Hello from Florida

[hmsngr]

Hi,

I am new to this forum and would like introduce myself. I am the Minister of Music at College Park Baptist Church in Orlando, Florida. I have been responsible for driving the makeover of our website. The pastor's secretary is our webmaster and we have several volunteer contributors to the site. I would welcome any constructive suggestions.

www.mycpbc.org (http://www.mycpbc.org)

Thank you!
hmsngr

[David Gillaspey]

Hi Susan,

Thanks for joining the forum and introducing yourself.

I'm off to work now, but I'd be happy to comment on your church's website after I get home tonight.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites
(and forum administrator)

[flutem3]

Hi, Susan,

Welcome to our happy throng. I have the bug, but I will take a look at your website later. I am not a whiz...I know what I like or not, but I have no training in designing websites. I am learning by doing.

You will find some people here who have wonderful talent and are willing to share it.

Glad you joined.

Carol

[David Gillaspey]

Sorry Susan,

I got home from work late tonight. I'll try again tomorrow night (Thursday night) to check out your church's website and make comments.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

[Faithhb_lutheran]

Welcome to the forum.

Your site looks great! All the information was easy to find and the design is pleasing.

[David Gillaspey]

Hi Susan,

(You'll see that I'm tough when reviewing websites.)

Well, first, I see that your website is based on a web Content Management System, E-zekiel. Thus I don't know if the design is a custom one created for your church by the company that sells the CMS, a stock design (template) that might be seen on many other client websites, or a design that someone from your church created. Until I know the answer to this, I'll have to limit my comments.

(Note that I support the use of CMS solutions. I just normally reserve my comments for websites that churches have created themselves.)

I will make a few comments here, however, nonetheless.

Looking at the source code for the home page:

1. The home page (and presumably the whole site) has no keyword or description meta tags. That's important for search engine optimization. Not as important as it used to be, but still important.

2. I see a few uses of the ALT tag in the source code, but it doesn't appear that there are any ALT tags for the numerous photos on the home page. ALT tags are important to provide accessibility because that's what the screen readers used by blind people read out loud, thus helping blind people to browse websites.

3. I see a lot of use of this: <font color="#000080" size="2">

and

<font face="Tahoma" size="1">

etc. This is the old way of specifying font characteristics. Use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) instead to specify font, font weight, font color, etc.

Now onto design of the home page:

4. The banner takes up two fifths of the site. That's way too deep. The dimension of the computer monitor is extremely valuable real estate. Use it wisely. Don't waste it by using an overly deep banner. Instead, put some real content on the home page -- some text. As it is, a visitor has to click a link to learn anything about your church. That shouldn't be the case. A visitor should be able to learn the basics about your church from the home page. Because the next mouse click they make might not be to go deeper into your site, but to go somewhere else.

5. On the plus side, you've got the church address, phone, and worship times on the home page, at the bottom. It's amazing how many church websites leave this vital information off the home page.

6. The drop down links turn from yellow to blue on mouse over. Blue against red is a poor combination. It's very difficult for people with certain kinds of color blindness to distinguish between red and blue.

7. The pictures at the bottom of the Student section of the site (from photobucket) are obviously stretched or compressed. That doesn't look good and should be avoided. While I encourage the use of the photos, don?t make the visitor keep linking deeper and deeper into the site to learn what the Student ministry is about. Add some text. (Once again, no ALT text for all those photos in the source code. There should be.)

8. Those Preschool/Children/Students/Adults photos at the bottom of the home page aren't clickable. They should be. They're big, inviting targets for my mouse. No such luck! I have to click on the tiny little area occupied by the words under the photos. I'd rather aim for much larger photos.

9. I clicked on the Adult ministry link and all I see is a MARRIAGE event. Include content for the many adults who aren't married (never married, single parents, divorced, and widows/widowers). The page about the events for married people includes an animated gif. In general, you can just stop using animated gifs on websites. They're an old, outdated technique.

10. Your How to Find us map is probably too much of a close-up. If I was from out of town, I wouldn't have a clue even what side of the city your church is located on. Back up a little so the visitor at least knows whether you're on the north, east, south, or west side of the city.

OK, I?m going to stop there. Hope these comments are helpful to you.

The design, in general, looks very nice (except for the too-deep banner), but, as pointed out above, I can't tell whether the design is original or not.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites




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[hmsngr]

Thank you, David, for your valuable input. I will share your observations and comments with our webmaster.

While Ezekiel powers our webite, a local PR company designed the templates. All content is provided by volunteer contributors.

Again, thank you! I'm glad I discovered this wonderful website and forum!

Susan

[David Gillaspey]

You're welcome. Thanks for joining.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

[StubbyD]

Hi and welcome Susan.

I would concur with David's insights but would also add one extra. When I go to any of the secondary pages the icons at bottom left suddenly move to bottom middle and obscure the address.

Not a huge thing to rectify I guess nor is it a major problem but nice to know about. And I've tried this in several different browsers so it isn't a browser fault.

[JackWolfgang]

Greetings from North Florida!

I tend to agree with what David said, but I would add one more:

I would move the Login/Register page to the bottom of the site (or "below the fold" as some call it when they borrow the newspaper term) if possible.