Site Profile
Lord of Life Lutheran Church
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John Kalis
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WEBSITE 3.0 – ONE GIANT LEAP, INSIDE AND OUT
The site went live July 1, 2009, designated as Website 3.0, with a different template. Into the fall of 2009, elements were refined and expanded, with an eye to new features being added into the foreseeable future. Most of the new features that were implemented came as a result of an early-2008 congregational survey about what people hoped to find in a website. As this ministry continues to evolve, feedback from members of the congregation will be important to crafting a website that is relevant to the needs of current congregational members.
WEBSITE 3.5 – PERFORMANCE AND EXPANDABILITY, REFINED
Since the launch of Website 3.0 in July of 2009, the website team kept close watch on the successes and growing edges of Lord of Life's site. Toward addressing those needs, Website 3.5 was introduced in November 2009.
The most obvious change is a new template, with softer tones, a more consistent palette, and layering via fields of color instead of gradients. However, the true motivation for the upgrade is the presentation framework of the site. The new framework allows web administrators access to over a dozen new module variations in appearance and location on a given page. This will allow a more efficient layout of pages, particularly on the front page of the site. Further, by implementing a state-of-the-art framework that uses CSS sprites and GZIP compression, page rendering time has been decreased. Finally, the menu system has been completely rewritten, eliminating previous usage difficulties.
This upgrade does NOT alter site topology or general page element layout.
WEBSITE 3.6 - MAKING IT MORE MISSIONAL
In the year following the launch of Website 3.5, Lord of Life has begun to see the website ministry bear fruit. Many new visitors on Sunday mornings and friends who have chosen to become members of the congregation have shared a similar sentiment: they learned about Lord of Life through the website. Similarly, the web administrator has answered requests for advice and comment from congregations across the United States and Canada to learn about how and why Lord of Life's website works.
In that time, the need for Lord of Life's website to be more explicitly missional became evident, specifically, the need to make the site more accessible to first-time visitors to our website. The major revision in Website 3.6 is a paradigm shift in the home page of the site. Instead of a primarily blog-like listing of upcoming event highlights taken from the monthly newsletter, the home page is now designed to be task-based. The goal is to make the growing library of content in the site easily accessible to new visitors who have a few fundamental questions in mind when looking for a church to attend, namely "What happens on Sundays, when, and why?", "What's going on at this church?", and "How can I find a place to meet God in community?"
From a technical perspective, the new layout of the home page is also designed to cater to the indexing algorithms of search engines.
Other changes in version 3.6 incorporate incremental additions that have been made over the last year, including the Compassion Weekend event registration engine, online Spiritual Gifts Inventory, linking of event details to corresponding "pinwheel" landing pages, and the microsite for the "dream Bigger" capital campaign.
NOTABLE FUNCTIONALITY
One of the main advantages of the Joomla system is its ability to accommodate new functionality seamlessly. A number of new extensions and components have been added since the initial site launch, giving an impressive array of functionality:
- Complete membership directory (secured, with individual logins)
- Spiritual Gifts Inventory (completion online and auto-email to church office)
- Event registration engine for Compassion Weekend volunteer weekends, capable of individually tracking dozens of events and matching them to hundreds of volunteers
- Extensive FAQ (both with its own menu item, and with categories linked to appear site-wide as appropriate)
- Online newsletter archive
- Mass emailing capability to membership (with individual ability to one-click unsubscribe)
COST SAVINGS
Beginning in January 2010, the U.S. Postal Service changed its rules, meaning that monthly paper newsletters to 300 recipients would need to be sent at the first class rate. This was an unacceptable addition to the church budget, so since the beginning of 2010, all newsletters are delivered via email. A limited number of paper copies are still available in the church Narthex for pickup by members who do not wish to receive digital versions.
As of January 2011, paper updates to the church membership directory are specifically opt-in. Members are encouraged to use the digital version of the membership directory.
These measures alone save the church about $1600 per year. This substantially more than offsets the annual operating costs for the website, which are generously budgeted at $400, including all site hosting costs and $250 for the purchase of new components and extensions.
John Kalis, a member of the congregation, authored the site and donates all webmaster time and labor.
byjcchen0121 on March 30, 2011
Clear template design with every Biblical steps to lead people to this Church, identify, serve and grow in God's words and community.