then upload that file to the web. On the web we have a small utility that reads that file and puts it into a legible format. That way you can search the entries, etc. Note well: even though a directory is password protected, it is not necessarily secure. While nothing is totally secure, I'd recommend placing your main directory file in a non-web directory, that is to say some place that your web server can access but cannot be accessed through the web. This is an added security measure that helps protect your database.