Faith and Web

Have you seen the new Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) website? After five long years of hard work, it was released into the Web this afternoon. You can still see its predecessor at archive.uua.org, where the UUA has cleverly stashed all of the now old pages in case of need.

Were the hundreds of thousands of hours put into this effort worth it? While it’s still too early to be certain, I’d be willing to bet the family farm on it – and I’m not a betting sort. Until today the Greek Orthodoxs had my favorite denominational site. But now the UUA has raised the bar for large faith-based websites. It’s elegant, it’s easy to navigate (especially for a site of 20,000+ pages) and it gives an instant sense of the spirit behind the faith.

Then there are the little touches – the things that make all the difference. Embedded throughout the site you will find quotes. Many inspire. All are thought-provoking and say something about this faith. But most amazing of all, they are contextual.

My favorite examples of the quotes-in-context are the pages about the site itself – in the section only geeks like me will care about. See, for instance, the Web Project Implementation Plan page.

Do you notice that blue box on the right near the top of the content? Hit refresh a few times, and see quotes by webmaster-favorites like webstyleguide.com go by.

On this page too, you can see at the bottom the project starting date of April, 2002. Mention is made of participants being “Unitarian Universalists but not employees of the UUA.” I was one of those participants. A year or so ago, I decided we must have set goals so lofty they were the undoing of any progress at all. Today, to my delight, I’m proved completely wrong.

But really, what’s most important about this page and section of the site, is how very professional they are – how cognizant the staff has been of all the many challenges of designing a great website – from empowering content stakeholders to complying with W3C standards. I wasn’t mistaken in thinking the goals were lofty. My mistake was in thinking they were impossibly high for a site so large.

Of course, it’s not perfect. I notice, for example, the Site Map is a bit limited, and I’ve no doubt there are other things to iron out. But this wonderful team (Julie Albanese, Kasey Melski, Deb Weiner, Mark Steinwinter and a host of others) has built a five-star foundation. I predict that not only will the site grow and thrive, it will help Unitarian Universalism grow and thrive.

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