Once again, I have chosen to participate in Pink For October, to honor my mother who fought breast cancer bravely, but ultimately succumbed to it when it metastasized into her brain a year and a half ago.  I encourage you to do your part in honoring and helping those many who have been affected by this ailment.

Yesterday, my father lost his job as his company did not get their contract renewed.  Please pray for him, as he's taking it pretty hard, especially with everything that's gone on the last 15 months.  I know he'll land on his feet, but unemployment is never a good place to be in.

Thanks for your prayers, and if you know of a need for .NET or C# developers in the Pittsburgh area, let me know and I can pass it along to my dad.

It may have been a few weeks, but I'm back with the fourth installment in our free website critique series as we take a look at Victory Harvest Church (VHC from hereon out) of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Again, I'll be taking the same approach as the previous entries in the series, and I would encourage you to leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Appearance

• What's done well?
  • Banner Image - I like how the church name and the wheat field image tie together.  It leaves an impression on the visitor.
  • Cleanliness - The presentation of VHC's website is almost a minimalist approach.  Not that it's bland, because it really is a very aesthetically pleasing site, and it really works well.  You're just not inundated with information, but everything you need is readily accessible.  It's just a nice balance of form and function.
• What needs work?
  • Banner Image - Yes, this feature falls in both the plus and minus.  For one, the text is a part of the image (making it unreadable by screen readers and search engines).  Secondly, the image is HUGE, taking up almost the entire screen on a monitor in 800x600 resolution (which, I know, is not the current design standard, but I do want to emphasize just how big it is).
  • Just A Little Plug For Yahoo! - I see this a lot, but I find it simply inexcusable for an organization to use e-mail addresses that don't match their domain name.  I know those are harsh words, but it just appears unprofessional.  It would be like getting a letter from your insurance company with the claims agents personal return address label one it (ya know, the ones with the puppy pictures).  Even if your web host doesn't provide any e-mail accounts with their service, there are free services like Gmail for Your Domain that allow you to set up e-mail addresses under your existing domain name with relative ease.
• Suggestions
  • First, see if there is a way to reduce the size of your banner image without losing the impact of it.
  • Second, use standard HTML text to overlay the banner image so that it is available to screen readers and search engines. 
  • Third, set up e-mails that work under your domain name.

Organization

• What's done well?
• Plain & Simple - It's not fancy.  It's not complicated.  It just works.  It's the KISS principle embodied.
• What needs work?
• Coming Soon? - Can't say that I'm a fan of the Coming Soon! pages.  If a page is not completed, then it should not be linked to on your site.  Feel free to comment it out in your code if you want to keep the link handy, but keep it out of public view.
• I Didn't Even Know I Was Leaving - As you probably remember, I'm not a fan of links that look like internal links that take you to another website.  This time around it's the link for "Victory Academy" that got me.  These links should not be a part of your main links, but maybe broken out into a "Partner Organizations" category that would indicate you are leaving the current site.
• Suggestions
  • Remove the links to unfinished pages until they're ready to "go live".
  • Like I mentioned above, try to make it clear when a link on your site leads to another site, even if it is affiliated with your church.

Utility

• What's done well?
• Here's What's Going On - How I love seeing service and event information on the main page of a church website.  It might be the primary information that one is looking for when they visit a church website, and it helps to have it readily available.  Nice work!
• Making Use of Tools - The use of the Google Calendar and it's clean integration into the site is very nice.
• What needs work?
• All Dressed Up And Nowhere To Go - While the use of the Google Calendar is nice, how come it appears empty?  I had to skip ahead to late May just to find something.  It's probably a good idea to also add your reoccurring events (service times, bible studies, adult education classes, etc.) to the calendar as well.  Otherwise it gives the impresion that not much is going on at the church.
• Where Am I? - I did finally find the location of the church buried in the introduction paragraph and on the Contact Us page, but I question why isn't the entire church address on the site's main page.  It's addition could definitely help when it comes to search engine performance, especially if someone searches for "church in baton rouge".
• Suggestions
  • Add your reoccurring events to your Google Calendar to make it clear that there's stuff going on at your church.
  • Add your address to at least your main page.  It could easily be added to all pages in the footer section.

While Victory Harvest Church's website doesn't pack a lot of the "WOW!" factor, it is a well-designed, appealing and functional site.  There are a few features which I'd clean up, but overall it's a respectable presence on the web that does a nice job of presenting the church.  It appears that there's more to come, and I hope that those features can be integrated without losing the current balance of the site.

