Request For Review

[Saintpaul]

Hey all,

I am the office manager at St. Paul Lutheran Church and was given the responsibility of renovating the church's website. I enjoy doing the webwork. Here is the info David asked for:

1) Provide the status of the current website or website to be, and your involvement with it. The website has been COMPLETELY redone. I don't even have the old site to show you anymore, but it was awful. We have had our current site (www.saintpauls.net (http://www.saintpauls.net)) live since about August. My husband had done most of the foundation and design of it all, but I have been the one to keep it running since then.

2) Read my list of website design tips:
I have followed the majority of the items in the list. I need to get an email to the webmaster on the "contact us" page, I think.

I liked the point about having more scripture on the site. It is the WORD OF GOD, living and active and it does not return void. I'll make sure to get more of it on the site.

I haven't included a box for emails. Not sure what I think about that.

Also not sure about the drop down menus. I have read a little bit about what everybody thinks about them, but am still a little bit confused about what else I could do.

3) Tell us about your general proficiency with ...

a) HTML -- I am moderately competent with HTML
b) CSS -- Understand it, but have a hard time with using it
c) Web standards -- Not sure...

4) What kind of software tools do you have with which to work, if any? I do all of my work through Dreamweaver, but I use strictly code, none of the design work.

Thanks for the insight. I look forward (and dread at the same time) to hearing what you guys will think.

Becky Stevenson

[David Gillaspey]

Hi Becky,

Thanks for your post.

I'll review your site in the next 24 to 48 hours. (A review takes me an hour or two to complete, so I have to fit it into my schedule.) Other members of the forum may very well post their comments before then, however.

[Saintpaul]

Thanks, David. Look forward to hear what you have to say. Just fyi, the school site that is linked to the church site needs a lot of work, and I know that. We're kind of in the middle of the politics to decide who should take care of it. We'll see. (The school site is similar to what the old church site looked like).

[David Gillaspey]

Hi Becky,

Here are my comments regarding your website. I viewed your site using Firefox on the Macintosh.

http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/stpaul1.jpg

1. (Above) I think your site (or home page, at least) has a good design. It's not a prize-winning design, but is OK for your purposes. I've seen a lot of really bad church website designs, so this is actually a compliment.

You wisely chose to group six individual photos (which rotate, or swap out, on mouse over — I haven't seen that before) in the center rather than gang them into one large image that would take longer to download.

Looking at the source code for a few pages, it appears that you've designed the site using only CSS and not tables code. Good for you!

Unfortunately, pages on the site tend to load slowly, even on my broadband connection.

Details ...


http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/stpaul7.jpg

1. The church name and logo are not clickable. Typically, the logo in a banner is linked to the home page.


http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/stpaul5.jpg

2. (Above) It appears, though I can't be sure, that each of these "tabs" at top left is a slightly different shade of green, progressively getting darker from left to right.

The problem is, a color and a slightly darker version of it are often used to display unvisited and visited links respectively. Thus, when I look at the tabs, especially the rightmost one, it appears like a visited tab to me.

Thus it seems to me the three tabs should be the same color, or wholly different colors.

Also, the light green background (seen at left above) is not very exciting. You might consider using a light texture background instead.


http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/stpaul2.jpg

3. (Above) In the bottom left corner, the faux "sticky" note is rather annoying to me. It's a popup window, after all — and people hate popup windows.

Also, it covers (that is, sits on top of) other elements.

Worse, the checkbox at bottom right of the faux sticky note does not work well. I started to write, "It doesn't work." But now I see that one has to aim to the very top right of the checkbox before the cursor becomes a hand and the checkbox becomes clickable. However, users will tend to aim for the middle of the checkbox, which appears to not be an active "hotspot," as one might expect. For that reason, I think users will be confused. In general, I think the faux sticky note is really not a good idea.

Also, as you can see, the church name in the footer runs across the photo. That may have been planned, but it looks like a mistake, and may very well be a mistake.


http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/stpaul4.jpg

4. (Above) The white type against the lime green background is not very readable, in my opinion. You might try using black type instead.


***** INSIDE PAGES *****


http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/stpaul6.jpg

5. This is picky, but I think 10 to 12 points of space between the left side of the search box and the left side of the page would look better.


http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/stpaul9.jpg

6. (Above) On the Ministries => Small Groups page, it seems to me that the orange buttons should be identified as linking to downloadable pdfs, rather than HTML pages.


http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/stpaul10.jpg

7. (Above) On all inside pages, it seems to me there should be more of a gutter or margin of white space on the left and right.


http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/stpaul11.jpg

7. (Above) That's a really nice looking calendar page. Information about each event appears in a popup window upon mouse over. Unlike the popup window on the home page, this is a very appropriate use of popups.

It's based on Easy PHP Calendar.

Looking at the source code, however, the page is missing the enclosing <HTML> and <HTML> tags. This needs to be corrected.

Those are my comments. Hope they are helpful to you.

[WebFishers]

Maybe the footer text (now in white) should be centered under the main body. I would get rid of the google search - if people wanna search in google, they will without a church site. ; )

I like the greens and think you did a good job on the design. It gives warm fuzzies.

The yellow thing at the left - eh - I would come up with something else as a button. It's the first thing my eye goes to.

the main logo appears like it's been scrunched. It's not very clear. I find this on all your main headers.

[Saintpaul]

Hey Guys, Sorry I didn't get back to you all sooner. I appreciate your help with the website.

1. The church name and logo are not clickable. Typically, the logo in a banner is linked to the home page.

I have made all of the headers "clickable" to go back to the home page. Thanks for that.

(Above) In the bottom left corner, the faux "sticky" note is rather annoying to me. It's a popup window, after all — and people hate popup windows.

I agree that the yellow sticky note is a bit annoying. We have changed it now, and just have a yellow square that is not a whole lot better. My question is, what do you do on a website to get people's attention for temporary things. I'm not sure what the best way to do that is. Suggestions?

Also, as you can see, the church name in the footer runs across the photo. That may have been planned, but it looks like a mistake, and may very well be a mistake.

This is a mistake... but in all of the browsers i have viewed it in, it doesn't cover the picture. It sits nicely in the green footer. I'll try to work on that.

6. (Above) On the Ministries => Small Groups page, it seems to me that the orange buttons should be identified as linking to downloadable pdfs, rather than HTML pages.

David, not sure what you mean by this. Can you explain? Thank you!

[JackWolfgang]

Maybe the footer text (now in white) should be centered under the main body. I would get rid of the google search - if people wanna search in google, they will without a church site. ; )

The Google search appears to be for St. Pauls site, so instead of ditching it, they may want to make that clearer (HINT: use the label tag!).