...frustrating. Not only because it is frustrating to use, but because I simply don’t understand the reasoning behind the design. I’m quite sure I’m missing something.
I know they have unique challenges that no other website in the world has - technically, culturally and theologically. I want to be charitable. I just don’t get it. You can view it here: Vatican.va
They are guilty of at least 2 of the 7 deadly sins of parish website design (which also apply to them) and a long list of venial ones.
I don’t want to be too critical as I’m sure they have further plans and this is just a small, first step. It just seems like a step in the wrong direction to me. But maybe that’s just me.
Take a look at it:
Here are a few suggestions for improvement:
1) Get rid of the parchment background. Maybe it does help the Vatican stand out as a significantly “other” or different kind of organization than any other on the planet (which is a worthy challenge and good goal). But unfortunately, it does so in all the wrong ways.
2) It needs to be designed with the audience in mind. And by audience I mean the World…not just the smaller circle of Catholics who quite enjoy the way the website currently looks. The Vatican website is one of the primary voices of Christ’s Church on planet Earth in this Information Age. It has the potential to evangelize, teach and impress the Gospel upon the world in a way like nothing else can. Yet it doesn’t seem to be reaching out or catering to that audience.
3) It should adhere to some basic web standards for informational-type (and almost all other type) websites. The primary one being navigational standards. The links are all over the place. And even if they do make sense in some way, it takes the user some time to figure it out. If we want to make information easy for new visitors to find, we should use navigation/menu standards that the average web-surfer understands and feels comfortable with the quickest. There are plenty of ways to inject some creativity and originality. The navigation and menus are NOT the place to do that for the Vatican website (arguably the most important website in the world).
4) The navigational links need to not only be organized better, but there needs to be less top-level links. This redesign supposedly improved navigation. But it does just the opposite. It contains a lot more links on the front page. Adding a lot more links to the top-level of a navigation system almost always makes navigation worse. I realize that some people like all the additional links. They are mostly the same people who have 95 shortcuts on their computer desktop. Most people find it confusing and overwhelming.
5) I would think that we would want to make some basic resources and answers easily available to new visitors. We want to help non-Catholics and searching-Catholics easily get this info. The Vatican can also be an example/help to other active-Catholics as to how to answer such questions…like What is the Catholic Church? What are its basic teachings? But this is not obvious at all upon visiting vatican.va. It takes awhile to confusingly jump around to all of the various links trying to figure out where I might find such info. Finally I MIGHT decide to scroll down and click on a link at the very bottom that says “Resource Library” where I am then given links to entire books on the subject (The Bible, Catechism, Canon Law, etc).
6) The search needs big improvements. If I try to search for something simple, like, say “Baptism.” The results are a bunch of google search links to thousands of various vatican documents that mention the word baptism. What it should do is give a few of the top documents/catechism links on precisely what the Church teaches about baptism and how to go about getting baptized. That would be more helpful for 99% of visitors. Instead the visitor will simply click away and go read what somebody else on the internet says the Church teaches about baptism. Opportunity missed.
7) Where is Jesus? Non-Catholics (and even many Catholics) might be confused as to where Jesus is? I suppose the circular pattern of links in the middle is supposed to be the Eucharist (but most people won’t get that). And the presence of Pope Benedict XVI instead of Jesus just perpetuates the misunderstandings out there that the Church is not Christo-centric. I love Papa Benedict. He’s one of my favorite people in the world. And he holds the Keys to the Kingdom and the man resonates Christ like no other. But that’s not the point. Most people in the world don’t see that. And the vatican website should take that into account.
We are just missing so many opportunities and I’m anxious to see the vatican website start to embrace them. It’s exciting that they are beginning to do that. I just hope it continues and in the right direction. I got mad love for them.
What do you think of the vatican website? Am I being too critical?
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Right on.
PRAISE THE LORD that I’m not the only Catholic who doesn’t love this redesign. I don’t get it, either, Matt. It frustrates me.
While it is probably a small step in a different direction, I do not like this direction (for the reasons you’ve listed here). Perhaps it’s an experiment. Whether or not that’s the case, I think we should be critical. We’re critical because we love the Church, and we want this to be one of the best sites on the web. Hopefully, our critical eyes can give the Vatican.va team a springboard for discussion and future design execution.
Together with our words, we should also pray for those responsible for the Vatican’s website. This is a tremendous challenge and opportunity, and we know they have limited time and resources. May the Holy Spirit provide them with all the gifts they need & may the apostles intercede for them as they strive to “sew” the best “net” possible.
I’m with you on this one Matt. It’s still pretty sub-par for it being the online arm of the seat of Peter. There is so much untapped potential here it pains me! For all of the wisdom in moving slowly and deliberately, it can be detrimental at times, and especially so with things like websites.
With all of Her great clarity and focus she has on matters of faith and morals, you would think based on the website that we’re just a big confused jumble. There are lots of images of text (usability nightmare) to click on but i’m not sure where the focus lies. The clarity of purpose seems to be missing.
