A little help please

[DaveM]

Re: A little help please

There will be 6 or more demos, currently labeled demo1, demo1, etc.
They will each have different features shown to the public as different views and facial content.
They will all open in a new webspace so that the original stays open. That should better handle what you said.
As far as ever looking like Realm, I could easily mimic that one, but don't like it at all. No problem if others do.
I am still bashing prices about here, but let me say that I can produce a limited site with real nice features for 9.99 a month including host and domain name and still make money. This would be aimed at the small 50 member church.
Realm starts at 29.95 for less than my 9.99 unit. Price does speak volumes I am sure. There are others out there advertising for free, but they are not free.

As far as what Churches and membership think and what they look at? Having been an elder for many years and a business graduate, I may have some pretty good ideas. I was always on the ways and means committee and generally a major contributor to the income and expenses side of the church.

main areas Churches:
membership can and will want to go there
propagation of membership
Advertise causes
Children and activities related
giving/money in
ease of use
simplicity
contact ability with a map
SEO is a minor and yet a major thing for a specific geographic area
Cost is a big thing to get through the business planning council
Site has to match the church, not our ideas of pretty.
ability to add or change some things in the site - all of which will come up in a planning council
and the odd one where a member decides to donate a website and then his desires become paramount
emails to home bound is a big thing for the church and the member
videos - which most will never do
audio files which some will do.
:: There is a bit more to it ::

[DaveM]

Re: A little help please

OK, I did a lot of changes so you "folks" can kill me again. Still more to do, but it is 2 am here.

[CraigSchumacker]

Re: A little help please

Looks better.

For some reason, your website (which is centerd in the middle of my browser) is only using 70% of the available screen in the browser.

Is that template sized to 768 wide, or something? Can you increase it to at least 1280 pixels wide?

Are others seeing this loss of real estate within the browser window?

[CharlesParker]

Re: A little help please

Craig, I am going to have to ask you look at my site next which I will post in another thread shortly. Your advice and thought seem to be pretty spot on, and with depth.
The last post about screen width raised the only thoughts I really wanted to chime in on. The screen width is a little bit of a concern here. I run a lot of websites and manage several Google Analytics accounts. I see that a lot of people still use monitors that are 1280 - 1024 in width. This website layout does not do well at all on small screens as is, widening it would surely make that worse. I think with a redesign to include the bullet points would go a long way to making the design fit all screens better. The navigation part is great on a mobile device but the content is too wide. With so much emphasis on mobile and screen size these days, I think I wold concentrate on those and you will by default watch your site take on a more modern look. Good luck!

[DaveM]

Re: A little help please

Craig,
it is completely sizable and yes it is at 70% Probably best setting is around 90%
Here, I will set it back to 90 or for Charles open it to full wide

Charles, this should fit any screen. This is what some call a fluid site, Viewable on phone or table as well.

I am working with 7 on google analytics.
here is a great free SEO checker. http://www.site-analyzer.com/

[CharlesParker]

Re: A little help please

the site format is fine for mobile but when I looked at it on my android device the center stage content did not resize and was waaaaay too wide.

[Steve Wood]

Re: A little help please

I use http://996grid.com/ to make my websites responsive*, and http://slicknav.com/ for the navigation. You can see a simple screen at http://alphatogo.com/framework.a5w. Slam the browser down to mobile size to see what happens. Or use the Chrome extension Ripple to emulate mobile devices. These tools work great together and are simple compared to other tools.

*Image responsive (resizing) is built in.

[DaveM]

Re: A little help please

All that other stuff Steve. You can actually do all of that with MS Expression web. Fully responsive. Free. Complete website builder. I am thoroughly surprised not to see more alpha people using it.

These are pure websites I am doing right now that are all Joomla and joomla components. CMS where content and almost everything is in MySQL databases and running PHP.
If I saw, what Charles saw, there may be a minor adjustment to rectify that.

Responsive for the site is usually a little work in css, Html. The menu is a good deal more work for regular website designing.

