Use a Map
The stereotypical male will have one foot in the grave
before he will use a map or stop and ask directions. If your Parish
Webmaster qualifies as one of these individuals, you may want to
have a heart-to-heart talk. A Parish Web site that is designed
without a clear, well-thought out structure in mind will most likely
end up being a chaotic mess. The overwhelming majority of web
surfers do not have the patience for chaos when they are looking for
information.
Navigation Map
Mapping out a Web site does not have to be rocket science,
especially when we are talking about a Parish Web site as opposed to
a large eCommerce site. I have laid out a basic Parish Web site with
a pencil and a piece of notebook paper. I have used 3x5 cards
representing the major pages or topic areas, spread-out on my living
room floor (this works well if you want to easily visualize
different site structures). And I have also used the navigation view
of my design program to add pages, lay them out, move them around
and finalize the basic structure. When designing a small- to
medium-sized Parish Web site, I suggest using the method with which
you feel most comfortable.
Storyboarding
If you are more artistically inclined (or have access to
someone who is), you can utilize storyboards to help layout not only
the site map, but some of the look and feel as well. This is
basically the way in which many movies are planned... especially
animated features.
Basically, the designer creates rough sketches
representing each of the major pages. These pages are then placed in
the hierarchical order in which they would be found on the Parish
Web site.
This is a much more "visual" means of mapping
your site, and may work well when you need to present your ideas to
parishioners and staff members who are not as familiar with the
internet.
Layout Your Templates
Virtually any popular Web site you go to will have a
fairly standard "look and feel". No matter where you go on
the site, you will encounter the same basic format and page
structure. This is not only due to the designers desire to
"brand" the site, it also makes it much easier for a
visitor to navigate (the menus are in the same place on every page,
etc.), and it makes it MUCH easier to update content.
On most commercial sites, the content on the web pages
actually updates itself automatically. The page templates are set-up
to grab content from a database and display it as part of the Web
page. If not for this automated functionality, updating the content
on a portal site such as Yahoo! would be far to labor-intensive. In
almost all instances, a Parish Web site does not need such database
connectivity. It should, however, have basic templates for all of
the standard pages. Once these templates have been designed, adding
and updating content will be a breeze.
Home Page
The Home Page of your Parish Web site may not be a
template, per se, but it could be the basis for all of your other
pages. The way in which you choose to layout your navigation bars
and menus, the title style and location, your Parish logo or
graphical theme, the color scheme of your Parish Web site... all of
these elements may be first encountered on your Home Page.
One thing we at the ParishWebmaster recommend that you avoid
doing is creating a "Welcome" page. An example of this
would be a business Web site where the URL takes you to a page that
says something like, "XYZ, Inc. Building the Infrastructure of
Tomorrow". Nothing else is on the page except some fancy
graphics... perhaps an animated GIF or a Flash video... and a button
that says "Enter". If your Parish decides to do this, it
is our opinion that it is a waste of time... yours, and your
visitor's. As with everything else you do with your Parish Web site,
ask "How does this move us closer to achieving our goals?"
You will probably conclude that a "Welcome" page is
nothing more than a hurdle between you and your visitors.
Your URL should point to a Home Page that provides
important information about the content of your Parish Web site:
what your visitor can expect to find, the best ways for visitors to
utilize your site, and perhaps information that will help navigate
it as well.
Main Topic Area Page
The second tier of your Parish Web site should be almost
like a home page to the particular topic area. If you have taken our
advice and set up your site according to demographics and needs, as
opposed to mirroring the Parish org chart, then these tier-2 pages
might include "Families", "Singles",
"Teens", "Non-Christians", etc... Each one of
these areas should have a starting page based on the Main Topic Area
Page template. Once again, this consistency provides a number of
benefits, including making it easier for visitors to look
around. Maintaining some level of consistency also helps your
visitors to feel more comfortable as they explore the different
areas of your Parish Web site.
The only exception to this template approach is if a
particular topic area has a Web site of its own. If your Parish has
the resources to maintain a Young Adult Ministry Web site, for
instance, then this "child" web can have an
"identity" of its own. A child web, regardless of whether
or not it is based upon the same templates as the main Parish Web
site, can still be completely integrated into the main site via
hyperlinks.
Doorway Page
A doorway page is one that is specifically designed to
improve search engine placement. It is closely related to the Main
Topic Area page, except that it is crafted with a particular set of
keywords and phrases in mind. For smaller Parish Web sites, it may
be wise to craft your Main Topic Area pages as doorway pages... and
kill two birds with one stone.
Crafting an effective doorway page can be almost an art
form in itself. In fact, larger sites have doorway pages designed to
place high with specific search engines! The topic of doorway
pages is one that will be covered in greater detail on the
ParishWebmaster.
Content Page
The template for the Content Page is fairly
straightforward. These are the receptacles for your articles,
stories, etc... and the more common they are, the easier it is to
update old pages or add new ones. This is the template with which
you should feel the most comfortable, for it is going to be, by far,
the most common template used on your Parish Web site.
Link / Archive Page
Many Web sites like to have Link or Archive Pages
available for their visitors. I recommend using the same template
for both, for they really only differ in regards to the destination
at the end of the hot-links your provide. When we refer to a
"link page", we mean a page which contains links to
(mainly) other resources outside of your Parish Web site. When we
refer to an "archive page", on the other hand, we mean a
page which contains links to past articles located on your Parish
Web site. The commonalties include (i) a name or title, (ii) the
exact URL, and (iii) a description of what the reader should expect
at the other end of the link. There are few things more frustrating
than clicking-through a link, waiting for the page to download and
then discovering that the content is not what was expected. Setting
up a good template and sticking to it will help alleviate most of
those problems.
Printable Page
A final common template is to accommodate people who
prefer to simply print articles and other information so that they
may read it offline. Printing a standard Web page, although
relatively easy, is usually a great waste of paper. There is far too
much space taken up by menus, nav bars, logos, etc. and the article
then seems inordinately long. The other problem arises when the
article has been written in sections, which are then connected by
hot links. A person wanting to print and read the article offline
would have to print each of the sections individually.
The answer is to set-up two versions of popular articles.
An online version replete with all of the trappings mentioned above,
and a printable version. The printable version should be a single
column, set at 600 pixels wide. If the article is multi-part,
spanning two or more pages of your Parish Web site, the entire
article should be contained in a single printable version. This
single version should be accessible from any page of the article.
Also remember that none of the menus or nav bars that are
ever-present in the other templates will not be included in the
printable template. They are not necessary because you will set-up
this printable page to open in a new browser window. Thus, when the
reader has printed the page, they simply close the new window to
pick-up where they left off.
The other option for printable pages is to compose and
layout the articles in your word processor, and convert them to PDF
files. The Portable Document Format preserves all of your original presentation
so that the reader sees the document exactly the way you intended it
to be. The only drawback is actually two-fold: (i) you must have
Adobe Acrobat software in order to convert your files to PDF; and
(ii) your visitor must have Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to view
the file. These drawbacks are relatively minor, though. Adobe
Acrobat can be licensed for less than $200 and Acrobat Reader can be
downloaded for free from the Adobe Web site:
<http://www.adobe.com/>
By setting up these templates in advance, you will save
yourself countless headaches on down the road. You will also create
a much more user-friendly, consistent look and feel for your Parish
Web site. |
