THE URANTIA BOOK FELLOWSHIP
ADMINISTRATION WEBSITE

As faith-enlightened and spirit-liberated sons of the kingdom of heaven, you face a double responsibility ofduty to man and duty to God while you voluntarily assume a third and sacred obligation: service to the brotherhood of God-knowing believers. [178:1.5]

Website Content Committee Report, January 2006

Although we have found that the website succeeds well fulfilling the webmaster's
stated purpose of providing an archive for research and a resource for study
groups, we believe that as an attractor for new readers, and people discovering
the website (and thus perhaps the Urantia Book (UB)) for the first time, there
are many improvements to the site that could be made. When a new reader is
making their first entry onto the site we recommend following a guideline that
we not require only immediate deep thinking, but that we also present an
encounter with evocative images, quotes that show the originality of UB
teachings, and "sound bites," kernels of spiritual truth.

We have so far summarized our findings in five general recommendations:

1. The two existing sites ubfellowship.com and urantiabook.org and should be
combined into 1.
2. There should be links designed to accommodate the differing needs of
existing UB students and new readers.
3. Add visual material to balance out the text.
4. Develop diversity and a global perspective in text.
5. Establish connections to a broad range of religions instead of the current
main
focus on Christianity.

As we began to suggest a redesign of the information hierarchy we realized that
before the committee was formed, no user data, surveys, or feasibility studies
had been gathered. This forced us to rely on hearsay, friend's reactions and our
own personal responses. Therefore, to make up for this lack of hard data, we
recommend that a survey be added to the website and also posted to the
Fellowship email list, SocAdmin to gather reader and nonreader reactions.
The committee agreed to design questions.

For the Fellowship survey:
What do you like the most about the site?
What do you like the least about the site?
There are two different sites: urantiabook.org and ubfellowship.com
What would you like to see added to the site?
What would you remove? Did you find anything distasteful or offensive?
Would you like you see more graphics? What kind of graphics?

Questions on the site might be different for new/first time readers, i.e.,
Is this your first visit to the Website? If you have visited before, what
brought you back?
Are you a reader of the Urantia Book?
Have you read the book?
If you are a first time user, how did you find us?

Even though we are offering this report as a general recommendation, I would
like to make a report of all the specific ideas for site redesign that have come
out of our meetings:

An FAQ link on the home page: Frequently asked questions or a link, "New Readers
Click Here" link, and a "simple tidbits" or "kernels of truth" quotes section.

Add a rotating series of images and/or photos of Urantia Book readers on the
home page with more of an emphasis on cultural/racial diversity.

Identify up front who people like Marion Rowley and Bill SadlerJr., to give new
readers/first-timers a more user-friendly entrance into "our world," by not
assuming that every website user will know who they are.

There's lots of room for photos and artwork on our website, places where there
is lots of verbiage and empty space on the right. Let's use it.

Restore the study group directory, which used to be on the right side, to the
home page.

Move Matthew Block's material, now located on "What is the UB" at bottom under
Research on Human Authors Contributing to the UB to a section not designed for
new users or readers, perhaps "Study Aids" or "Advanced Studies."

Feature Jesus' picture on the website. He is the great attractor, central to our
teachings. "If I be lifted up I will draw all men and women to me."

Key concepts of the UB needs to be edited, perhaps reduced down. A new reader
may not understand "The overcontrol of evolution" (a more intellectual
terminology) even though it is a paper in the UB. New site visitors would
perhaps find "Evolution is a technique of creation" or, "…is a cosmic
technique of growth" more meaningful and immediately attractive.

Respectfully submitted: Martha Babatola, Dave Holt, Stuart Kerr, Peter
Laurence, Bill Rocap, Cristina Seaborn, Paula Thompson,