The more I critique sites the harder it gets. It's not easy evaluating other peoples work.

Some things I like:
- I like the font you have chosen. I'm not sure what it is about it... but I like it.
- Bravo going with a graphic designer and asking for feedback. That is never easy.

Some things to think about:
- The pages are not semantic meaning they are not very search engine friendly, not very accessible to the handicapped, and no good on mobile phones.
- You have click to activate for flash in IE. So, your header doesn't show and your sidebar piece doesn't work until they are clicked. You might want to look into something like SWFObject.
- The bottom 3 images on your welcome page look good and clean in firefox. But, in IE they look very different and not clean at all.
- On your welcome page the box in the flow of the content has not top marign or padding so it runs right into the text.
- The menu is images with a mouse over. The mouse over image takes a few seconds to load on a slower connection because the image file needs to be downloaded. It's not a fast response. You might want to consider preloading those images for instant response. See this link for some details to do it in short order with jQuery.
http://www.mattfarina.com/2007/02/01/preloading_im...
- This site, even though done by a designer, has the feel of something web 1.0. You may want to consider the search for your next look to launch in a year or so. Something that flows with the direction web pages are going which is what people are glowing to expect.

That's just my 2 cents. Hopefully Rob can pipe in when he gets back from his vacation.

Matt Farina
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.mattfarina.com

- I'll have to look into SWFObject, preloading, adding the margin, and getting a better handle on what semantic is.

- regarding the 3 images - IE bites again! I'll have to do some more CSS wrestling (grrr!) (any resource recommendations?)

- I was puzzling over the web 20 thing when listening to the podcast. We've got some of it (large logo, large navigation, whitespace, few items on the page). There is something different but I can't put my finger on it. Is it that it is not really a 'flat' look, or a 'drop-shadow' look? Something else? Right now it kind of has a hybrid style of its own.

I look forward to Rob's comments too.

Thanks

Whilst it is nowhere near as good as FireBug for Firefox, the IE developers toolbar can be quite useful for tweaking those annoying IE issues

IE Developers Toolbar

Andy

Warwick Baptist Church - The Kemps' Blog

The direction web pages are headed for look has a number of things other than large logo, large navigation, and white space. For example, unless there is a special reason those pages are all have the content centered (like G&G).

One thing that I think gives it that old school (not the good kind) of feel is the background. That reminds me of a common type of background when backgrounds first started showing up on web pages. I feel like that's a background I used back in like 1997.

For some web 2.0 style thoughts check out... http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/web-2.0-design...

Matt Farina
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.mattfarina.com

I tried firing up the IE Dev Toolbar - inspected the DOM and found something very wierd.

My HTML for the welcome page has
div class='node'
div class='node'

all at the same level

but in IE the DOM has them all nested!
div
--div
----div

which explains why they all seem to keep getting smaller in IE

But that is a new low for IE if it can't even construct the DOM correctly! I guess I have more googling to do :(

Steve,

Your site has a good warm feel to it and the color scheme seems very complimentary to your main logo.

My only comment is that your interest boxes (the ones with people's photos and quotes)... I have a real hard time reading that text. Perhaps something larger (1.25/1.5/3.0 em)?

God Bless your ministry!

-B

I love that calendar you have.

Jesus replied, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God." Luke 9:62

it's the drupal event module with some modified css

I would recommend using the newer cck, date, views, and calendar modules instead though - even more flexible.

You've got a good quality look on your site and that puts you steps ahead of most churches. I have to agree that it looks quite dated though. I wouldn't have guessed it was new. I'm sorry if that seems harsh. Posting here is a great idea and shows you are doing some good work and recognize a need to learn and improve.

This web 2.0 thing is tough for a lot of folks to pick up and especially for congregations who often rely heavily on older and less technically oriented adults for guidance.

People on the web a lot and using the webs newer interactive features generally start to get a sense of current styles and features. If you work to get people familiar with this participating in guiding your process you should do fine. But it is not something your people can get just from reading about it or watching a presentation.

Depending on the who your designer or developer is they can help you advance or hold you back. I know some older developers who are still operating the way they did ten years ago. So going with a pro will not necessarily give you an up-to-date design. Actually being a consumer and user of the technologies is invaluable.

Just my perspective....
Mark

The Drupal SWFTools module can make it easier to get SWFObject (or UFO) working in Drupal. It is kind of code heavy though.

You can minify the javascript (don't use packer) and it gets a lot smaller. We use that script on G&G.

Matt Farina
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.mattfarina.com