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Building and Reviewing a Church Web SiteBased on a presentation at Interact, Presbyterian Assembly, Dunedin, 4 October 2000 (updated October 2002) Our focus here is the World Wide Web. Like the use of other communications tools it can be useful to address some standard communications questions: What?A web site is a communications tool that can be used for two-way communication. Web sites are a set of internet technologies that include email, telnet and FTP. No-one know how many web sites or web pages there are, but there are more than a billion individual pages, which have grown from virtually none just several years ago. Being new such technology raises special issues, as I will highlight. Why?Why have a website? Many organisations are developing web sites because everyone seems to have one. This is NOT a good answer. Think through what you can achieve by having a website that will help your organisation. As a communications tool it should form part of a thought through communications plan which helps to achieve the mission of the parish or organisation. Who?Who is the site for? Who are the potential users of the site? Who outside the church would be looking for you? What are their needs and what will they expect? Who are the key audiences, both internal and external? Who will plan the site? Good planning is important and saves time in the long run. For an organisational or church site two or three brains are better than one and forming a good team should help the process. Who will build and maintain the site? Also important is who will set up the site and maintain it. It is often easier to find someone to build the site than it is to find someone to commit to maintain and update it on a weekly basis. If you can't find someone to maintain your site, think again. t is also important to have someone respond promptly to email generated through the site. How?This is probably the biggest mystery about websites, but creating web sites is easy. However, this also makes it easy to create bad pages. Everything you need to know about building web sites is available free on the internet. But before you jump straight into HTML, ASP, JAVA and PHP, you should learn about how to make your site easy to use and accessible to as many people as possible. Success on the web, like it is elsewhere, is largely a result of good planning. UsabilityMake your site easy to use by considering the research that others have already done into what works and what doesn't.
AccessibilityDesign your pages like God would - open to all who seek. Learn about designing so that you don't exclude anyone, such as those with poor eyesight or with physical disabilities. It is easy to test your site to ascertain whether it meets basic standards. cast.org bobby (an accessibility testing service) CredibilityWill people believe what you have to say? You have to make your site credible. http://www.webcredibility.org/ StandardsThe internet has standards and adhering to these will ensure that your site is accessible to all people. w3.org:80 [the web standard setters with many tools that Will test you pages against the standards for HTML and CSS] The government has issued guidelines for public sector sites, but these include much good advice for all website: SoftwareThere are many types of software that can be used to create web sites, from your Windows notepad to advanced WYSIWYG editors and site management tools. You can even create pages using Microsoft Word. For some software links see this directory of software links. DesignKeep it simple - if you don't need it then drop it. Look at other sites and critically examine what they have done, what works and what doesn't. You can look at their code, to see how they built their pages by looking at the code select View > Page Source in Netscape or View > Source in Microsoft Internet Explorer. There are several sites on the web that deal with design. There are two elements to web design, information architecture and graphical design  
Test If you build your web site on one computer often it looks very different on someone else's machine. Look at your site on both Apple Computers and PCs. Test with at least Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer browsers and use different screen resolutions and colour settings (to use different computers visit cyber cafes or make computer-related pastoral visits). You cannot afford to assume that everyone has the same system as you. Get others to test your site and even watch them navigate through your site without your guidance. This can be a humbling experience. Review Once the site is operational get feedback on your site from users, both on the graphic design and ease of navigation. Get logs from your ISP about how many hits you are getting (resist placing hit counters on your homepage). Where?Once you have built your site it will only be accessible to others if you have the files hosted on a server, which is a computer that "serves" web pages to people connected to the internet. Hosting your website To have a website you must have some space on a server. Contact your Internet service provider about hosting websites. Church specific ISPs Godzone: http://www.godzone.net.nz Vision: http://www.vision-nz.co.nz/
Other ISPs http://www.consumer.org.nz/ispsearch.asp?Category=Internet%20providers
Domain names Where will people find your site? Some churches have their own domain name like St John's, Mt Roskill (stjohns.org.nz) others use a domain that like St Martin's, Papatoetoe that is derived from their ISP's domain (homepages.ihug.co.nz/~brandon1/resources/) Having your own domain looks more professional but costs more money. Publicity Letting the world know you have a web site is obviously important to attract people. To do this well you must understand how people find websites in the first place. How do people find websites? 57% search engines (Source: http://www.hollow-moon.com/search-engine-optimization.htm)
Try to get a link from sites that focus on your region or city. For example, St John's in the City, Wellington is listed on the Search Wellington site, which is a Wellington regional web directory. (wellington.gen.nz/directory/search.cgi?cat_id=5) General Links All sorts of useful stuff casi.org.nz/links2/pages/Internet/ Web Monkey hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey SitePoint sitepoint.com Yale Web Style Guide info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/ Web Design BooksWeb design books are typically expensive, but can be very useful. However, they do go out of date quickly. Try your library for the following titles: The Non-Designers Web Book by Robin Williams and John Tollett Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, by Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville Web Pages That Suck: Learn Good Design by Looking at Bad Design, by Vincent Flanders and Web Design in a Nutshell, by Jennifer Niederst MagazinesNetGuide is a cheap but extremely useful New Zealand suitable for all abilities. Available in magazine shops or by subscription. Their web site is: netguide.co.nz/ |
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