Hello from Monroe! :)

[Chris Martin]

Hi everyone! I've been lurking the forum for a couple weeks while I work on a new revision for my Church's website. Some great information here! Thank you!

I guess I'll share a little about myself. I'm not a web designer. :) I'm a 24 yr old print media designer / aerial photographer. But along the way, my church has elected upon me to work on their website - so here I am, and I hope to learn a lot here.

I didn't see a "website feedback" or "website review" section, so I guess I'll post here as I'm hoping to get some advice before the site goes 'live' - which is scheduled sometime next week, if not earlier. Administrators, if I'm posting in the wrong section, please move this thread to the right place. :)

Please feel free to take a look and let me know if there's anything I should change/update to the site.
I've racked my brain trying to work on this site, and it's been a "several revision" project. So hopefully, I won't get flamed if there's something on there fundamentally wrong - as pertaining to the site's functionality, user friendliness. It's important to point out that the skeleton of the site is implementing Joomla 1.5 and a template I purchased for the church.

Church current website:
http://www.fccmonroe.org/

Church "beta" website:
http://www.chrismartindesign.com/fcc_new/

Warm Regards,

Chris Martin

[David Gillaspey]

Hi Chris,

I didn't see a "website feedback" or "website review" sectionThere was a church website review section for a long time on this forum. However, as is usually the case, I found that people joined to get advice about their site than never came back to reply to other posts and thereby add content to the forum. So I've closed that section of the forum.

But I'm happy to provide some feedback about your beta site.

I hope you won't mind if I post a screenshot of the beta of the home page.

http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/images/forum/reviews/fcc_monroe.jpg

I'd say you chose a very nice looking template indeed.

I could only find a few things to say about the site.

* Since you (wisely) included the service times at top right, in the banner, it seems to me that it's unnecessary to include a link to the page with service times under the "Who We Are" dropdown menu.

* You include "Newcomer's Welcome" under the Resources dropdown menu. That doesn't seem like the proper place for it. Perhaps it should be under the "Who We Are" dropdown menu instead.

* The font throughout the site is a little on the small size. That, combined with your use of a serif font, combined with tight letterspacing, makes the text a little hard to read. (I'm viewing the site on a Macintosh, however — text on a Macintosh always appears a little smaller than the same size font on a PC.)

* At top left, in the banner, the "1st" in "putting Christ 1st" is illegible.

* On the Contact page, you include both the church address and an HTML form to allow visitors to send a message to the church. Those are really different classes of information or functions, and belong on separate pages, it seems to me.

* In general, while the site looks great, I have a feeling it's going to end up being an "online brochure" — a pretty one, to be sure, but one that doesn't include much information and the information doesn't change much, even though you've built the site using the Joomla CMS.

For example, how will you include lots of information and photos on the youth ministry page (Ministries => Middle & High School)? You are planning to include lots of text and photos, right? I fear your design will begin to fall apart when the text on the lefthand side of inside pages grows long.

Just the very fact that you built the beta around small amounts of text on the inside pages means you haven't planned for filling the inside pages with lots of information.

Hope these comments are helpful to you.

[JackWolfgang]

Chris--

Welcome to the board!

It looks like FCC-Monroe is Restoration Movement. Did I see that right?

[JackWolfgang]

Since you (wisely) included the service times at top right, in the banner, it seems to me that it's unnecessary to include a link to the page with service times under the "Who We Are" dropdown menu.

David--

I somewhat disagree with you on this point if the Service Times page is expanded to explain what is going on during those service times.

[David Gillaspey]

I somewhat disagree with you on this point if the Service Times page is expanded to explain what is going on during those service timesHi Jack,

I totally agree with that point.

[Chris Martin]

*** Hi, it's chris_m_atl again. I'm not able to post while logged in as I'm getting a User Permission error. So I'm posting as a guest until it gets sorted. I'm glad I copied my message to the clipboard prior to hitting the Submit button, otherwise all the following text would have been lost to cyberspace. :)
**************************************

Good Lord thank you so much! As with anything new (and technical), I've been researching, reading, printing, reading and reading countless posts, tutorials, and .pdf documents trying to get this site into something half way decent. Your review and suggestions were an unexpected gem! Thank you! It's exactly the kind of help I needed so much. The church, as you might expect, only offers at most "wow it looks great," "lets go with it", "awesome!", but no constructive criticism or content suggestions. I do love their support and encouragement, but I've been really yearning for some direction.

We're a very small church with an ever-falling membership - and our minister (of 23 years) is retiring on Feb 8th. So the website I hope will be one of the tools to help stimulate the base membership...and help encourage outside people to at least visit our church.

Having said that, the children and youth ministry is a major foundation for the church. Although, attendance over several months has been on a steady slide - in the wrong direction. I really hope this website can be an interactive gateway for parents and youth, singles and couples - etc. to visit and return....and hopefully visit the church...


You include "Newcomer's Welcome" under the Resources dropdown menu. That doesn't seem like the proper place for it. Perhaps it should be under the "Who We Are" dropdown menu instead.

Fixed. - it does make more sense to put it under Who We Are. Eventually, I would like to have the Resources section as a place to download not only the Newsletter and Audio Sermons, but also additional print media for visitors to download and print. (Such as our upcoming Mission trip - At the moment, all we have is a MS Word document with a couple paragraphs about the trip pinned to the bulletin board - what would encourage the kid (or parent) to take a copy of that letter to school/work and show their friends?

