www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Parish Life & Evangelization parish website - feedback wanted

Hello,

With the upcoming retirement of our pastor, I've been recruited to take over our parish website. This is my first effort at website design. Instead of revamping the existing website (seen at St. Philip of Sacramento [stphilipofsacramento.com]) , I've decided on a complete redesign. It isn't complete, but I was hoping I could get some feedback from the people on the forum. I've temporarily uploaded it to St. Philip temporary [calweb.com]

I still need to do some tweaking on fonts, placement of items, etc. I'm looking for some feedback on layout and content especially. I haven't completed a few of the pages and I know I have some dead links, but feel free to point out any that you find.

Elizabeth

Elizabeth,

Very, very nice! I really like the elegance of that background. The tabbed calendar format is also both attractive and easy to use.

This reminded me that you had sent photos to me for the parish's directory entry, but that I hadn't yet uploaded them to replace the old ones - which I now have.

I've also installed the temporary weblinks for both the website and calendar links on the directory entry - be sure and let me know if/when those change, as you finalize the site.

Will take a more in-depth look this weekend and give you some feedback - but it looks very nice on a quick perusal.

Many years,

Neil

Neil, thanks for your feedback and the vote of confidence. I'm really struggling with getting it "perfect". As I mentioned, I've never done this before. I'm not particularly artistic, so I've spent months searching the web looking at other sites for inspiration. I hope that I've come up with something that is all our own. I've got to work on filling in the content a bit. I need to do the links page (I'm open to suggestions for great links), get some pictures of our new priest and write a brief biography, and spend some time aligning various items on the page. After that, I think I'll be ready to go. I plan to upload it to the parish website on September 1. I shared it with our (soon to be) new pastor tonight and he seemed to like it. He isn't very computer literate, but he was interested in knowing how to upload things to it. That's why I created the "pastor's corner" page, so that he can easily make changes there. I'm still looking for a better name for it. Any suggestions?

Also, do you think I should include pictures and information about Father's wife and family on the website, or leave those explanations for when people come to visit in person? Would that be a deterrent to people who are thinking about a visit?

Elizabeth

All the more impressive. I was fairly skilled at html, but when we launched the directory, I discovered that html was passe (and web design had passed me by). Result, a long struggle - you've done extremely well in such a short timeframe.


You might want to skim the "websites worth seeing" thread - I think a few of those got special mention for the quality/usefulness of the links they posted.


For me, that sounds good - altho I realize it's used a lot. Possibly someone with a more creative bent might have an idea.


Personally, I think it's a wonderful addition - altho not many EC parishes do it (nor a lot of EO either). I'd make it low-key but, combined with brief text on the Eastern praxis, I think it's a wonderful teaching opportunity. If that deters visitors, I say let them go elsewhere - but I suspect you'll hear opposite opinions.

Many years,

Neil

PS - is that your little lady being baptized? she is beautiful!

Yes, that is my little girl being baptized. The pictures were awful. I tossed an unfamiliar camera at my uncle at the last minute and asked him to take pictures. Still, I'm glad I have them and they're all I have for the website at the moment. The congregation pictured was almost entirely for the baptism. Usually, we run from 10-30 people. I'm hopeful that our parish will grow soon, though, and I'm hopeful that this website will help. I've put out a call to other parishioners for more pictures, so hopefully I'll have some to add soon.

Elizabeth

Elizabeth,

You were asking about links - check out the links page [careerjumpstart.org] at the Byzantine Church of the Resurrection in Smithtown, NY.

From the note at the top of the page, Father Jack (Custer) apparently imported it from Ss Cyril & Methodius Seminary and to say it is faitly comprehensive would be an understatement. While there are likely some there that won't be of interest to you, there are more than enough choices to satisfy most any web administrator's desires and I suspect that Father Jack would be happy to share; there's an e-mail link for him on the site's home page.

One caution - the link there to a parish listing on the ByzCath site is old and dead; if you want to include one, I'd recommend using the new Directory link.

Many years,

Neil

The only comment I would make about the Smithtown Site [ and I think it's great ] is that the bulletins need to be in a different Format . Word is not always easily read by folk who do not use M$S

OK I'm a Machead - I do have M$S Office and Neo-Office so I'm OK

What about Linux users ?

Could Bulletins be in PDF - this would make them easily available to all and I think that most WP Progs can save into PDF without having to have the full programme available .

Just a wee point

hmm, not sure about that - but I knew we'd hear from you Maccies when I saw that their bulletins were .doc

Hmmm I know that I can save as PDF from the Print dialogue box and that converts it nicely

In Neo-Office I can export a document as a PDF [ so presumably Open-Office ( PC Version) can as well]

While using the old G3 I found it still had Appleworks 6 on it and even there I could save a doc as a PDF .

Surely PCs can do that ?

yeah, actually, you can - I just checked; never noticed it before

OpenOffice actually does a better job than ms word at opening ms word files from even slightly different versions of word. Unless you use truly exotic features, it opens files just fine.

However, pdf works a lot better at letting you actually lay anything out--word files can display differently depending upon other settings in the computers, whereas pdf specifies what and where things display (you can get problems with even mild features).

OpenOffice (also available for windows, no charge) also is capable of exporting to pdf without any little "by my product" messages . . .

Word also has the problem that it uses flatly non-standard characters (OK, it's worse; it defies the standards), with the result being that if you read with anything other than MS word on windows or MS explorer on windows, you get bizarre displays (the most common is that curly quotes & double quotes for word have nothing to do with standards, and display as other things, particularly when cut and paste into web sites).

hawk

So, our website is up and running at www.stphilipofsacramento.com [stphilipofsacramento.com] It isn't finished, but I guess these things are always a work in progress. I added google analytics for tracking on the site, and I've been pleased to see that we're getting several hits every day, from a variety of sources (including 3 from this very thread). It is really amazing how much information even a novice like me can collect.

We celebrated our first Divine Liturgy with our new pastor on Sunday. I think there's a tremendous sense of hope right now in the parish. We have been without a resident priest for nearly 6 years, but now we have one.

Thanks to those of you who helped with comments about the website.

Elizabeth