Finally, after two years of on-again off-again work, after lots of planning, changes, updates, calls and emails, we are finally launching hutterites.org! The purpose of Hutterites.org is to share our lifestyle with an interested audience. We realize that during our history and even today, Hutterites have often been misunderstood. And often people who don’t understand or who have no contact with Hutterites, form misconceptions and allow false impressions to shape their views. We hope to alleviate some of these misconceptions by presenting factual information and advocating for Hutterites on the web. Further we wish to provide a resource for various audiences to learn, to share and to gather info about Hutterites.
The first webpage devoted to the Hutterites was developed in 1996, sixteen years ago as a Brandon University optional course project. The site was hosted as a user-based website at www.mts.net/~deckercs. Shortly thereafter, by 1998, hutterianbrethren.com was born. By this time, I was teaching at Decker Colony School and together with my students we re-developed the website, and we ended up hosting it at dotcanada.com. Groups of students were responsible for writing different section of the website and different sections were completed as part of the requirements of the course. At the time we coded it using raw html. Yes, it was ugly!
Since then, the website has been updated various times and this, the 2012 version, is the latest and most comprehensive update ever. Phase 1 of the website is now complete and we went live on April 4, 2012.
James Waldner, a teacher, and web and logo designer from Wingham Colony in Manitoba, designed the look and feel of hutterites.org. He spent countless hours designing, tweaking, fixing, and polishing the overall layout and design. He continues to work with the hutterites.org team to further refine and develop the site. The Hardy Brothers (Dan and Gareth) of downwithdesign.com developed the site and made it live. I was responsible for the content, and migrated a lot of it from the old site and re-wrote many of the pieces with help from other, such as Kenny Wollman from Baker (MB), Linda Maendel from Elm River Colony (MB) and Jeremy Waldner from Newdale (SD). But I wish even more Hutterites would contribute to this project…
A lot of work went into the organization and selection of photos for the website and for the gallery. Lisa and Karis Waldner (Decker) spent hours collecting, organizing, selecting and publishing the photos and writing the captions to go along with them. The photographs themselves are the responsibility of several photographers, including Lisa Waldner (Decker), Lenita Waldner (Silverwinds), Kelly Hofer (Green Acres) and Adam and Karen Waldner (Newdale, SD).
Thank you to everyone who has contributed. And if you are a Hutterite and feel that you can contribute, drop us a line. We can always use help to keep this site going.
Our wish is that this website will continue to achieve our goals of explaining and sharing the Hutterite lifestyle and beliefs, help to dispel misconceptions and to provide a resource for various interested audiences. If you have questions or comments, please feel free to respond below. You might want to consider signing up for updates to the website by clicking on the “Subscribe” link in the footer below.
Thank you.
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