Take a Look, Please.

[flutem3]

Hi, everyone,

I am fiddling around with designs for our index page. I would like to know what you think of this kind of thing. I would also like to know if anyone can tell how fast it loads on dial-up. Somebody on this forum told me that our website looks like it is for "old people." I do not know how this person was defining "old," but I imagine my age will do.

Please take a look at the following and let me have it gently: :D

http://www.wabashfirstumc.org/untitled5.html

Thanks a lot!!

Carol

PS I already see a couple of things which need to be changed, but I am going to leave it this way until you can see it.

[JackWolfgang]

Hi, everyone,

I am fiddling around with designs for our index page. I would like to know what you think of this kind of thing. I would also like to know if anyone can tell how fast it loads on dial-up. Somebody on this forum told me that our website looks like it is for "old people." I do not know how this person was defining "old," but I imagine my age will do.

Please take a look at the following and let me have it gently: :D

http://www.wabashfirstumc.org/untitled5.html

Thanks a lot!!

Carol

PS I already see a couple of things which need to be changed, but I am going to leave it this way until you can see it.

It looks like a good start.

I see several items, but I want to wait until you fix them to see if they were the same things you saw.

However, the one thing I am going to say is check your HTML Validation (http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wabashfirstumc.org%2Funtitled5.html) and your CSS Validation (http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?profile=css2&warning=2&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wabashfirstumc.org%2Funtitled5.html). Most of the problems with the HTML validation are caused by unencoded ampersands (this character: & ), and if they are in JavaScript (they appeared to be to me), they can be enclosed as CDATA. To see how to do this, check out the Wikipedia article on CDATA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDATA).

Other than that, I have a question and a suggestion. Question: Is the Greg Berg Quartet a ministry of your church? Suggestion: move the trademark text about the United Methodist logo to a legalese/copyright page (I was looking for a good example of this, but didn't. If someone knows of one, feel free to post it).

One last thing, set the title for the page. That's also an important accessibility function, but it's also important for people who run tabbed browsers (like me!) so that they are reminded of what's open in what window or tab.

[flutem3]

Jack wrote:

"Other than that, I have a question and a suggestion. Question: Is the Greg Berg Quartet a ministry of your church? Suggestion: move the trademark text about the United Methodist logo to a legalese/copyright page (I was looking for a good example of this, but didn't. If someone knows of one, feel free to post it)."

Hey, Jack,

I doubt that it will validate. I use Homestead. The George Berg Quartet is a ministry of our church. George Berg was my dad. He formed the quartet many years ago, and in jest the guys called it the George Berg Quartet. When Dad died, they gave the quartet the name in honor of him. They are very good and sing in churches all over this area and as far as 100 miles away. We have another quartet which does the same thing.

That is not the picture I am going to use. But it is the size of picture I am going to use. I decided that some people make the name of the church

HUGE and the pictures of people are tiny in comparison. The church is composed of the people...not the building or the words.

I do not know if I am going to use this kind of index page. I wanted to try something very different for me to do. Mondrian came to mind.

Regarding having the copyright information on the page: That is where it is supposed to be according to GBGM (General Board of Global Ministries). It is not supposed to be on a separate page.

One thing I can't figure out is how to get it to look okay both in IE and Foxfire. There is a miserable difference. I don't know if I can fix it.

Thanks for your time and ideas.

Carol

[JackWolfgang]

I doubt that it will validate. I use Homestead. The George Berg Quartet is a ministry of our church. George Berg was my dad. He formed the quartet many years ago, and in jest the guys called it the George Berg Quartet. When Dad died, they gave the quartet the name in honor of him. They are very good and sing in churches all over this area and as far as 100 miles away. We have another quartet which does the same thing.

Validation will work if you have the ability in Homestead to edit the source code. If not, then it will be difficult.

If the quartet is a ministry of your church, then leave it. It's fine. I was thinking that they were special musicians who came in for an event, in which case, I would have said replace it with some regular attenders.

That is not the picture I am going to use. But it is the size of picture I am going to use. I decided that some people make the name of the church

HUGE and the pictures of people are tiny in comparison. The church is composed of the people...not the building or the words.

While I agree that the church is people, not buildings; you have to give the people visiting your site an idea of what it's about, and the best way to do that is with a title.

I do not know if I am going to use this kind of index page. I wanted to try something very different for me to do. Mondrian came to mind.

I like it, it's very nice.

Regarding having the copyright information on the page: That is where it is supposed to be according to GBGM (General Board of Global Ministries). It is not supposed to be on a separate page.

In David's three examples of churches using their denomonational logo, they are all United Methodist (probably because they have the most recognizable logo of churches. None of them have that text on the page with the logo. Sometimes, rules need to be broken.

One thing I can't figure out is how to get it to look okay both in IE and Foxfire. There is a miserable difference. I don't know if I can fix it.

I do not see a bad difference using Firefox 1.5.3 and Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP. The middle box with scripture drops a little low on Firefox, but I think it looks OK.

Thanks for your time and ideas.

You're quite welcome.