Posted by alan mccoll on March 3, 2011 at 7:32pm
I've been noodling with Drupal for awhile. Here is my first serious effort at a church website http://goodwillbaptist.org; done for the church that my family now attends since we just moved to this area (Richmond, VA). It's done in Drupal 6 with views, cck, panels, gmap, lightbox2, views rotator, nice menu, etc and a custom theme built on Zen 960.
Comments and criticism?
Comments
Congratulations - Looks good
But, and maybe its just me, but the google map thing on the front page looks out of place or wrong somehow.
Thanks, Spark_man. I wonder
Thanks, Spark_man. I wonder about the footer map also. My thought is that a visitor might quickly find the location of the church. It does look kind of awkward, though. I'm on the fence.
Removed the map block, looks
Removed the map block, looks much better.
I think so too.
But I hope you didn't do it just on my account.
No. Had others mention it. I
No. Had others mention it. I really do like it better. Besides, there's a big Directions graphic that links to a map already on the front page.
Kudos
Great work!!!! It is me or are the fonts just massive. I'd tone down the font sizes on the "entire" site a bit, including the menu, headings and body text. The fonts are so big, i can not only see them, i can hear them as well. That's just my honest opinion.
contact
i did not see a way to contact the webmaster. i always like that ability to be available.
Branjawn, what's the best way
Branjawn, what's the best way to incorporate "contact the webmaster" on a client's site? is it best to add it as a category on the contact page or a separate link somewhere?
Where to place "Contact the Webmaster"? It depends
Excalibur, I would always put the "webmaster" link in the footer, but when you're dealing with a client's site, how I would do it depends upon your specific role.
Are you the person who does all the updates? Hopefully not, if you've created a highly functional site in Drupal and trained them to maintain it. But if you are, I would add "Designed and maintained by [your business name and a link to your site]" at the bottom of the footer. Don't put it in the body of the Contact Us page, because you're not them.
Did you train one of them to handle the routine maintenance of the site? If so, then I would consider that person to be the webmaster. I would also center that link at the very bottom of the footer: "Problems with our site? E-mail our webmaster." The word "webmaster" would link to an e-mail address associated with the site: webmaster[at]church.org, for example. No matter what the individual's e-mail is, people are e-mailing the role, not that person. Forward that e-mail to their personal account. And I would add a "Webmaster," linking to the webmaster e-mail address, to the "Contact Us" page.
Exception: If the site has a rich footer (a footer like the one used with this church's site) and one of the columns is contact links, then I would add "Webmaster," linked to the e-mail address, to the bottom of that column.
In either of these cases, I would center at the very bottom of the footer, "Designed by [your business name and a link to your site]."
If, as in this case, you're doing the design as a member of the church, I personally would not add the "Designed by" link in either case. Unless you recruit someone else into that role, you would be the "trained person" who gets all the e-mail sent to webmaster[a]church.org.
Thanks Cliff
Thanks for this detailed insight Cliff. I design & developed my church site as a member of the church (so it's non-paid/pro bono). However, i have a web dev business site. And i've been contemplating putting "Site by Excalibur" with link at the bottom right area of the footer that holds nothing right now. (Copyrights, privacy, etc are on the left).
Will this be considered exploitative or shady on my part? It's a big church and I am hoping i can get business through referrals from the site. Is this a no-no?
Not necessarily — check with the church
If I were leading your church, my inclination would be to say, "Go ahead." It's small compensation for the service rendered. (And a donation of services isn't a tax-deductible contribution, because you would have to count the money you would have earned as income, too, so that would make it a wash. That's not how to complete the tax return, but that's the logic behind the law.)
This is one of those cases where asking permission should be a slam-dunk for getting a "Yes," but doing it without asking could be perceived as being presumptuous.
Let me know how it turns out. Oh, and enjoy DrupalCon. I'm envious!
Great result for a first site!
Great result for a first site!
On the font size issue, there's no right answer. Having built dozens of sites with different clients and designers, the one thing people disagree on at least half the time is the right font size. As a general rule, younger people have brilliant eye-sight and are used to reading text on postage-stamp-sized devices, so are very comfortable with tiny fonts (and get bored / are too lazy to move their eyes more than a few cm/inches to read the whole text. Older people (and I'm beginning to 'empathise' more with them!) have reducing eye-sight and need bigger fonts and higher contrast - I don't mean they want a 'high-vis' option for 'sight-impaired' visitors - just that wisdom and eye-sight seem to travel on opposite sides of the highway!
I'm not a designer, and I liked my first impression of the design, but the thing that jarred a bit was the light-blue used for the drop-down menus and as a glow around various rounded boxes. Navy blue, greys and 'gold' seem to work together well, but not the light-blue.
Otherwise a really nice site, well done!
Andy
Thanks for all your comments
Thanks for all your comments and great input.
Excalibur, I toned down the fonts a bit. It wasn't really noticeable at high resolution, but once you got below 1280 it really showed. It was easy to change site-wide. I'm sure you all know this, but in case someone else is reading, a font-size statement in the body statement of your css file given in pixels, then all other font-size references given in em, (relative). Changing the pixel size in the body changes all font sizes site-wide in a relative fashion.
Andy, thanks for pointing out the sky-blue thing. I'm not a designer and really struggle with color schemes. And, I didn't notice the "glow" you were talking about. A quick look at the css for custom-panel-class class revealed an odd color choice for the shadow in the -moz-box-shadow statements. I also darkened the background of the drop-down menu. I will add a "webmaster" link when I get time.
Thanks again. This really underscores the beauty of the Open Source community; many pairs of eyes looking at stuff and making suggestions.
Tools to help with color
Hi, Alan! Beautiful design and a wonderful job of showing the many different ways to connect to your church. Newcomers and members alike should benefit from the information you've made available.
About the fonts, I think the grey characters in the footer links might be easier to read on smaller screens if they were roman (that is, plain) instead of bold. (They are bold, aren't they? It's hard for me to tell.) I'm not absolutely sure, but give that a try and see how it works.
As for colors, and specifically for the problem you encountered, of getting enough contrast, check the Color and Contrast section of our Theming Guide. It gives an overview of a number of free tools that help you solve that problem. Some of them are simple. Some are more complex. One is bound to work for you.
Looking for a drupal theme for my local church
Allan - great work on your church site- its beautiful.
My church is currently in need of a website overhaul. Could you either design one for us or point me to a similar theme? We are a church of 70-100 members.
Thanks!
bomett, Thanks, it seems to
bomett,
Thanks, it seems to be working well and people are actually using it!
I am currently working on a new site for the Eastern Region of Awana. This is my first Drupal 7 attempt. I'll post a link when there is more to it.
They have several hundred records of church info that need to be migrated so that it can be used with a search / display as pushpins on a Google Map. I'm looking at the Feeds and Location Feeds modules. I love the fact that Drupal has so many modules available.
Send me a note and we can discuss your website mccoll(dot)alan(at)gmail(dot)com where (dot) = . and (at) = @
Al