Glory to Jesus Christ!

The parish website for St. Mary's (Hermine) and St. Stephen's (North Huntingdon) has been updated. Any suggestions?

http://www.bcchnh.org

I apologize in advance for not having the time to comment on the good portions of the website, of which they are many.

Here are a few of the things I noticed in a quick look-see:

• It is hard to read the Liturgy schedule. In particular it is hard to figure out which time goes with which location. A few blank lines would help.
  
• When I try to read a bulletin, I simply get a lot of white space. The only way to see the bulletin is to click on the "Open in ew window" icon.
  
• I would prefer to see "Events" re-labeled as "Schedule" or maybe "Events/Schedule". I expected to see information about upcoming or past events, and when the page loaded I said to myself, "Oh, so THAT'S where the schedule is!"
  
• Some of the "Helps", in particular "Byzantine Evangelism" and "Visiting a Byzantine Catholic Church" (and possibly others) displayed as white text on a very, VERY light gray background. If I had not accidentally dragged my mouse over the text, I would not have realized that I was not looking at empty space.

Again, these are only the problems I discovered. On the whole, I think it is a nicely done website.

Thank you for taking the time to comment, I'll work on your suggestions.

First, it's better than 95% of the eastern church websites out there, so take these suggestions as mere fine tunings.

- Font consistency. There are a TON of different font formats (e.g. bold, italics, sizes, spacing, colors, and types). My recommendation would be to limit it to 3 or 4. One for headings, one for the body text, and one for the footer text. If you wanted to use a different one for menu links, that'd be fine, too.

- The green drop down bars. When I go to the Vocations link and a few others, the content is hidden behind the green drop down bars. Nothing wrong with using drop down bars (though it's not my style for the body text), but the green is really off putting. It does not match the rest of the color scheme.

- Inserted images. When inserting an image made elsewhere (for example, at the top of the Bulletins page), try to edit it a bit so it fits the page's style. So for the Bulletins page, I would have colored the white background of the image to match the grey background of the site.

Those were the little things that jumped out at me. But I do like the site on the whole, and love that y'all are engaging the net with a lot of good content. Kudos!

Thanks, I'll do some fine tuning!

Hi, Father! I'm in the same boat you are trying to work on the church website. I have no idea what I'm doing, so I'll offer my 2c from sympathy, but I don't know how helpful it will be.

I like that you have an active blog! I think that's my favorite!

I thought at first it was one of those websites where everything is on the front page. I don't know what "That's New" means, but I figured that's all that was there. Then I saw the menu bar at the top. It had escaped my attention. You have a lot of stuff there! Very cool! I really like the Vocations page except that it tries to download a PDF automatically.

The visitor counter is taking up a lot of prime real estate on the front page and could be moved to the footer. The Facebook link could then be moved up. I was surprised to see a quote by Soren Kierkegaard as the quote of the day. I would have expected a Biblical or saint quote or something like that if a daily quote were going to be included.

The menu bar seems a little crowded. May I recommend combining several of them? Home and About can be combined (with the stuff from About being on top of the Home page). The weekly update on ECF is great! It would probably go well as a blog post each week instead of getting its own top level menu bar page. A calendar plus a bulletin page is probably more than what's needed. Confession could be put under Helps. Courageous could be put as a link like the front page has or as a blog post.

I really like the stream-lined way you put the articles on the Vocations and Helps pages. Making it consistent across the site like that is going to be awesome!

Might I suggest some sort of welcome or invitation to attend on the front page?

I hope that helps some.

Bless, Father Jim,

I don't have any additional comments to add but I do want to say that, as one who is very convinced of the importance of using electronic media as a tool for both for education of one's flock and for evangelization, I'm most appreciative of the time and effort that you have put into the website of your two parishes.

Many years,

Neil

Thank you all for taking the time to examine the website and make suggestions. I believe strongly that the public presentation of the Church and Her message is best served by communal reflection and presentation of insights. Your thoughtful contributions have been a real blessing to our attempts to evangelize.

The website has been updated based on the impute from the Byzantine Forum

http://www.bcchnh.org

What do you think?

Bless, Father Jim,

Excellent! You don't waste any time . It's very professional looking, yet attractive and welcoming, even more importantly, it has some excellent materials on it and is easy to navigate. On top of all that, it's very obvious that these two parishes are alive and energetic - and I think that's incredibly important to anyone looking at the site as a prelude to deciding whether it is a place that they might want to consider as their new parish home.

You've got to promise that you'll let us know when the parish brochure is added. I'm very much looking forward to seeing that!

Many years,

Neil

Thanks Neil, you have been a wonderful help from the begining!

Even better than before!

But...

• I still can't get the bulletins to display without opening them in a new window. I am running IE 9.0.
  
• I opened the "Helps / What to Expect When Visiting a Byzantine Catholic Church" to make sure that the text was visible. It was, but the first tihing I saw was a typo. "Once Liturgy starts expect a great deal of SIGNING".
  

But again, congratulations on a nicely designed website.

Until reading Ed's comment, I had presumed, obviously incorrectly, that they hadn't yet been uploaded. I also find that I can't open/view them in either IE 9 or Firefox 9. I can, however, open them in Chrome and (Windows) Safari. Curious ...

Now, I've seen the parish brochure - very nicely done.

Many years,

Neil

Thanks again guys, I feel like I'm chanting a litany AGAIN & AGAIN. Your wiliness to help is most appreciated. The site is created on a MAC, so I have to try it out on a PC and see what I still need to correct, so everything works properly. I'm learning a lot and your tutoring is MOST helpful.

fr. Jim

I tried the website on Windows 7 with IE and everything worked fine....not sure what to do

Bless, Father Jim,

It might be a function of compatibility that sometimes occurs with upgrades (IE is particularly known for having problems that can require one to use an earlier version - the surprise to me was when the issue was replicated using Firefox, which is almost always more tolerant in that regard).

Oftentimes, these problems resolve after an upgraded version has been out there a while and some of the bugs have been worked out. I'll give it a shot with an earlier version of each and see wwhat happens.

Many years,

Neil

Bless, Father Jim,

Ok, I'm baffled. In Chrome and Safari, I can open anything except September 2011 - that one defies all my efforts. With FF and IE, no luck at all, unless I use the open in a new window option.

I also tried using an on-line tool called netrendering that lets one see the difference in how things are viewed in several different versions of IE. It's very popular with Apple/Mac web designers because it can let them check a site against IE versions back to IE5, I believe it is. No luck there either and, since the error message rendered in German, I couldn't figure out what the issue was.

Maybe one of the more technically oriented among our members will have an idea.

Many years,

Neil

Neil,

I have been able to open ECF September 2011 News with no problem and parishioners with PC have as well. To be honest, I'm not real happy with the document plugin and I'll see if there is something better.

Your time, assistance and care are most appreciated.

fr. Jim

Christ Is Risen!

Bless, Father Jim,

I just had occasion to take a look at your website, as a new member here linked to it. Wow! I am very, very impressed at how it came out! Extraordinarily well done!

Many years,

Neil

Thank Neil, good people like you were a great help in getting it up and running.

fr. Jim

What a nice site! Thank you, Fr. Jim, for sharing, and it is clear this labor of love for Christ's Church will be of benefit to many!

Thank you Joe, it surprises me that in seven months 5000 visitors have come to the site.