Website Design Journal

Suggestions?  Send them along to Elaine Crepeau, John Mac Leod, or Richard Helmer.

Special Thanks to:

John Mac Leod for technical expertise and software and hardware support.

Elaine Crepeau for a good eye and lots of sound advice.

Joan and Terry Peck for providing initial photos for the site.

The Church of Our Saviour Vestry for helpful feedback as the website got off the ground, and for reminding me to get some sleep.

July 11th, 2007:

Completed and launched the Godly Play page, fixed some of the Google Calendar php acquisition code, and began experimenting with code for browsers without JavaScript enabled (GoLive! goofs it all up!).

May 25th, 2007:

Completed and launched the Spirituality & Faith and Outreach pages.

Mid-April, 2007:

Completed our Donate page. We set up a direct service to accept credit/debit card donations through PayPal.

April 3rd, 2007:

Over the weekend right before Holy Week, added automatically updating calendar framework for the pages. Saves a load of trouble, and now we keep our public event calendar using Google Calendar services, which the new code automatically references via RSS each time the webpage is loaded for viewing. The PHP code we use for this purpose was adapted from that created by James Cridland (instructions can be found at his website) and makes use of SimplePie. Here's the best part: none of this costs a penny!

February 20th, 2007:

Design updates. Put some finishing touches on the frame design and removed the background color, as it did not show up attractively in some setups.

Added the news page.

January 8th, 2007:

Began transitioning to menu-driven site menu using MenuMachine.

December 14th, 2006:

Tidied up a number of design elements and added a logo to tie pages together. Justified text in larger paragraphs for better appearance and bolded links as well as cleaned up stylistic elements for consistency. More pictures are coming. . .still much to "dress!"

November 22nd, 2006:

Developed a basic information page for mobile users The homepage now should automatically redirect viewers to the mobile page if they are trying to access the site using a mobile device (Pocket PC, Palm, cell phone, etc.). At least it works with the devices and simulated devices I could get my hands on. . .

Found the (almost) appropriate php (server-side) code for re-directing online here. The code requires some modifcation. For more details, drop me a note at rector@oursaviourmv.org.

November 21st, 2006:

Waiting for Google to recrawl the site is like waiting for. . .well. So moved the search to siteLevel free. Much more customizable. . .

November 20th, 2006:

For ease of updating, consolidated calendar panel, announcements, and events into GoLive! components that can be updated once. GoLive! then updates the components on all the pages that show them. (Clever!)

Trimmed code for W3C compliance and eliminated proprietary code.

November 13th, 2006:

Built events page. This completes the backbone of the website. THREE CHEERS!

Built a preliminary donations page. Need to research possible online donation resources and seek Vestry and Treasurer counsel.

At the great advice of the Diocesan communications officer, began adding an introduction and ending comment to each sermon broadcast with church information and scriptural references for the listeners.

November 13th, 2006:

Built families page and began hooking up contact e-mails for the leadership of the various ministries.

Our sermon podcasts were added to iTunes today!

Customized the sermon pages from the standard Podcast Generator style to match the style of our overall website. Found it a little easier than expected. . .

November 12th, 2006:

Developed and posted visitor form in the welcome area of the site.

Met with our confirmation class -- two of our youth offered to help begin developing the youth page.

The Godly Play web page will also be developed soon.

November 10th, 2006:

Cleaned up code to bring the site into W3C compliance (or as close as possible -- it coughs up a few hairballs with a tag attribute or two).

Constructed the Community and Announcements pages.

Novenber 9th, 2006:

LAUNCH!  Was hoping to wait until late in the day Saturday, but Lynn beat me to the punch by e-mailing the congregation Sunday's announcements. At the top was that we had just launched our new website!  

Central box now reads "You are invited. . ."

Constructed initial worship & music page.

Tidied up the server and the sermons pages.

Readjusted central pictures on the top page. At least one smiling face in each montage is a must!

Links between particular worship services on the top page and longer descriptions of them are provided.

Three more second-level pages to go before the backbone of the site is completed!

November 8th, 2006:

Began posting pictures to homepage. Added javascript to change central pictures each time the homepage is loaded.

Constructed the welcome page, adding links to basics about the Episcopal Church and Anglican tradition.

Added search box to the top page. Readjusted the table and central box.

Shared the preliminary site with the Vestry and got their hearty approval to move ahead.

November 7th, 2006:

Worked out more table glitches.

Began construction on the welcome page.  Eventually, we hope to have several parishioners featured in addition to our clergy leadership, as well as links to newcomers materials and a statement about what we believe and our faith.  For now, I’m linking up to some general Episcopal Church material provided by the Diocese and region of the Church.

Started photo editing and posting for the top page.  Hope to have that wrapped up (aside from links to pages that have yet to be built) by the weekend.

November 6th, 2006:

After several disastrous attempts, the table for the homepage finally came together. Computers are great, but nothing beats an old fashioned straight edge with a pencil and a sheet of paper for design. Fonts can now be scaled for the viewers taste without destroying the homepage tables. This forms the basic tabular design for our underlying pages as well.

If you want to know, we shamelessly lifted several design ideas from the snazzy website of St. Timothy's, Mountain View. It's well worth a look-see. Elaine kept coming back to it as a prime example, even after visiting well over a hundred different church sites.

Finalized (ha, ha, for now -- nothing is ever final) some of the specific style issues, like link colors!

Built the directions page.

Added links to the church calendar, sermons page, and RSS feed for those who wish to be updated each time a new sermon is posted. In addition to podcasting, we're also now starting to post the written texts. They can be found linked in the details pages of the sermon section.

Our sermon podcasts are posted through freeware from sourceforge: Podcast Generator.

John Mac Leod, who provides lots of advice and the powerful Adobe web-design and graphic editing software (GoLive! and Photoshop) for construction of this site, is sending along a script that will allow the generation of pulldown menus from the main links on the homepage.