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    Church Website Best Practices - Entries from September 2008

    Home - Blog - Church Website Best Practices - Entries from September 2008
    TueTuesdaySepSeptember30th2008 Browsers: Switch or Upgrade...?
    Posted Tuesday, September 30 2008 @ 11 AM byTravis Hickox Tagged Best Practices for Church Websites Website 101 2 comments Add comment
    We want you to have the best web experience possible. Because of that, we want you to think about the tools that you use when you are online. This post is geared specifically at web browsers.

    Browsers
    Internet Explorer (IE), Firefox (FF), and Safari are the most mainstream browsers out there. The reason for this post is to encourage you to make sure that you are using the latest version of whichever browser you have chosen to use. To be perfectly honest, that comment is directed to anyone who is using IE for a browser, sorry.

    IE doesn't play nice with the web community at large and is slowly beginning to change because people continue to switch. How do I know this? Check out the statistics that are found here at the w3schools website. You can see that users are upgrading to IE 7 from IE 6, but more importantly, users are switching all together to FF or Safari!

    FF and Safari render the text and graphics on your website as they should and adhere to the rules of the Web community.

    Graphics Lesson
    If you really love IE, then stick with it. Know that I will be praying for you. HA! In all seriousness though, the reason why I want to encourage you to update your IE version is because the websites that you visit will look better. This is because IE 7 finally decided to render graphic files with the file extension of PNG.

    Images that you have probably heard of are JPG and GIF. PNGs trump these other formats because they are the best of what JPGs and GIFs have to offer. PNGs will render a gradient (fading from one color to another) without degradation (this is what a JPG does) as well as render a transparent background correctly (that is what a GIF does).

    If you go to a website (with IE 6) and you see a strange box or a graphic that looks completely out of place, this is probably because the designer of the website needs to render a gradient (like a drop shadow on an image), and it needs to sit on top of another graphic without blocking the background image from view (thus needing transparency), so they are using a PNG. BUT...because IE 6 can't figure out what to do with the graphic, it renders the graphic with a whacked out color in the background.

    If you would like to be uber nerdy, you can check out Wikipedia's explanation of JPGs, GIFs and PNGs by going here:
    WedWednesdaySepSeptember24th2008 A Great Decision
    Posted Wednesday, September 24 2008 @ 8 AM byTravis Hickox Tagged No tags 0 comments Add comment
    "We made a great decision when we chose iMinistries for our website provider. We have continued to discover new and easy ways to involve our ministry leaders in making fresh updates to our site. We have also found the staff of iMinistries to be not only cooperative, but eager to answer our questions and quick to respond to our support needs."

    Steve Best
    Senior Pastor
    Harvest Bible Chapel of DeKalb, IL
    ThuThursdaySepSeptember11th2008 The Tower Christian Community Church
    Posted Thursday, September 11 2008 @ 8 AM byTravis Hickox Tagged Quote Semi-Custom 0 comments Add comment
    In the fall of 2008, Senior Pastor Nathan DuPree began his church in the Reno, Nevada area. They signed up with us and had us modify one of our free skins that we offer. This is a great example of how one of our free skins can be customized to fit the needs of any church or ministry.


    "Working with iMinistries was such a great experience. They had the personal touch we were looking for in a website company, and it has made the difference in our relationship with iMinistries. Thanks guys."

    Senior Pastor Nathan DuPree
    The Tower Church
    SatSaturdaySepSeptember6th2008 Come to Harvest
    Posted Saturday, September 06 2008 @ 8 AM byTravis Hickox Tagged Baron3 Custom Harvest Bible Chapel 0 comments Add comment
    We created this website for a series featured at Harvest Bible Chapel. This site contained a welcome video by senior pastor, James MacDonald, an open invitation graphic, and linked to the main Harvest Bible Chapel website. This site is a great example of how video can be embedded on a homepage (or within your website) to dramatically represent your ministry.




    FriFridaySepSeptember5th2008 Harvest Bible Chapel - London
    Posted Friday, September 05 2008 @ 8 AM byTravis Hickox Tagged Baron3 Custom Harvest Bible Chapel Quote 0 comments Add comment
    Harvest Bible Chapel of London, Ontario is one of my favorites! Both the staff and the site are top notch. I hope to make it to their church and Harvest Oakville at some point if I ever make it to Canada. This site is another great example of how we can make your ministry's web presence fresh and eye-catching.


    "We switched to iMinistries in 2006 and we have never looked back. The quality and ease of use of the content management system is amazing, as our site is highly presentable, but requires little time from me to make it that way as all the pieces are already in place. We had our whole site customized in 2008 and I could not be happier with the way it turned out, and the level of customer service we received on the project was outstanding."

    Jon Sodemon
    Director of Administration
    Harvest Bible Chapel London, Ontario
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