Well, you may have noticed that I haven't had many updates to the site recently, and I've gotten a little behind on the critiques. Don't worry, I'm still working on them, and they're coming soon. I've just been a little distracted... Spring has finally come to Pittsburgh, and I've definitely been taking advantage of it to the detriment of my blogging time. My dog has definitely appreciated the long walks though!

Internet Evangelism Day is coming up in just two short weeks, and it's time to start thinking about how we can promote the use of the Internet in evangelism.

Granted, the best and most effective way to evangelize is to create strong personal relationships that can be used as a basis for discussing God and our faith.  However, the development of the social elements on the web have made it easier for us to harness the technology of the Internet and build these relationships, sometimes with people we've never met in real life.

I'd encourage you to work with your church to either add an announcement in your service, or put a flyer (PDF) in your bulletin, highlighting the different ways the Internet can be used to spread the love of God throughout cyberspace.

Well, it's time for the third entry in our free website critique series, this time we're looking at the site of Metropolitan Baptist Church (a.k.a. The Met) in Houston, Texas.

Again, I'll be taking the same approach as the previous entries, and I would encourage you to leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Appearance

• What's done well?
  • Design - The Met has an extremely attractive design and layout that is easy to follow, and that gives it a very professional appearance.  It's definitely a lot slicker looking than I could hope to make on my own.
  • Coherence - The site also sticks to it's theme throughout the site, with little to no deviation.  All the images fit the styling of the site, but stand up on their own.  They manage to pull off the trick of being noticed, but not standing out.
• What needs work?
  • Ummm...
• Suggestions
  • Honestly, the site is amazing looking (and actually one of the reasons I chose to critique it).  They've taken the extra steps to make sure everything works together, and all uses of tools like Flash are well integrated and definitely add to the site.

Organization

• What's done well?
  • Divide & Conquer - Like Christ The King, the breakdown of main menu topics with sub-topics is clear and easy to follow.
  • Topic Volatility - Over a span of several visits, it's easy to see that The Met's main page gets updated frequently.  On their page, they have links to events that are around the corner, and future events that need to be addressed now (i.e. camp and VBS).  I'm sure keeping the information current both assists members and keeps them coming back to see what else is going on.
• What needs work?
  • Menu Consistency - I know, I already gave props to the menu in general, but the "Ministries" portion doesn't sit right with me.  While the rest of the menu items are links, this one isn't, and causes a big, black drop-down menu that doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the stylings of the site.
  • We Really Want You To Listen - While having links in the footer of each page to the church's contacts and calendar of events is probably both pertinent and useful, I think the other three links for sermon audio on each page is a little much.  These should probably stick to your Media Library page.
  • Did I Stay Or Did I Go? - Two things I noticed about the "Quick Links" sidebar that I noticed on most pages:  (1) Not all the links stay within the site, even though it looks like they should (mainly the Rehobeth links) and (2) the links in this section often take me to pages that do not contain the page I came from in their "Quick Links".  For better overall site flow, I'd use the policy of "if I can get there through a link, I should be able to get back through a link".
• Suggestions
  • Work on a few of the organizational inconsistencies you seem to have in the site.  In the end, they'll make for a better navigational flow to your site as a whole.

Utility

• What's done well?
  • There's Something Going On - No visitor can miss that there's a lot going on, and it definitely seems to be a focus of the church to promote these happenings.  It shows a liveliness and vibrancy for the church that I hope it fulfills in real life.
  • Event Details - Not only are there dates, times and locations for events, but there are also individual pages with descriptions and details on them.  That's a feature I really appreciate.
• What needs work?
  • Image Bloat - While the site is very visually appealing, it does suffer from some apparent image bloat.  Most of the header images in the site's sub-sections (like The Weekend page) loaded up very slowly for me, and I'm using a cable modem connection.  The image file sizes don't seem too awful, so I'm not sure if it's the images themselves or your web host, but something likely needs to be addressed.  I can only imagine the experience on a dial-up connection, which you still have to account for.
  • PDF Links - Yes, this is nitpicky, and I've mentioned it previously: If one of your links requires a special plug-in, like a PDF document, then it should be noted in or by the link.  To me "download the...insert" is not descriptive enough, as the link could be to an image, text document, or any other kind of file.
  • What About My Scroll Wheel? - Another picky thing, but the scrollbar on the News & Events section on the main page doesn't work with my mouse's scroll wheel.  While not a deal-killer, it's an inconvenience to someone like me who uses it frequently.  In addition, if you tab through the links in that section, the content moves while the scrollbar does not.
• Suggestions
  • Most importantly, take a look at the load times for the images on your site and how to improve them without sacrificing image quality.  This will improve the experience for all visitors.

