New Site for Harvest Pointe Christian Church

[webharvest]

Harvest Pointe has just released their new site. The URL is http://www.harvestpointecc.com.

We are still making tweaks and adding our old content but for the most part it is all up and running. I am the developer of the site and created all the templates from scratch. The goal of the project was to go away from a static content site to a site utilizing a content management system. Our old site made it very difficult to update and make changes. Particularly with our members emails addresses.

Our new site is strictly database driven and allows our users to update their email address on their own. All the contact info is tied to the database so when they change the contact forms change as well. The goal was to make the site as user friendly as possible and utilize as least amount of time our webmaster as possible :).

I would say I am a general developer with HTML, CSS and PHP. I would not call myself and expert. I used Photoshop for all the graphics and Crimson Editor for all my coding.

Let me know what you think. I tried to make all the pages compliant to the web standards but i had to sacrifice in some areas.

Thanks

[David Gillaspey]

Hi James,

Sorry for the long delay in responding — it's been a very busy week.

My comments:

Home page currently looks like this:

http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/harvest0.jpg

1. I like the wheat images in the background (not visible in the screenshot above). This is similar in function to the filigree background pattern that I've observed on a small number of other church websites. The difference is, pictures of wheat stalks in your website's background make some sense given the name of your church. On other church websites, the pattern is ornamental only — not that anything's wrong with that. After all, patterns are seen everywhere in nature.

2. The photos mortised in the banner at top right rotate (swap out). Two of these photos (lady with popcorn and boy laying on rail) just don't look good in that space, in my opinion. Also, two images each showing two people hugging are back to back. It seems to me it would be better to separate those with a few other photos.

3. And then there's the mortise itself. The rotating photos of the people mortised into the background of wheat just seems jarring to me. I've seen effective composites of people photos with other subjects, e.g., buildings. This one doesn't really work for me.

You might try moving the rotating people photos to the left side, placing them in a normal rectangular shape, and moving everything else over. That would put the people photos next to the church logo, thereby associating the two.


http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/harvest1.jpg

4. (Above) This is a picky detail, but there's some missing commas in this introduction.


http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/harvest2.jpg

5. (Above) Another picky detail: In the link phrase "Harvest Pointe Christian Church Ohio" at the bottom of the pages, is "Ohio" part of the church name? (A similar link phrase is found on the Directions page.)


http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/harvest3.jpg

6. (Above) Another picky detail: You have links to both the Senior Minister and someone known as the Preacher ("[Welcome from the] Preacher"). These are actually links to material about or from the same person. Wouldn't it be better to use consistent terminology? (This term also appears under the "New to HPCC" dropdown menu under the banner.)

I realize that different denominations call their leaders different things — pastor, minister, senior minister, preacher, pulpit minister, priest, bishop, etc. — so I understand the two terms could technically be the correct terms to use. However, consider that for a visitor, this might lead to some confusion.


http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/harvest4.jpg

7. (Above) Is it necessary to list the login in the "Most Popular" list of links, especially when the login form itself is just an inch away?


http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/harvest5.jpg

8. (Above) But more generally, and more importantly, it seems to me that the bottom of your home page is rather empty. You've filled it with links to somewhere else. In my opinion, it would be better to put some actual content (text, or graphical ads) at the bottom of your home page. This should include a list of service times.


http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/harvest6.jpg

9. (Above) I'm afraid I've never found much use for Search boxes on websites (those that search the site itself). These are only useful if the search results are really relevant. What are you expecting people to search for, may I ask? I tried three tests: "Service times," "Directions," and "Youth."

I didn't see any relevant results for "Service Times" on the first page of the search results (with the default sort order, anyway; see below). I got three hits for "Directions," one of which really was a link to directions (the information I was looking for). But another of the three search results for "Directions" was "About RSS/XML Feeds." Uh?

The search results for "Youth" yielded a link to the junior and senior high ministry, which is what I wanted, but the results also included links to a recent sermon series in which individual sermons were titled "Jesus' [something]" — no apparent connection there for me to what I searched for. So again, Search boxes need to return highly relevant results to be useful, in my opinion.


http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/harvest7.jpg

10. (Above) Speaking of search results, would it be possible to include an option for "Sort by relevance"? And what exactly does "Newest first" and "Oldest first" mean? Date added? Dated modified? Date of the event? Date of the sermon?

I search for jobs constantly on job websites (since I've been unemployed for several years), so sorting search results by Newest makes good sense to me. I'm not sure how helpful chronological order would be in the search results from a church home page, and it may be that you need to better clarify what the terms mean.

11. On the positive side (yeah, occasionally I give a compliment), the graphics in the slide show are very nice.

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


http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/harvest8.jpg

12. (Above) The layout of photos and text on the "Who are we?" page makes reading the page a challenge. I would suggest lining all the photos up in a stack on the left or right side. Of course, that layout is somewhat dependent upon the type size and whether one is viewing the page on a PC or a Macintosh, so it could be that I don't see what you see.

13. (No screenshot). I liked the layout of the Latest News (Connect => Latest News) page. However, one announcement is for the upcoming Super Bowl Party (after the fact), and another is regarding photos from the same event. The page needs to be kept up to date.

14. Several of the ministry pages, e.g., youth, small group, and sports, do not have a photo. Come on — surely someone in your church has a digital camera and can provide photos from these ministries.


http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/harvest9.jpg

15. (Above) Your "What we sound like" (Resources => What we sound like) page is a great idea, but do you have a license to post those songs on the internet? A CCLI license doesn't cover posting copyrighted songs on the internet, for example. ASCAP offers an internet music license; see http://www.ascap.com/weblicense/. The other two performing rights agencies (BMI and SESAC) didn't offer such a license the last time I checked. Songs in the public domain, if recorded by your own singers, may be legally posted in this manner on a website without a license.


http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/harvest10.jpg

16. (Above) Your three Staff pages (for the Senior, Youth, and Worship ministers) each list the staff member's name plus where the person is from in the title. That's a bit confusing.


http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/harvest11.jpg

17. (Above) Your "Financial Information" page (About Us = Financial Information) is a great idea, but there's no content there as of this writing.



http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/art/FORUM/harvest12.jpg

18. (Above) You have one dropdown menu for Staff, as I mentioned above. Then, you have a page, Contact Us => Leadership, that looks like the above screenshot. Each link leads to a form. Presumably, when the user completes the form and submits it, the message is sent to the chosen leader. Thus, you've combined the functions of "list our leaders" and "contact our leaders."

What if the user wanted to send the same message to two or three leaders? It seems to me a better way of handling this would be to have ONE form, with a dropdown menu listing all staff and leaders' names (plus "All staff" and "All leaders) from which the user could choose one or several recipients.

Then, have another page listing names of staff and leaders, with links to their bio. That separates the "about our staff and leaders" function from the "contact our staff or leaders" function.

I hope these comments (tough as there were) are helpful to you in your ministry

[webharvest]

Great comments. No problem on the delay. I know exactly what you mean. I have a final Friday.......

I will go back and talk about your comments (hopefully tonight).

One thing to note is we are still working on some of the details. We had to launch the site a couple months earlier than I wanted due to hosting issues.

Thanks for the great feedback,

James