Thu 21 Feb 2008
New Site Launched
Posted by Andrew Mitry under Web/Tech
Launched a new version of our church website today using Drupal. Still needs a few tweaks, but we decided to go ahead and cut it over. Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
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- Thursday, Feb 21st, 2008 at 6:37 pm
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February 22nd, 2008 at 1:09 am
i went to the website earlier today and hardly recognized it. i think it’s really nicely laid out and well organized. i like the newsfeed and the other things like the calendar and such. it’s nice to not see so much orange! such new and pastel-looking pretty colors make the website attractive looking. take no offense to this, since this is just my opinion but i think the website is a little too impersonal.
February 22nd, 2008 at 10:59 am
I agree that the site is too impersonal, we are hoping to get a several shots of real people from the congregation up on the site to give it a warmer, more personal feel. Trick is to find good pictures
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:59 am
Good work! Marked improvement over the last version! Way to go man.
Drupal 6 looks hot. I’m hoping to find a little time to tinker with it soon.
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Thanks David, yea Drupal 6 looks pretty sweet. We actually launched with Drupal 5.7. I didn’t want to deal with module incompatibilities, figured it was easier to wait until the developers caught up.
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Nice step forward Andrew. The color scheme is much better than the recent one. But the issue is not the color scheme because it ould have enn easily changed by chaning the template. It’s the power of Drupal that makes this more advanced than Joomla.
Good luck and keep on.
February 23rd, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Nice job Andrew!
It’s more comfortable to the eye, but still I believe if there was some contrast in colors, it would be less faint.
The former one was less difficult to use though, for example there was a direct link to small groups and all the resources were there both arabic and english. Also as I was trying to log on, a window appeared with a “close” tab and that’s it. Once you click on that, you lose the site.
I think it needs more refinement for ease of use and God Bless.
February 23rd, 2008 at 11:15 pm
i like the new look for the website, it’s really great job, God Bless
February 24th, 2008 at 8:02 am
Ihab: Yes, Drupal does allows us much more flexibility with the site, the taxonomy system is quite powerful.
Mona: I agree that the colors/contrast still need quite a bit of tweaking - I still have a few more options to try that may give us a better look. We haven’t moved over the small group resources yet, God willing that will be done this week. Thanks for the heads up on the small group link, that is fixed now.
Mina: Thank God!
February 24th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Nice to see you finally got drupal up and running i remember you talking to me about it about a year ago. it will take a little time to get used to but great layout and design.
it has a different feel than the old site. the old one was very organized and the columns were very straight forward but the new site because of its 4 columns, lack of a border around the borders, and lots of text it feels more crowded and a little less welcoming. also the old site had the gray blank space all the way around which feels more controlled than a universal background.
Great idea to use Google Apps. feels nice to not see orange everywhere.
February 24th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Thanks Michel, we are trying to tweak the layout to flow better - borders are a good idea if I can get the CSS working right.
February 29th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Nice job and a lot of efforts…
Fonts need to be tweaked a little bit as all look the same and may be some bullets for every topic and if we can get the most recent event to appear first on the updated news.
Thanks again for the hard work, God bless you.
March 1st, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Thanks Peter, I am working on the fonts/colors/menus (you’ll notice minor changes here and there over the next few days), hopefully it will come together soon. I fixed the updated news.
March 3rd, 2008 at 11:40 am
you said that you need some new pictures for the site… try coptic icons. it gives a more homey feel in my opinion and it’s what makes orthodox sermons and the orthodox bookstore website really approachable
March 3rd, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Hi Jasmine, We didn’t use as many icons because we want the site to feel welcoming to both Orthodox Christians and to those who are not. We are working on creating a section of the site that introduces iconography as well as other highlights of Orthodoxy and explains why we worship the way we do. Thanks for the input.
March 7th, 2008 at 2:52 am
I REALLY LIKED THE PICTURES YOU HAVE PUT OF THE PASSION….I thought it was pretty appropriate for the events we are living in the church right now..however, I was a bit overwhlmed since everything was underlined..and closely put it was hard to find certain things i was lookig for….thank you for allowing me to share my humble openion and God bless you for all the hard work you do…..
March 7th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Thanks Marian, I took out the underline formatting on the middle right column, I hope that helps. We are still working on ways to tweak the layout.
March 8th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Nice website Andrew You really are a person that knows how to handle computers. Let your knowledge of computers, make better technology.
Anyways, nice website
March 9th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Andrew and the IT crew! Great job!
I’m loving the direct link to the live broadcast! YOU KNOW I’m loving it hehe 
Bless you.
March 10th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
The arabic button doesn’t work, and its a very good idea to have an arabic version of the website but on most websites they’ll have the arabic button written in arabic for the people who really cant read english.
i also liked how there is now streaming from the gym, but right now 7:52PM on 3/10 none of them work, this comes up:
Windows Media Player cannot connect to the server. The server name might not be correct, the server might not be available, or your proxy settings might not be correct.
i think this is the first time i have encountered this problem from the streaming.
There is also 2 Home buttons right next to each other if your on anything but the Home page.
It would also be nice to control the speed/be able to pause the slide show on the home page, on Lovers OF Christ they use Slide.com which can also have a video or audio. i now see that what you used to make the slide show (JW Image Rotator) can be user controlled.
I really like how you post the quiet time in english and arabic. it may be good to add a button to say what quiet time is for new members.
March 13th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Thanks Michel. We are working on translating more of the content to Arabic - and maybe even Spanish in the future. When the Arabic link is clicked, any page that is translated will automatically appear in Arabic.
Live streaming might not be working when there are no services.
Good point on the the dual Home links, hopefully we will come up with a better solution as we tweak the navigation.
We thought about adding user control to the slide show but we wanted to keep it as simple as possible and usually there will be no more than three slides in the rotation.
March 21st, 2008 at 8:17 am
Good job Andrew….
Is it possible to switch between the “Latest News” and the “Daily Quiet Time”? It is easier to find out what is going on once you launched to the website.
God bless you for all the hard work you do.
March 21st, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Thanks Heidi, we’ve found that the Quiet Time sections gets the most traffic (by far), that is why we give it better placement.
April 5th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Nice job Andrew!
I would like to be able to go to “Small Groups” directly from the main Menue (on the left side).