I just became the webmaster for a relatively large church website that is currently managed via Dreamweaver. When I took over, the staff was already heading in the direction of rolling out Contribute (Dreamweaver-compatible WYSIWYG editor) to allow more people to share the load of keeping the site updated. For a whole laundry list of reasons, I'm convinced that converting the site to Drupal is a much better option. I'm currently at the phase of setting up a Drupal demo site to use to 1) figure out what the heck I'm doing and 2) show folks on the church staff what kind of stuff we could do with Drupal.
As part of that process, I would appreciate any critiques of the existing site. I want the Drupal demo site to have the same basic look and feel as the existing site, but also recognize that this would be a good opportunity to make any improvements. One concern I have is that the site has started to lose it's cohesiveness as different ministries have found people that are comfortable with other technologies and have started managing their own sections of the site on their own (see the university section). How hard is it to integrate sections like this into Drupal menus? I'm not sure how much resistance I'll get to getting everyone on the Drupal bandwagon.
I'm pretty comfortable with coding, but most of that has been writing C/C++ in the guts of computers. I know enough html and css to get me in trouble and absolutely nothing about PHP, but I'm not averse to rolling up my sleeves and getting as dirty as I need to get.
Thanks all. I've been going through the podcast series on setting up a Drupal site and they've been awesome.
You Can Learn It
Clint, you are in a fun and tough place. But, there is a lot of promise here.
First, if you know C/C++ you can learn PHP. PHP is a C/C++ like language. You can learn enough to be dangerous without too much work.
Second, you have some great opportunities here. The current site violates most of the rules of good design and is using web design practices that are out of date. You can learn more about some of the current trends at http://www.webdesignfromscratc....
The site is, also, clearly targeted at church members and people who are churched. There are over 100 millions people who are unchurched in the US. People who don't even know where to started. For someone like that, most of what is said on the site is giberish. I blogged about this recently at http://www.innovatingtomorrow....
In drupal you can give different sections of the site different looks and feel. One way to do that is with the sections module.
These are just a few thoughts....
Matt Farina
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.innovatingtomorrow.net
www.mattfarina.com
Thanks for the comments and
Thanks for the comments and the links. I agree with your comments, but I'm not sure I'll have the freedom or time to rebuild the site from the ground up at the start. I'm hopeful that if I can get the site migrated over to Drupal, then that will allow us to manage the site much more easily which will free up more time to look at making bigger changes.
I have a few specific questions, but since that is really non critique related, I'll ask those questions in the more generic Drupal forums.
Thanks again,
Clint "The Geekin' Deacon" Eaker
Webmaster - Chapel Hill Bible Church
Chapel Hill, NC
Want to share ideas?
Hi, Clint.
I'm the webmaster at the United Church of Chapel Hill, just down the road from you. I, also, have been thinking about moving to the Drupal platform. In our case, the existing site is hand built and maintained. We don't have any CMS behind it.
Our site is showing it's age. To me, Drupal looks like the best base to build on for the future. At this point, I'm still in the daydreaming and brainstorming phase. I do hope to get on Drupal, but I'm guessing that it will take 6 months to a year.
Anyway, if you'd like to share ideas, please contact me at webmaster@unitedchurch.org.
Bill Siddall
Share Ideas Here
Bill -
You can also share ideas on this forum. I just redesigned my church website from a hand coded site to a drupal based site. I find it easier to maintain on a weekly basis.
If you want to do it yourself, it is not that hard. I would start by setting up a server with a test drupal install and start creating the new site bit by bit.
John
john-simons.com
Thanks, John. I just
Thanks, John.
I just discovered the geeksandgod forums, and I'm finding my way around. I suppose I should use the drupal forum for drupal-specific questions?
I have a drupal installation that I'm prototyping with. At the moment I'm a little overwhelmed with all the different contributed modules. Give me a day or two, and I'll probably be back with some more specific questions.
Check out the Drupal podcast series
Hi Bill (and Clint) -
Just my $0.02, but I highly recommend the Drupal podcast series here at G&G (whoops - jut read the last part of your post... you have found it).
Like you, I am (was??) a C programmer, and I have certainly dived in at the deep end. (I recall someone saying something once, like: bite off more than you can chew... then chew like heck!)
I found it helpful to listen to the drupal podcasts several times (no... I'm not a slow learner!). Some of the stuff that is discussed makes more sense [is more significant] once you've gotten your hands dirty.
We are about to launch a drupal-based website connected with our Church's TV ministry, and I can honestly say that I learned a ton of stuff from the Drupal podcast series, which essentially kick-started me into that project. The G&G drupal forums also contain a wealth of information.
I'd be attending the Web 2.0 conference too if I could, but I'm from outta town...
Cheers, and hang in there!
Pete
Critique
I work for a major telecom doing web stuff (well now I project manage their SDLC for IT, but I used to be a web Architect)
Please take these comments as they are intended, as constructive criticism, you do many things right on the site, so my focus is on the changes that I perceive are needed.
Some general pointers on design (regardless of the underlying technology)
1. If you can use text instead of graphics to achieve the effect you want, do that. (I noted that the left nav bar is all graphics, but it's really just text in a font very similar to Arial).
2. Sections of should align with other items. Your "what's going on" section on your home page does this in that it aligns with the left side of the picture above it, but the far left side there are a bunch of square graphics that seem to just be floating out there not particularly aligned to anything. A better place for them might be aligned horizontally under the what's going on section of text.
3. Consistent use of fonts and font sizes to convey relative importance. The font sizes seem to vary greatly from item to item (service times vs. left menu items vs top menu items.)
4. It is unclear what the other languages are doing for you on the site. ie The Spanish says, "Welcome to Chapel Hill Bible Church" Which may be better served to say, "We have a service in Spanish" (Se ofrese un servicio en Espanol) Sorry, don't have Spanish keys enabled at the moment, so the spelling is wrong, but I'm sure someone at your church could provide you with the wording. I don't know chinese, but you may want to make sure that that is CLEARLY stating the same thing.
5. In regard to Chinese characters, those don't have to be a huge graphic. (On the main page it makes sense so that folks without languages installed know what it is supposed to look like) When they drill down to the actual Chinese content you should encode the pages as UTF-8 (with signature) Then the text would be searchable by them, they could cut and paste, etc. and it would perform better.
Both the Spanish and Chinese take you to a page with content in the language selected, but all the navigation is still English and all the links take you back to English information.
6. On sub pages, again, make consistent use of fonts. Left nav bar has different (and smaller) font size used...and is aligned in the center, which makes it harder to read, IMO.
I like that most of the left nav there under About Us replicates the drop down, however that too is inconsistent. ie Click "Newcomers" and you get 4 sub-items on the left. But if you click "Deacons" you get the full About Us menu on the left (which I think is better)
7. Breadcrumb trails. These can be hit or miss, but especially on a site like yours where you have quite a few levels of content they help the user know where they are and navigate around.
In case you don't know what I mean, I mean a link system that looks like this:
About Us : Deacons : What the deacons do
8. The use of colors should be consistent and tame. Even this site with the use of orange links is consistent. They have a few colors which are used throughout and they use them consistently. On the whole your site does as well, but on say the "Upcoming Special Events" section I want to look away. None of those colors "go" with the site as a whole (I would argue they don't go with ANY site) ;)
9. Any time you are going to be leaving your site try to let people know they will be leaving. ESPECIALLY if it's hard to get back. I went to the Fusion site and then couldn't use the browser back button to get back unless I hit it twice in a row real fast.
Thats enough for today I think. WOW, its late here.. 1:30 am
Hope you find the info helpful.
--Tony
"I can make it good, fast and cheap...pick any two."