The Great Church Websites blog

On this page, I record my observations as I research church websites, as well as offer general comments. Please let me know about special features on your website that you feel are unusual or specially well-done. These must be features on a website that you've developed yourself.

Comments are moderated, to stop spam.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Five new churches added to directory

On Thursday, 25 October 2007, I added the following churches to The International Directory of Church Website Design (replacing an equal number of outdated sites).

Tenth Avenue Church, Vancouver, British Columbia
Crosswinds Assembly of God, Sparks, Nevada
Lake Center Bible Church, Portage, Michigan
The Meeting Place, Columbia, South Carolina
Grosse Pointe United Methodist, Grosse Pointe, Michigan

To see all of the 145+ church websites that I've added recently, click this link.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

posted by David Gillaspey @ 12:56 PM 0 comments links to this post

A cell phone / PDA option

The home page of Greater Grace Temple of Taylor, Michigan, offers three download options. That in itself is good. It's the middle one I want to mention. This is the first church website I've seen that explicitly provides an option to view a version of the site designed for cell phones & PDAs.

(The other two options are: HTML version for 56K, and Flash for broadband.)

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey

posted by David Gillaspey @ 9:36 AM 0 comments links to this post

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Two versions of a home page

Occasionally I come across a church website that includes several links under a "Home" dropdown menu. Usually, of course, a Home link is not a dropdown menu and is just a single link to the church's (or any organization's) home page.

The Home link of Tenth Avenue Church of Vancouver, British Columbia, is a dropdown menu with two links: one to a home page for visitors and one to a home page for members. The layouts of the two are much different. The content is much different, too. Notably, the services times are shown on the home page for visitors, and not much else. The home page for members is comprised of a number of announcements and updates about ministries. No service times are listed, because they don't need to be.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey

posted by David Gillaspey @ 9:45 AM 0 comments links to this post

Friday, October 19, 2007

Don't use IX Hosting

I've used IX Web Hosting since 1 January 2007. Frequently I've been disappointed with their service. Here are the problems I've experienced:

1) I've been waiting for almost five days now to get an email problem resolved (support ticket #556749). Trying to get honest answers out of the tech support staff about this issue has been difficult. I even faxed a letter of complaint to the company's manager of tech support, Drew Sanford (that's supposedly his name; it's always possible I was given a false name). It hasn't helped.

2) Several times a month throughout the summer, when I tried to upload a small jpg to my site, my FTP client would inform me there was no room left on the server. My hosting plans includes 3G of server space; I've used 153M. Thus it seems absurd to get an error message about no space left on the server. The problem is that the company has grown so fast that they couldn't get a new data center online in time. Thus, they've kept adding more and more customers to the same servers. Clients think they have 3G of hard drive space (or whatever their plan guaranteed). In fact, the company's servers are filled to almost overflowing. Seems like a case of false advertising to me.

3) Average wait time for tech support by phone during the day (in the U.S. time zones) is 18 callers. (That is, you are 18th in line to talk to a rep.)

4) So then, you might be tempted to use their "24/7" support ticket system. Don't. It's their lowest priority of all. (I learned this from a phone tech support person.) And be sure not to add a comment later to your own ticket. That will put you back at the bottom of the queue, as I learned the hard way.

5) So, you might be tempted to turn to their 24/7 online chat help. Don't, except for lower priority matters. The online chat just connects you with an offshore call center. The folks try hard to help, but it's apparent from the wait times that they don't get any better access to IX's support staff than you or me. But at least with online chat, you don't use up your phone minutes.

6) Their shared mySQL server frequently crashes (due to activity on some other customer's sites).

So, I want to switch hosters next week. Can anyone suggest a good, reliable hoster with good tech support?

Sincerely (but unhappily),

David Gillaspey

posted by David Gillaspey @ 8:09 AM 2 comments links to this post

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Six new church websites added to directory

On Thursday, 6 September 2007, I added the following churches to The International Directory of Church Website Design (replacing an equal number of outdated sites).

Green Valley Christian Center, Henderson, Nevada
Grace Community Grace, Chelmsford, Massachusetts
Lake Shore Church, St. Clair Shores, Michigan
Bethesda Romanian Pentecostal Church, Troy, Michigan
The Parish Church of St Andrew's, Medstead, Hampshire, England
Memorial Church of Christ, Houston, Texas

To see all of the 140+ church websites that I've added recently, click this link.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

posted by David Gillaspey @ 5:56 PM 0 comments links to this post

Monday, July 30, 2007

Five new churches added to directory

On Monday, 30 July 2007, I added the following churches to The International Directory of Church Website Design (replacing an equal number of outdated sites).

Four Corners Community Church, West Chester, Ohio
Rolling Hills Community Church, Franklin, Tennessee
Harvest Christian Fellowship, Riverside, California
Mt Calvary Lutheran Church, Acton, Massachusetts
Vineyard Christian Fellowship of Greater Boston, Cambridge, Massachusetts

To see all of the 135+ church websites that I've added recently, click this link.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

posted by David Gillaspey @ 12:26 PM 0 comments links to this post

Friday, July 27, 2007

A good reason to use a splash screen

Splash screens or intro pages have fallen out of style with web designers. Thus, it's number one on my list of top website tips (see link in banner above), in which I encourage webmasters to not use a splash screen.

However, the home page of Pleasant View Baptist Church of Port Deposit, Maryland, employs a splash screen (it's really more of an entry page) for a valid reason: to guide visitors to content suitable for visitors on the site, or members to content suitable for members.

The home page (the entry page) is small and loads quickly. No fancy, slow-loading Flash animations on this entry page.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey

posted by David Gillaspey @ 2:19 PM 0 comments links to this post

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Five new churches added to the Directory

On Tuesday, 17 July 2007, I added the following churches to The International Directory of Church Website Design (replacing an equal number of outdated sites).

Church by the Glades, Coral Springs, Florida
Generation Church (youth ministry of The City Church), Kirkland, Washington
All Saints Church, Chevy Chase, Maryland
In Your Element (student ministry of Champion Forest Baptist Church), Houston, Texas
Bethlehem United Methodist Church, Thornton, Pennsylvania

To see all of the 130+ church websites that I've added recently, click this link.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

posted by David Gillaspey @ 3:16 PM 0 comments links to this post