beta.mormon.org

A large annoyance that currently exists on mormon.org, and now also in the beta.mormon.org has to do with "Worship With Us" page.

Particularly when you choose Australia as the country. Australia, as many commonwealth countries reuses city/town names in every state/metropolitan area. So if I choose "Fairfield" as my city, expecting to get a chapel in Fairfield(metropolitan area of Melbourne) in the State of Victoria, I don't. I get Fairfield(Sydney), New South Wales.

So my recommendation is this, add a state drop down for Australia.

Zevlag wrote:A large annoyance that currently exists on mormon.org, and now also in the beta.mormon.org has to do with "Worship With Us" page.

Particularly when you choose Australia as the country. Australia, as many commonwealth countries reuses city/town names in every state/metropolitan area. So if I choose "Fairfield" as my city, expecting to get a chapel in Fairfield(metropolitan area of Melbourne) in the State of Victoria, I don't. I get Fairfield(Sydney), New South Wales.

So my recommendation is this, add a state drop down for Australia.

I'll pass your feedback along to the folks who maintain the web site.

Tom

It would be very helpful to have a search by Tongan, Spanish, deaf (ASL or whatever is appropriate for a given country), YSA, SA, and English speaking that can be searched by county. As it stands, the search is city by city. For someone moving to the Los Angeles/Orange County area of Southern California, that search is approximately 150-180 incorporated and unincorporated cities. A person must also know the names of each of those cities. Another alternative would be to be able to pick a city, zip code, or area code and search that area. The zip code search could be modified to be a xx mile radius. Furthermore, being able to create a list of wards for a specific language or unique groups served would be very helpful.

Keep in mind that Mormon.org is to help non-members. This site should make it easy for them to locate useful information.

The problems you are mentioning are with the Meeting House Locator service we have. This product is scheduled to be rewritten to fix the bugs you are mentioning. I don't have a time frame on when this will be done.

Thanks for the feedback.

Tom

I love the new beta.mormon.org site! I usually write http://www.mormon.org on pass-along cards and tell people they can visit. When will the beta site go live?

tomw wrote:The problems you are mentioning are with the Meeting House Locator service we have. This product is scheduled to be rewritten to fix the bugs you are mentioning. I don't have a time frame on when this will be done.

Thanks for the feedback.

Tom

Wonderful! Please note that being able to search for English speaking wards in the US is just as needed as Spanish, Laotian, or any other language. As someone with 5 years of early morning seminary under my belt (nearly--come June!) and another 9 to go, living near a chapel is vital. Some buildings have no English speaking wards here, so one must plan carefully.

I agree that capability should be worked into the meeting house locater.

As for the US, you can use the search for a LUWS to help your search. Input "YSA", "Single Adult", or the language of interest to see units available.

RussellHltn wrote:I agree that capability should be worked into the meeting house locater.

As for the US, you can use the search for a LUWS to help your search. Input "YSA", "Single Adult", or the language of interest to see units available.

What does "use the search for a LUWS" mean?
Thank you.

scion wrote:What does "use the search for a LUWS" mean?
Thank you.

Search for the Local Unit Website. Go to https://secure.lds.org/units and click on search. Since these things are part of the unit's name, you should be able to find them there. As I said, this is mostly for the U.S. Not all units have a website, but most do.

RussellHltn wrote:I agree that capability should be worked into the meeting house locater.

As for the US, you can use the search for a LUWS to help your search. Input "YSA", "Single Adult", or the language of interest to see units available.

and a subsequent quote:
Search for the Local Unit Website. Go to https://secure.lds.org/units and click on search. Since these things are part of the unit's name, you should be able to find them there. As I said, this is mostly for the U.S. Not all units have a website, but most do.


Thank ou for the follow-up explanations. When I went directly to the local unit website at the address above, I did not see a search function. Upon login, I was immediately sent to my ward website. (Nice touch, BTW. It was irritating to have to fumble through multiple screens each time I wanted to see if anything made it to the calendar yet.) However, that site doesn't have a search function either. When I got out of my ward website, I was back at LDS.org, which does not search on language or other groups. A city-by-city or zipcode-by-zipcode search seems to be required.

