What is Schoenstatt Link?
by jeff Posted 5 years ago
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After almost 3 years, we're proud to announce the formal launch of Schoenstatt Link. For a while several parts have been functional, but I believe we've gotten the point where it can grow on its own.
What is Schoenstatt Link?
Schoenstatt Link is an attempt to create a complete reference on Fr. Kentenich bibliography, shrines around the world and officially released Fr. Kentenich texts. It's collaborative structure invites all to assist in filling in missing information and works to provide a space to encourage communication within the Schoenstatt Movement.
Who's behind Schoenstatt Link?
The site started at the request of the General Presidium to create a simple contacts database for internal use. This later became a platform for other projects that could be of service to the Schoenstatt Community. The creator and principal maintainer is Jeff Roedel (the author of this blog post), a seminarian belonging to the Schoenstatt Fathers' community, though this was only be possible through the help of many other members of our Schoenstatt Family. While this began as an initiative from within the Schoenstatt Fathers' community, I hope that other communities and lay persons can take greater leadership. Currently, I'm in my last year of formation and after ordination (God-willing!), I won't have much time to dedicate to the programming. Please let me know if anyone knows any Catholic programmers!
Project status and next steps
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Shrines Coming along nicely. On the top of the to-do list is to allow for "opening hours" information, and mass times. Need to cleanup the world-wide shrine list. Not sure about how to show the wayside shrines.
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Literature index The literature index has come a long way in the last few months with lots of book covers, and updates. The most important step in the near future is to import the catalog of the Schoenstatt Research library in the Vaterhaus in Schoenstatt which can be considered one of the good resources on Schoenstatt books. Next we need to make per-author pages and organize the tags to describe the book content. It would be great to be able to include other Schoenstatt library catalogs.
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Libraries This will receive some attention this month as we need to do some work on the Colegio Mayor (the Schoenstatt Fathers' seminary in Santiago, Chile) library. Working on linking up the Schoenstatt Link library system with a complementary Google Sheet system which makes it easier to process larger volumes of book updates.
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Texts Working on converting some Fr. Kentenich texts to Markdown to publish them directly on the site.
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Movement Not much work planned for the time being. Waiting to talk with the General Presidium to look at how to continue.
Shrine API (Application Programming Interface, programmer talk)
There's a group of guys from Brasil wanting to put together an Android app for cell phones to help facilitate pilgrimages. For this, we made a new API for anyone looking to do similar projects. Check it out!
Pre-launch to-do list
- Privacy policy (Done!)
- Merge libraries into Literature page
- Allow for commenting on shrines
- Create a password recovery function
- Allow registered users to update shrine info
- Allow users to "star" favorite or visited shrines
