Comments on: There’s No Need to Feel Bad About Your Site

By: Anna Belle

Anna Belle — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 10:43:24 +0000

Thanks, Dan. This is soooo true. I would add that for the poor webmasters who cannot manage even your #1 point, that they try to assess as best they can how much this is really their doing and personal responsibility. If there is not much they can do about it, I advise quitting as the webmaster. It’s not worth it. Yes, the site will suffer even more, but hopefully only for a few months until leadership gets their act together.

In my experience, once in a while (maybe 20% of the time) it is, in fact, the webmaster’s responsibility that the site is not functioning well, but more often it’s despite the webmaster’s best efforts. Your church is very lucky to have a minister who gets it and is supportive of web efforts. My church is similarly blessed with a leadership that is supportive. And I should add, our site is far from a model, but it’s good enough (using your excellent criteria) and should improve with a judicious redesign.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 01:59:00 +0000

One other point that might save some anxiety — a church Web site should reflect the kind of church you really are. If you’re a big church with lots of staff and money, my feeling is that you should have a site that reflects that. But I’m in a small church, where we don’t have much money, and all our volunteers are maxed out, but we’re freindly and fun. So we have a site that’s technically clunky (a little ugly, the CSS doesn’t always work well, and it’s not 100% valid XHTML) but we try to make it friendly-looking and fun to read — which is a pretty accurate representation of who we are.

In short, I think we should feel good about our Web sites when (1) the site accurately reflects our church, and the people who show up at church after seeing our site feel immediately at home — and (2) when our current members and friends can find the info they need. And (1) is the most important for me….

By: Anna Belle

Anna Belle — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 13:27:18 +0000

Very sound advice, Mark. I guess when you do feel good about a site, rejoice — especially with all those who make it possible.

By: Mark Alves

Mark Alves — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 04:01:43 +0000

I’d tell the emailer to take heart – even web teams at large companies with dedicated design staff often feel bad about their websites. Let your desire for a better church website motivate you to improve it, but also remember that most church members are willing to cut volunteer site producers some slack. Focus on making the basics work and then add visual improvements later.

By: Anna Belle

Anna Belle — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 00:24:47 +0000

Chris — You’re right. That’s exactly what I thought and did after inheriting one disaster of a site. Fortunately it was small — under 100 pages. Another time I inherited a several thousand page disaster. Needless to say, no matter how much I wanted to take care of it, it took time.

Have you seen the The UU Web Templates? They might work for the scenario you describe.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 15:19:13 +0000

“There’s no need to feel bad about your site.”

Good advice, but I’m not sure there’s always a choice. I remember doing my initial diagnosis when I first inherited our church’s site. All I could think was “I have to fix this. I really have to fix this. I really have to fix this, RIGHT NOW.”

I know Dan Harper has proposed having a group of UU geeks maintain a standard Drupal installation so our churches can get a content management system running quickly. It might also make sense to have someone (UUA? Someone else?) maintain a bare-bones, ‘good enough’ fill-in-the-blanks church home page template, just so a new webmaster can stop the bleeding (and fretting) quickly.