When I go to https://secure.lds.org/units, just above the User Name, is a link "Search for a stake or ward Web site".

If I'm logged into my ward's website, on the left side, near the bottom is a link "Stake and Ward Web Sites"

Either one will work for the search I'm talking about.

RussellHltn wrote:When I go to https://secure.lds.org/units, just above the User Name, is a link "Search for a stake or ward Web site".

If I'm logged into my ward's website, on the left side, near the bottom is a link "Stake and Ward Web Sites"

Either one will work for the search I'm talking about.

Ah ha! Thank you! I did not realize that "Search for a stake or ward Web site" was a link. Just above that, the page instructs registered users to enter their name and password, so I did. Therefore, I was missing this search option. The results were for US Spanish, deaf, Cambodian, YSA, etc. units. Thanks for the work around info. I'd still like to be able to search by English in my area, though.

I love the idea of quick digestable high-quality videos on Mormon.org.

One challenge I have is the choice of the first video... The woman's testimony is sincere... but it goes by so quickly I'm left with one thing in my mind: "Do Mormons believe that God is a ball of light or did she refute that?"

I'm thinking that the videos are in general too short. I think a 50 second rule could be good. Anything less than 20 is too short in my mind.

Great work though guys!

Tomw

This is the feedback I got from a non-member friend about beta.mormon.org. I tried submitting this via the site feedback page but it will not take this much text. Can you see that the right folks get this valuable feedback?

---
From: Devin Bunch
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 10:34 AM
To: Enrique Romero
Subject: Beta.Mormom site

Hey Enrique,

Checked out the site and here are a few comments I have.

It felt a little detached. The purpose of the site was not clear to me.
The focus was on the images of the people who are in my opinion presented to large and out of scale with the rest of the home page.
I think there should be some sort of welcoming on the home page or a separate welcome page all together.

The video’s were a little out of context for me. Are they just there to reiterate the questions? At times it is not clear what they are talking in relationship to. So I watch a video, then what? The video doesn’t make me want to dig deeper into the subject matter. Maybe because it is too vague or does not refer to how the truth is restored. The people have good presentation but doesn’t give me enough.
Why isn’t there the option to play all?

The text and layout are a little too business like for me. It is impersonal and uninviting.
It is laid out very simply and clear however.

Basic Beliefs.
It is a little unclear if these are just statements or are what the Mormon church believes and wants to share. It is not well defined as to what the source or purpose of “The Restoration of the Truth” is. At least for me this isn’t direct enough. Perhaps over simplified or not presented as directly related to the teachings of the LDS church.

I like the “Worship With Us” information. Don’t think the links are necessary to the left on these pages.

Ask A Question.
I am not sure if it is my system or network but I couldn’t get anything to happen when clicking on ?Have missionaries contact me”, Chat live or doing a search.
It doesn’t say if the chat live is seven days a week or not.
What type of search is this? Is it to type in a question or key word? Can’t get any response regardless of what I put in the blank. This may be my system but can’t tell.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Devin

enriquer wrote:Tomw

This is the feedback I got from a non-member friend about beta.mormon.org. I tried submitting this via the site feedback page but it will not take this much text. Can you see that the right folks get this valuable feedback?

I'll see that the feedback is properly sent.

Tom

I tried to send the below message through the feedback link on beta.mormon.org. After pressing submit, I'm just getting a blank page. I don't know if the feedback system is working, so I'm posting the content here. Hopefully, this is okay.

First of all, I love the face-to-face interaction available on this web site. The large images and videos of *people* helps me connect a lot more with the message. One thing, though: at the end of one of the videos I saw some biographical information about the brother who had shared his testimony. I appreciate this assurance that these people are telling their own stories and aren't just actors presenting aggregated experiences as I understand has been done in prior Church videos. Is there any way we can get that biographical information on the videos on the front page as well--letting viewers know these are real people with real stories. I think this especially important given people's natural distrust of information presented online.

Aaron wrote:I tried to send the below message through the feedback link on beta.mormon.org. After pressing submit, I'm just getting a blank page. I don't know if the feedback system is working, so I'm posting the content here. Hopefully, this is okay.

I'll forward along in the event that there is a bug.

Tom