Church Web Design Template

About this page's content

Make it easy on yourself. If your web site visitors will appreciate some of the free syndication that's available, by all means add it. The only caution is to test it for page display speed after adding syndicated content. Sometimes syndications can really slow down page display. Or is may be just a bad day at the syndicated feature's web server. Look before you leap. Or test it out for a month and ask church members to check it out and give you comments.

The images at left are just that - not the result of actual United Methodist syndications code.

Subheads

Also remember to make font sizes mean something. If you use subheads, they should be stand out from ordinary body text, but they should also be obviously smaller than the page title head font. You may want to make them look more like small headlines by using the same font for all Headline style elements on your web pages.

Alternate uses of the left column area

An alternative for the current left-column "menu area" is to have links to special topics, Religion news, syndicated news items, or other material not directly related to the page.

Another option is to use that left box area to hold links to a sub-web -- a whole series of pages sub-indexed by left-column links on your "About our church" page, for example ... You could include location info, staff names and office email addresses, your church's history (with a few nice old pictures), and your pastor's bio.

Another really cool option is to put a free Google "site-flavored search" block on a lower part of a web page -- perhaps the home page. For a sample, see http://a963333.sites.myregisteredsite.com/help.htm

A third option is to include the next week of your church calendar of events.

What would your church members and potential web site visitors want to see on the page in question?

Footers

Each web page on your site should have a footer. The footer could be under just the main text area or under the whole design area.

The items most commonly placed in the footer area are:

Full name and address of the church
A link to a web page with your disclaimer and privacy policy (Do you collect cookies? Does your web host keep statistics of any type about your visitors? Do you "harvest" people's email addresses? If someone emails the church, do you then keep their address on a list for future contacts? )
"This page last updated [Month day, year]"
An email address for the Webmaster in case of site-related questions (and/or put the email address on the contact page.

Questions about this page? | Disclaimer & Privacy Policy

Celebration United Methodist Church, 1234 Disciple Ave., Stone Mountain, GA 30000
770-111-2222, FAX 770-111-2244

This page last updated January 6, 2005

Celebration UMC