I have used "slicknav" and 996grid is interesting.

[Steve Wood]

Re: A little help please

What is a "pure" website?

[DaveM]

Re: A little help please

"Pure" is when there is no working db to contend with on it's on. If I added another database and did some programming to work with data in that database, it would not be pure anymore. All cms has a database for use with the screens. Still pure.

To do that on this platform is not that hard, a db and use php to work with it and it is good to go. Set the site on a windows system and you can use other than php. Mainly good to show and input simple data, but with work it could be done with more depth.

I am still surprised I have not seen Joomla or others being used with alpha databases being done with them(even without php).

Hope I did not confuse anybody. I picked that terminology off another forum somewhere.

[Steve Wood]

Re: A little help please

Ahh, I am more of the un-pure type. I use the term "website" for what you call pure, and "web app" for something with dynamics beyond CMS.

[CraigSchumacker]

Re: A little help please

Looking better and better.

From the top of the home page, here are my thoughts:

1) The phone and email address are in way too small a font. I’d encapsulate the email address in Flash if I were you. It will be harder for spammers to harvest than using an HTML MailTo.

2) The navigation links at the top of the page are using a font with dots in it. It looks fuzzy.

3) The picture with the hand holding the world doesn’t excite me. I think you would add credibility placing a logo there. If tyou so choose, try to get a vector based logo that you can create a crisp 16 pixel favicon from.

4) The fields for the newsletter are way too small. The end user may find it annoying not being able to see what he has typed, and you will decrease the likelihood that email addresses get mistyped unless you relocate those fields elsewhere and stretch them out… In the end, it may not matter, as my guess is no one will desire a newsletter, and you may find making a newsletter to be more effort than it’s worth in return.

5) I would change ‘Highlights’ to ‘Features’.

6) Mobile Support. E-commerce Solution – Store (Spelling error on page), Online Giving, and Calendars have different size icons that displace all the ‘Features’.

All these graphics need to be the same size so the text all sits neatly.

After you get the page framed out, you need to work on the wording to better sell your features. You need to get rid of the grammatical errors, remove carriage returns that offset text, and smooth out the sales points.

References like POP and SMTP (Spelling error on page) have no place there, for example. Just talk about the email features in your app that make communication within the organization better.

“How about a calendar that shows the dates and time, but also pinpoints it on a Google Calendar.”

I have no idea what things like the above mean. You need to sell the features of the software.

I do not know what your calendar does, but something like:

“Your website will have an online calendar where you can quickly post upcoming events.”

[DaveM]

Re: A little help please

Thanks Craig,
I agree with a lot and not so much with others. Believe it or not, I have had 4 churches sign up for the news letter in 2 days(not expected).
Flash is not a happy time on some systems and does not work(turned off). The email/phone at the top is a function of that theme and pretty well set unless I want to change the css. Those are google fonts.

Spell checking will be done this coming week I hope.

I have a calendar where when someone clicks a date that has an event in it, it does a popup with all information and a google calendar comes up with a marker at the address where it is happening. Can be taken to a full screen if wanted and get driving directions. It was very well built with way too many features.

[MoGrace]

Re: A little help please

Just a small suggestion on Demo1 that uses the plain subheader - when scrolling it becomes 2 lines. Perhaps a change to 'Media' would work, and you could omit Video and Audio/Hymns and it should fit on one line. Then Media could have a submenu for Video, Audio (Podcasts/ Sermons?), You Tube etc.

[DaveM]

Re: A little help please

Assuming you are on a desktop, I don't have a screen small enough to test that. I even tried it on a laptop without the results you found.

I think, I am not going to worry about it, but Thank you much.

Nobody mentioned the loss of loading speed on demo 2 that I will fix in the next week or so. It is because that demo is on a windows server. It will be placed on a Linux server to remedy the speed problems.

As regards to ios devices, I had one of my associates say that about another site a short time ago. No solution was found, but when he upgraded his device all worked fine.