Metropolitan Baptist Church has a fantastic website that is extremely appealing and functional.  It's a goal we should all strive for.  But it still has a few flaws floating around, which is a nice reminder to us all that our jobs are never done.  There's always work to be done when it comes to our church websites.

Today, If Jesus Had A Website, known for it's Christian propaganda, was purchased by the "Great Leader", dictator Kim Jong-Il of North Korea.  Jong-Il said he plans to rename the site "If Kim Jong-Il Had A Webiste", with the subheader "It Doesn't Matter, Because Now He Has One and You Will Bow To It's Awesome Power!"

Former owner, Greg Nilsen, of Pittsburgh, PA, was asked how the purchase came about despite the glaring conflict in interest.  "All I have to say is that you should never accept his challenge to a game of golf.  It looked like he could barely walk, but the man made 6 hole-in-ones!  I'm happy all I lost was the site," he stated.

When reached for comment, Jong-Il said he plans to use the site to exhibit his talents as the best writer, blogger, reporter, photographer and web designer ever to grace the earth.

It may sound funny, but you probably want to spy on your church's website, especially if you're in charge of it.

"So, I should essentially spy on myself?", you may be asking.

Not quite, but pretty close.  It's not really you or the content of your website that you want to spy on, but what your site is doing on the internet:

• Are people linking to your website?
• If they are, what are they linking to?
• And, what are they saying about it?
• Is your church being referenced in news or blogs, but not linking to your website?

For a church, this is all important information to have, but how can we go about acquiring it?

Google Alerts

Google Alerts allows you to have the latest new search results for a particular search term sent directly to your e-mail.  For this site, I monitor both "if jesus had a website" and "ifjesushadawebsite.net" as search terms so that I can be notified of new links to the site and any references to the site in any other manner.  For your church website, I'd recommend both the basic unit of your website URL (i.e. "abcd.com") and the name of your church as search terms.  In addition, if your church goes by any distinctive nicknames, I'd create alerts for them as well.

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools can not only help your church website's presence in search engines through the use of sitemaps, but over time it will also give you a multitude of stats and information to learn how your site is referenced.  This information includes search terms used that find your site, page access errors or problems, and the types of links on your site and where they go.

While you won't have to monitor these tools a closely as the alerts above, they're good for a periodic check of where you are with your site.

Bloglines Search

For those of you who use Bloglines as a RSS reader, you can also take advantage of the Bloglines Search feature.  It is similar to Google Alerts, but it focuses simply on the content of blogs, and seems to provide more up-to-date results.

A combination of these and other similar tools can really help you understand where your church website situates itself in the great expanse of the world wide web.  With that knowledge, you can determine if you're where you want to be, and if not, a course of action to get there.

Yes, this is a little belated, but a happy Easter to everyone out there.  I hope that you were able to take both time out to thank our Savior for all He did for us on the cross, and spend some time with family on this holiday, as I was able to today.

Sometimes there are just good reasons to stay away from the computer all day...

As a sports fan, one of the blogs I like to read is Uni Watch by Paul Lucas of ESPN.  If you're not familiar with the site, Paul describes it as "The Obsessive Study of Athletics Aesthetics".  Basically what he and a few interns do is observe and comment on sports uniforms and accessories.  These will be anything from uniform redesigns and logo changes to name misspellings and equipment malfunctions.

The reason that I like it is that it collects the details and minuteness that some people overlook, but seems to stick out like a sore thumb to me.  In fact, part of me thinks that's why I started this site.  I had seen just too many church websites where my reaction was "yes, it's a website, but this, this, this and this could be changed to make it much better".

What we can learn from many of these uniform examples are ways we can try to spot check our own church websites:

If You Make A Mistake, People Will Notice

Check all your spellings and other details.  Otherwise people my not take you seriously.

If Something's Out Of Place, It Will Distract Some People

It may not seem like much, and it may not bother you, but little things out of place will drive some people crazy.

People Will Notice If Something Is Missing

Just to be safe, I'll clarify that Miguel Tejada's normal number is 10.  If people are expecting to find something (i.e. service times), they'll notice if they can't find them easily.

If You Look Bad, People Will Let You Know

They may not say it to your face, but people will say something to someone if they find something repulsive.  Do what you can to avoid being the butt of some joke.

If Things Don't Work Right, People Will Notice (And May Complain)

Make sure your site is fully functional, since you don't want to get caught with your pants down!