Website Brings Church’s Vision to Life
Parish Gains Inviting, Invaluable Community Resource
Santa Monica, CA (PRWEB) May 18, 2004--A usable, well designed website in the
religious community can be well nigh impossible to find. When Los Angeles’ St.
Paul the Apostle Church decided their site needed a complete redesign to better
reflect their spiritual mission, they turned to premier web development company
A Far Site Better. (http://www.afarsitebetter.com)
The warm, welcoming home
page serves as an entrance to either the new St. Paul the Apostle Church
website, or the church’s adjoining school. Colored sketches of both historic
buildings set a friendly, peaceful mood. Entering the church site, a visitor
finds a wealth of news, events, archives, and information at their fingertips —
everything from a church calendar, to archived homilies, to next week’s
readings…even an online member registration!
“The multiple forms of
navigation give the users multiple ways to find their way through the site,”
said Steven Laff, A Far Site Better president. “We coded in a drop-down list,
breadcrumbs and left menu to create a robust application.”
How It Was and
What Happened:
When the Rev. Tom Jones took over the parish several years
ago, he inherited an antiquated website. Not only did it fail to convey the
church’s overall feeling, but also it often took months to make changes or
updates.
Jones invited A Far Site Better president Steven Laff and
designer Julie Keehner over to his church for a closer look. “Religious
communities don’t normally contract high-end web development companies, but I
couldn’t stand not having a site that truly served our parishioners any longer,”
Jones said. “What made it worse is that I had never seen a site anywhere else on
the web that was remotely correct for our purposes. It was time to do it
right.”
The challenge of this project was not lost on A Far Site Better.
“We felt it was essential to show visitors just how different this Paulist
Catholic community was from the way many lay people think about the Catholic
Church,” said Laff. “They are truly a warm, open, non-judgmental and accepting
community, and we needed to make that visually obvious on every page of the
site.”
Laff and Keehner photographed the church thoroughly, spent hours
meeting with key persons in the church’s ministries, scoured church archives to
find the right way to convey the ideal message, and even had editors help the
church develop content for their web site.
Are church officials happy
with the end result? To merely say “yes” would be an understatement. “The
feedback on the site (http://www.sp-apostle.org) has been just what we’d hoped for,
with its bright feel and positive voice,” said Jones. “Many people have gone out
of their way to compliment us extensively. The layout just makes sense. This is
especially important for our senior parishioners, who can be rather
web-wary.”
Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, the days of waiting
for a third party to make vital page changes and updates are over. Using A Far
Site Better’s web-based Content Management System, the church staff finally has
the power to edit its calendars, bulletins, events, and even the priests’
sermons online, and on time. “We are finally experiencing the promise and power
of the internet by making the constant changes we need ourselves, in a matter of
minutes,” Jones said. “It’s simply awesome.”
About St. Paul the Apostle
Catholic Parish:
There are currently about 2,100 households registered in the
parish. The adjoining school has an enrollment of 540 students. The Paulist
Fathers and Daughters of Mary and Joseph continue to staff the parish, but are
now joined by dozens of dedicated men and women who volunteer.
About A
Far Site Better:
A Far Site Better’s charter is to improve and revitalize, or
in some cases, resuscitate a company’s existing website and online profiles. By
analyzing a company’s needs, especially in light of previous experience, A Far
Site Better takes their clients to the next level. Services include evaluation,
high support, and customized content management tools so that the client’s own
personnel can easily make changes, updates, and manage their own site.
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/5/prweb126192.htm