Branches On Line Our newsletter is available online in a password-protected directory or via e-mail. To subscribe, contact the church office.
Co-Ministers' columns: The PBUUC Newsletter, Branches, includes columns written by our Co-Ministers. The most recent of these columns can be found by clicking on this link.
Other columns may appear here someday
Back to top
Keeping up with things: There are four pages which provide frequently updated information. Most of this information can also be accessed from the front page. They are:
In addition to these frequently changed pieces of information, the PBUUC Bulletin Board links to online copies of calendars or brochures that describe our ministry and provide a catalog of upcoming events in an area such as Religous Exploration or Social Action. Current information includes:
Navigating by Button: On the left side of the front page you will see three groups of buttons. The top group is titled "PB-InfoCenter", which links to several pages presenting general information about Paint Branch (including this one!) and a link to the page that welcomes newcomers to our community. The middle group, titled "Our Ministries", links to information about the main elements of our church's program and community. The bottom group, titled "Inside Paint Branch", contains more information on how the church operates for members and friends who have found their place in the community and are providing their time, talent and treasure to nurture it.
Getting announcements onto the site: [will add later] breaking news, Paint Branch Events, related events, notices
What's new on this site? Follow this link to see! We don't keep track of every time we add a new event to the schedule, but we track significant changes from one (roughly monthly) backup to the next.
Web Archive: an archive of PBUUC news and events. They include the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Site Directory: Lays out the organization of this site based on its directory structure, making a huge number of links available on one page for those who are already expert navigators of this site.
The Paint Branch Web site provides a message board that is found at http://www.pbuuc.org/forum; which provides the electronic equivalent of both hallway bulletin boards and of Speaker's Corner at Hyde Park. Posting is strictly restricted to registered members, in order to prevent unwanted postings from purveyors of pornography, online casinos, or Saddam's gold.
The Bulletin Board section contains four forums, one of which is restricted to a small group of users (nominally the Church Administrator, co-ministers, and Board President) empowered to post official announcements, two of which are available to all users. These forums are:
All of these forums are visible to the entire Internet; they are intended to promote our community and give Paint Branchers areas where they can participate in said promotion. Each of them has a post at the top of the forum expanding on its intended use.
The Say Anything section contains two forums, one of which is visible to all the Net, one of which is hidden. They are named Across the UUniverse and Church Business, respectively. Both of them are intended to be freewheeling in nature, the latter is reserved for inside baseball that would bore the world, or otherwise should not be shared outside the Paint Branch community. But in either case, "Say Anything" means you can say, well, anything. The only rule is that this board is associated with a Unitarian Universalist church and that posters should act accordingly. Well, that's assuming UUs want to be ethical about fair use aspects of copyright law and will respect the worth and dignity of other posters by refraining from stalking and harassment, but we think that is a reasonable assumption about our way of life!
If you are interested in being able to post as well as read, the registration link is at the upper right of the page. The message board administrator must activate your user account; it is how we prevent unwanted postings from purveyors of pornography, online casinos, or Saddam's gold. This activation will usually be within a day. At this point you will be able to post.
The steps for registering are as follows:
In addition to the Paint Branch Message Board, we have the Paint Branch Blog and its associated Message Board . As the blog's slogan indicates, this blog and message board is "Totally Unofficial, Sometimes Informative, Always Opinionated". By this we mean
The best thing you can do is just poke around, and contact Ken or John if you run into any problems.
There is some thought of the "Say Anything" area on the church web site ultimately merging with the unofficial message board. The "say anything" intent is the same in both places, the question is whether the existing blog community decides to move or not.
We are still evolving official policies for these pages, but unofficially what happens is that the upcoming services and events are generally taken from orders of service and newsletter information submitted by the ministers, as well as from things like the Adult RE brochures. To assure an event gets on the schedule, e-mail the webmaster at mstark"ATSIGN"pbuuc.org.
Announcements are used for three main purposes:
The good news on web-based announcements is that while we try to have short announcements appear on the pages mentioned above, we allow, nay encourage, links to more detailed information. The short text should follow the Order of Service guidance of 100 words or less. the further information can be either HTML web page(s), or PDF files that are printable version of flyers handed out in church. [Link to archive for examples]. If you want more extensive promotional material to be put on these pages, contact the webmaster as described above.
Search WWW Search www.pbuuc.org