The font throughout the site is a little on the small size

I've been working on that one. I remember reading somewhere that I could change the overall size of the text throughout the site (some sort of global function?) And I also want to change the font to sans-serif - but as far as I can tell, I'll have to go into each article and change it manually...and I haven't found my "round-tuit" yet. :)

I'm also working from my macbook pro and agree with you on the screen render of type.

At top left, in the banner, the "1st" in "putting Christ 1st" is illegible.
Yeah, I scribbled that in Photoshop with my Wacom tablet... I'm planning to change that whole area to an actual logo - after I design one for the church, of course.

On the Contact page, you include both the church address and an HTML form to allow visitors to send a message to the church. Those are really different classes of information or functions, and belong on separate pages, it seems to me.

I'm not really satisfied with how Joomla is displaying the contact page by default and I'm searching for techniques to modify it. But regarding your point, I'm really not sure how best to separate this....One menu item for address/phone number/etc...and a "Slide Out" menu to send a message to each of the Staff members? (Similar to how "Staff Directory" displays under "Who We Are"...

You are planning to include lots of text and photos, right? I fear your design will begin to fall apart when the text on the lefthand side of inside pages grows long.

That's a great point - of which I've been debating just what it is I want to do to solve this. I've been reading up on the different ways to display News Feeds and New Content on a site, but I haven't decided what will best produce that golden "interactive gateway" I so much desire.

My first option was to have a "Right Position" menu that is unique and dependent to the individual ministry - and having the items in that menu link to articles, updates, and events that have occurred, or information about upcoming events. (And have the corresponding item in the Google Calendar link directly to that page for 'more information'.) Also, I was going to embed an image gallery/slideshow directly within the article....or have an "Image Gallery" page setup using a wrapper and a spiffy slideshow program I've used on my personal (former) website.

My second idea was to have the main church website display pretty much what is already their...but for the youth and children's ministry - I was going to create two Subsites that uses a different Joomla templates and caters to the specific group. Children's ministry will use a child-like template with a fun "playhouse" look - while the Youth Ministry will look more modern - Teenage'ish....This will hopefully give those ministries dedicated areas for them to flourish - and encourage students and parents to get involved.

While being such a small church - it is clearly divided. You've got the "old-school" elders that are relunctant to change and the "middle-aged" - somewhat technology savvy adults that want a more modern image for the church. I just hope this website can create a happy medium - one that's not too traditional - and not to "progressive". But it is clear that without any change, the we could be in trouble.

Hope these comments are helpful to you.
I couldn't have imagined a more helpful review. Thank you.

[David Gillaspey]

Hi Chris,

(I sent you an email regarding your membership and posting problems.)

Lots of small churches have great looking websites, but, let's face it, because smaller churches have fewer ministries, it's harder to fill websites of smaller churches with fresh, exciting content.

For now, I would encourage you to keep all the ministries on one website. Using different templates ("looks") for some sections of the website is a good idea, however.

Use lots of photos from the children's and youth ministries. Try to get permission if possible, however.* Include captions to explain what's going on in the photos to outsiders. You probably should avoid giving actual names of children and youth, however.

(* Or, with the pastor's permission, include a "warning" with all promotions of youth activities in the bulletin and elsewhere that photos may be taken and used on the website, and also post a sign saying the same thing at all such activities. Anyone who comes to such an activity has thereby given tacit permission for the use of their photo on the website.)

Youth ministries by their very nature always have something going on, so it should be possible to make this area of the site a big area with lots of content.

I remember reading somewhere that I could change the overall size of the text throughout the site (some sort of global function?) And I also want to change the font to sans-serif.It's easy. Find the external stylesheet used by Joomla for your site,

http://www.chrismartindesign.com/fcc_new/templates/church_interface/css/template.css

and change the font specs for the <body> tag. Also look at this line

body, td { line-height:120% }

which controls the leading. In most cases, 120% (of the font size) leading will be fine. But if you had a layout with really wide lines of text, you'd want to increase the amount of leading for that area.

I'm not really satisfied with how Joomla is displaying the contact page by default.Consider adding to the Who We Are dropdown menu the link to the page with the church address and phone number information. Then the Contact link on the menu becomes Contact Us (note the subtle difference in the possible meanings for that) or Email Us and this page is just a page with the HTML form for sending email to the church.

Some churches include a dropdown menu with such a form to allow the visitor to choose to whom the message should be sent. This also helps to avoid staffer's email addresses being harvested by spammers. Just keep in mind that outsiders won't know what each staff member does, so you have to include a title or function with each name.

My first option was to have a "Right Position" menu that is unique and dependent to the individual ministry - Yes, do that.

Personally, I dislike dropdown or slideout menus. They force the user to move the mouse all the way back to the menu to go somewhere else on the site. Then, the dropdown menu is often problematic — it might be hard for the user to select the desired link, or it might disappear altogether before the user has time to select another link.

So I prefer to see static (but different for each main area of site) menus in the left- or righthand columns of major sections of a site. Because they're static, these menus always remain available to the user to click on a desired link, and the distance to move the mouse is less.

[Chris Martin]

I already responded to these posts, but it was lost...so this message is a test to see if I can post, then I'll write the original reply over again tomorrow. Thanks so much!

[David Gillaspey]

I already responded to these posts,Hi Chris,

There is no "save as draft" feature offered by vBulletin (the forum software that I use), and I've never seen a plugin that would add such a feature.

I wish the feature existed.

I always write long posts separately in MS Word, then copy and paste the text into the forum posting text input box when I'm done. I hate losing a long and carefully worded post because of some problem with the server or I accidentally hit Command + Q and closed the browser.

[David Gillaspey]

Very nice video. Thanks for posting about it.