Website tidy-up

You might have noticed that the menu structure on the church website has been changing today (11th August), one output of a larger website tidy-up project. New styling will also emerge in coming weeks.

A busy website

The website is a very active part of Vineyard life. Did you know that

There are 818 pages on the website
We have 296 registered members (180 adults, 116 children)
On average 35 people log in every day, 98 every month (50% of adults).
On average 2500 pages are read every day
20% of the time people are looking at the forums
The Offers and Needs forum recently claimed a record of meeting a need within 9 minutes

Hard to navigate

Many visitors have commented (usually among compliments) that our website is "very busy", and we wondered what it felt like for a newcomer. So we took a look at some other church websites to see what we thought was best on them from the point of view of an outsider. We realised:

The front page is very cluttered
Our menu structure is very "deep" which is quite hard to operate with a mouse
The logic of where things belong on the website has become clouded over time
There are quite a lot of articles that refer to 2007 or even 2006, or to events that no longer happen

A new menu to make navigation easier

We have introduced a new menu structure which is much less "deep". The new menu has the following main sections:

New to Vineyard	Replaces the About Us section, but includes more sections and is designed to be as helpful as possible to the newcomer. We've also updated or removed loads of out-of-date material.
Events	This is an attempt to make it easier for people to find out what happens on Sundays and at other "central" events.
Groups	Covers all sorts of groups you can attend: Housegroups, Vineyard Kids, T4:12, Men, Women
Courses	Initially highlighting the Alpha Course and Leadership school.
News and forums	For those of you who check the website several times per day, this is the place to make your new homepage!
Opportunities	We often say "Find a place to serve". This section should be more helpful to people who want to do exactly that.
Resources	Replacing the "Features" section, the resources section

This change will seem more difficult at first for those of us who are used to the old structure (and it may not fully make sense until we get all the new material written), but we hope you will bear with us.

How to help

If you spot something that seems out of date, it would be very helpful if you could either fix it if you know how and/or let us know. The best thing is to copy the URL from the Address Bar in your browser and paste it into the form below and explain what the problem is.

Webpage URL:

Problem:

Your email address:

David Wallace, 11/08/2008