Cool Site

Ran across this site tonight. Pretty cool layout and feel. The only thing I don't like is that the text is sometimes difficult to read because they didn't darken the background quite enough. JM

Websites

They're working on a redesign of our church site right now. They're still in the first stages of it. They asked us to fill out this little survey thing answering the purpose of our site, functionality, and stuff like that. Then they asked us to list church sites that we liked. After poking around at several different churches that I like, I only found 3 sites that I liked:
Mars Hill
Origins NYC
Reston Community Church
It seems like every other site wants to show you everything that they offer right on the home page rather than just giving basic information and then allowing people to click through to find out more if they want. Hopefully we can end up with a site like Mars Hill. I just love it. JM

Home Page Maintenance

One of the tasks that I do at my job is maintain the home page for our church. It was kind of just thrown at me, but I don't mind doing it. A couple of things frustrate me about it, though. First, most of the time I have no idea what events should be posted on the home page. I try to stick with major, church-wide events, but usually since they are church-wide, they don't have an individual champion and don't have more information that I can copy text from or add a link to. So I'm stuck trying to create copy for a brief description of the event.
Second, people throw things at me and expect me to put them on the home page, even if they aren't that important. One time somebody wanted me to announce a meeting on the home page. I didn't do it, but I hate the pressure and expectation.
Third, people hand me things and expect me to create entire pages for them that either they should be creating themselves or should be having their assistant do it. We use Contribute, so it's exceptionally easy to learn. They just don't want to take the time to do it.
JM

Home Page Simplicity

I'm constantly trying to encourage my church to simplify our web page, we're making progress, but it's going to take a complete redesign in order to get there. I love Mars Hill's page. It would be tough to get more simple. Awesome work. JM