The LCH website had its last refresh in 2013, so it’s time for some behind-the-scenes maintenance and and a tune up. That maintenance, which will begin on June 11 (the Kamehameha Day holiday, when our webmaster has the day off), gives us the opportunity to bring the software behind our pages up to current standards. However, to make that happen, we will need to switch templates, and that will change the look of the website and disrupt the formatting of our pages for a period of time. Details about the the reasons for this and what will happen will follow for those interested. For everyone else, be assured that the content and structure will not change, but formatting will be disrupted at times. Formatting issues will be particularly noticeable for “fancy” pages like the list of readings, hymns, and special music. We thank you for your patience and apologize for any inconvenience.

Background—The software behind the LCH website

The LCH website runs on a platform called WordPress that allows people to create web pages without needing to do coding. In the old days, people would write code in a markup language called HTML. This required them to “markup” the different parts of their pages with “tags” (e.g., <h1>...</h1> around the first-level headline, <p>...</p> around a paragraph, etc.), and then a viewer’s browser would ”render” the page in accordance with a “stylesheet” the coder created to specify what each part should look like. As websites became more common, people wanted to be able to create them without having to learn code, and so ”open source” software like WordPress was developed to make that possible. WordPress runs on top of software called PHP, another open source program, that generates dynamic web pages that change depending on conditions specified by the person creating the page. Both of these programs are maintained by communities of individuals and available freely across the web. As with all programs, they are continually revised and updated to deliver better service and remain secure.

Background—Special considerations for the LCH website

Each WordPress website uses a “template” that specifies what individual pages will look like, and there are hundreds of templates available. Back in 2013, when LCH switched from hand-coded pages to WordPress, the web developer selected a template, customized it with the LCH logo, and copied over the content of the main pages from the old website or with new content. We then created the rest of the pages on our site in WordPress. However, because many of our pages use special formatting (particularly content displayed in tables—things like the music list mentioned above or the listing of worship participants or the calendar in the HeartBeat, to name a few), we had to add a lot of extra code to the stylesheet in our template. All this special formatting allows us to display information attractively, but once we start the maintenance process, the special formatting will disappear and formatting issues will pop up.

The maintenance process

We anticipate the following steps:

1. Switch our website to a different template so that our current template can be updated. This will completely change the look of our website and introduce a host of formatting issues. We hope to copy over the parts of the stylesheet and fix most of the formatting issues fairly quickly. However, you should be prepared for new colors, some strange formatting, etc. The new template will remain in place until step 2 has been completed. Because this work needs to be done in webmaster’s free time, the alternative template may be in place for a couple of weeks.
2. Install newer versions of PHP, WordPress, and our current template. Depending on a number of factors, this could take several days.
3. Switch back to the updated version of our current template. This will require customization of the template and its stylesheet, so you should be prepared for an unfamiliar look and strange formatting for several days while that work is done.

When all this has been completed, the familiar look and feel of our website should be restored, but it will be running on top of up-to-date software.