Episcopal Church website redesign aims to ease navigation

(ENS) Easier navigation, better search functionality, and a more modern style are a few of the changes visitors will see upon entering the newly redesigned Episcopal Church website.

To be launched on July 8, episcopalchurch.org highlights the four Mission Centers that now encapsulate much of the staff of the Episcopal Church Center as they continue to achieve new levels of service and collaboration.

“With the change to the organizational structure here at the Church Center we felt that the website needed to reflect that,” said Michael Collins, director of Digital Communication. “We’ve changed the entire look and feel of the home page and we’ve also created new pages for each of the four mission centers including their areas of mission and their staff.”

According to Wade Hampton, art director, visitors will immediately notice how the style of the website has changed and incorporates “a broader color palette.” He also said that the work, which began in late March, was aimed at making the site “more inviting and welcoming.”

Read it all.

Posted in * Anglican - Episcopal, * Culture-Watch, Blogging & the Internet, Episcopal Church (TEC)

22 comments on “Episcopal Church website redesign aims to ease navigation

  1. Chris says:

    As someone who works in web site design, I would offer that the ECUSA web site as it currently exists is pretty much fine. Seems like an ill conceived use of resources…..

  2. flaanglican says:

    Except that “as it currently exists” today, July 8, is the NEW website design. Looks good. My pet peeve, though, is having to remember what the blue, green, yellow, and red banners mean on pages behind the home page. The only way to know is hover the mouse over the banner and look in the bottom left-hand corner. As for content, no comment.

  3. DeeBee says:

    Deck chairs, Titanic, etc., etc. . . .

  4. Grandmother says:

    “Easier navigation, better search functionality, and a more modern style”

    Yep thats ECUSA alright! Making “christianity” easer for everyone.

    Gloria in SC

  5. BCP28 says:

    I did not like the redesign a couple of years ago, which replaced a Christ icon figure with smiling people. I thought it was sort of a pander to the “you tube” mentality. (This is a common feature of a lot of non-profit websites, esp. museums and churches. The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore has pictures of people looking at art on its front page, but you can’t really see the art.)

    This is a significant improvement, and the those involved are to be commended.
    Randall

  6. Cranmerian says:

    Of course, I would love to open a church’s website, and at least see a verse of Sacred Scripture, and perhaps one of the following: God, Jesus, Christ, LORD, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. ECUSA’s website has none of these. Perhaps this will get “worked in” with the revision.

  7. justinmartyr says:

    Wow, everyone has gone off the wall. I applaud ECUSA on their new web site (and also on the new carpets in their entrance hall), since no one else seems able to keep substance separated from silliness…

  8. Phil says:

    I don’t see the point of obsessing over the website design, when it functions as a gateway to pearls of wisdom like this:

    On Christ:

    Sometimes he [sic] is the Son of God; sometimes he [sic] is a prophet to this devastated world; sometimes he [sic] is just someone I can talk to. – Jim, Choirmaster and Organist, Texas

    (I know, I shouldn’t criticize: “sometimes” being the Son of God is an improvement over the teaching of some of the clergy.)

    And sells books like these:

    The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Weapon in America

    Antigay Agenda : Orthodox Vision and the Christian Right

    Beyond Our Ghettos : Gay Theology in Ecological Perspective

  9. midwestnorwegian says:

    Rubbish is Rubbish no matter how it is organized.

  10. libraryjim says:

    What was Jesus comment about the pharisees and whitewashed tombs?

    Jim Elliott <><

  11. GSP98 says:

    Straining out a gnat, and swallowing a camel?
    Whitewashed tombs?

  12. Christopher Johnson says:

    I think it’s a good effort, certainly better than their last one.

  13. Br. Michael says:

    Yeah right, navigation into the wrong harbor.

  14. nwlayman says:

    What *isn’t* there is darn interesting. The “Seeker’s Center” used to be a good place to see a mueum piece Modalist explanation of the Trinity. What a loss. I think the last educated cleric must have got to the webmaster in the last year or so, for it was there til very recently.

  15. Intercessor says:

    Lipstick on the pig….
    Intercessor

  16. Bob Maxwell+ says:

    Kind of like the Vichy public relations campaigns of the 1940’s trying to convince the world they were the “real Free French,” much as TEC is the “Real Anglican presence” in the USA and everywhere the TEC flag is planted.

    I’ll miss the old sermons of “Smoky” Magers and a few others from the archives. The last 5 years have been “great________;” . . . a lot of “Pastor Niemoller’s” need to wake up.

    Choose this day whom you will serve.

  17. D. C. Toedt says:

    My blog reader (Google Reader) doesn’t show comments; you have to click on a link to see the posting itself. Why is that relevant? Because every so often I see “TEC does X” postings in my blog reader, where X is something utterly mundane. And I know, before I even click on the link, that a large percentage of the comments will quickly jump into dyspeptic griping about what those ambassadors of Satan at 815 should have done to proclaim The One True Faith. Such comments address the actual topic of the post in about the same way that Churchill supposedly made martinis: by nodding briefly at the vermouth bottle across the room, then turning his attention to the real object of his affection, namely the gin.

    To give credit where it’s due, sometimes the barely-on-topic griping here can be imaginative and even clever (recall the hiking-in-the-fields scene in Saving Private Ryan, where Tom Hanks explains to his men how, hypothetically, he would gripe to his superiors about their mission).

    I also know before clicking on the link that I’ll seldom have to read more than 5 comments to get to one of these barely-on-topic gripes. In this case, DeeBee didn’t disappoint, coming in at #3.

  18. Larry Morse says:

    This is what gilding the toadstool looks like. LM

  19. Anglicanum says:

    Whew, I was afraid my watch had stopped. I was thinking just the other day that we were past due for one of D.C.’s regular visits, in which he pops in to thank God he’s not like other men.

    It’s certainly not off-topic to point out, pace #3, that no matter how pretty you make those deck chairs, the ship is still sinking. Of course, some in TEC have an investment in it sinking, so any alarm would seem ‘dyspeptic.’

  20. D. C. Toedt says:

    Anglicanum [#19], those who insist on dragging every conversation, no matter what the topic, around to their particular obsession, are generally regarded as bores. Sometimes they talk themselves, and each other, into believing that’s the price of being a prophet, but they should read what Deut. 18.20-22 has to say about wannabe prophets. Time will tell whether TEC is going down the tubes; we don’t need to be constantly reminded, at every turn, that in your opinion it is.

  21. Phil says:

    Good point #20; now, look in the mirror.

  22. D. C. Toedt says:

    Phil [#21]: I tip over my king, sir. Actually, I’m well aware of, and try to contain, my own propensity along those lines. It’s the main reason I don’t comment here as much as I used to — I seldom feel I have much new to say, and dread the thought of inadvertently being a bore myself.