Just having a new website does not necessarily make it a better website. It appears that the page was simply rearranged. I must be missing something as well.
With all of it’s seemingly obvious shortcomings, there is a key success with this update; that it is happening in the first place. That is the best part about this whole effort.
I have an idea.
NC Register hold a design competition: redesign of vatican.va.
Announce it, and give people a month to come up with a redesign. Just static mockups showing a few pages, proposed features, maybe a write up explaining how and why their design would best serve Jesus and the Church He left us. You could post the top 10 designs. It would be a great opportunity for everyone to take action and help give both the Vatican web designers and others some ideas.
It would be a great way to engage the vibrant web community as well.
I can’t say I love the changes,however it wasn’t long ago that the Vatican just got typewriters, so the rapid changes of the “information age” maybe somewhat overwhelming and this is not only their problem but also share by some religious Orders as well.
They should consider your advice on some topics and chose what works best to spread the Glory of God, the Gospel, and the Magisterium of the Church, in a manner that is easy to use as well as complete. Christo- centric gets big applause from me but leave the documents as they are! A Better example of an updated Catholic website is that of the ocso.org.the Trappist who along with the whole Benedictine family were responsible for perfecting the use of the Scriptoium.
Amen Brother, very disappointing. It’s difficult to read, difficult to navigate, and yup, with a Jesus-less homepage, helps re-affirm many non-Catholics’ belief that Catholics are not Christian.
I completely agree with all of your points. I recently heard that the website was updated and when I checked it out I was upset that not much had changed. I was expecting a complete redesign that would address all the points you mentioned here. As THE website representing the Catholic Church throughout the world I expect a lot better.
I agree with all your points. There is SOME improvement, but it is disappointing that the opportunity wasn’t taken to rethink the whole site rather than just tinkering with some elements. Let’s hope that the makeover will happen.
You are so right. Plus, you put it in susinct terms, a feat that was beyond me. I stopped at just not liking it. Wish there was a way to get feedback to them.
More agreement here. In the past I’ve turned to the Vatican website when I need to read an encyclical or Code of Canon law. Most anything else I turn to newadvent.org for its encyclopedia and collection of church fathers, and other lay-run websites for reference.
One of the bigger disappointments continues to be the presentation of documents—it is not easy to use the vatican.va online Catechism, etc. not only because of the poor color/background choices, but also difficulty in navigating the documents.
I have to agree. On my first glance, I thought “well, it’s ok”, but as I looked around some, I was less and less impressed. It’s good that they have different languages listed, but there are only 8 listed, and 7 are European. There are javascripts that will redirect a user based on browser language, and a non intrusive drop down menu could allow users to change language for older browsers. I go into all of that because you only have a few seconds to catch a viewers eye. A Catholic looking for the site would likely stick around, but a seeker, maybe not so much, but if the page automatically came up in their language on a page showing Christ looking back at them, all the better.
While I agree that if the Vatican has been slow to pick up technology, this could be a daunting task, surely there are people who are not afraid of technology. that would be more than willing to create something that symbolises Jesus in this age
And a purely personal opinion, that is a really creepy picture of the Pope.
It breaks several more rules:
- Get right to the point…what is the point? It appears it’s to idolize B16
- Avoid Jargon, internal terms and acronyms…I (a faithful Catholic, who isn’t an idiot) don’t know what half of these words even mean.
- Chunk your content. It doesn’t even look like similar things are grouped together in the circle.
- Give Context..“Latest…latest what? News? Papal activities? Documents? UFO sightings?” Turns out it’s publications.
Although, I suppose they are writing for their users, or think they are, thinking that most Catholics going to the Vatican website are looking for info on the pope. I never am (I’m usually looking for some document - which I often end up copying into a word file so I can print it)
The parchment background I kind of like, but it should have something else as background to the words or a more muted color (and NOT red text).
It is the website for the Vatican, not the Catholic Church, right? Those two are not interchangeable.
Overall, I don’t think it really matters what the website looks like or how many “deadly sins” someone thinks were committed. I will continue to say this until I hear someone say “You know, I didn’t join the Church/I left the Church/my faith suffered because of the Vatican website.” Personally, I think it serves my own needs just fine.
Finally, what good are these suggestions going to do here on this site? It seems to be like me complaining to my wife about people at work, telling her how they could do such-and-such better. All that would do is, if she ever meets these people, prejudice her opinion of them. So, now more people will go to this website with a jaded edge.
dans0622 I agree on one point. Unless we do something, these comments go nowhere beyond this page.
Which is why I think a better use of our time and energy would be to try and come up with a design yourself (ourselves).
An NC register organized design competition to redesign the Vatican website would help generate ideas and perhaps the powers that be would pick up on a few of them.
I really wish I weren’t writing this.
The church would do well to study what Mormons have done. http://lds.org/
The Menu, Tools, and Search at the top of that site are excellent. The suggestive search is wonderful. Try typing baptism into there search box and it will suggest as you type.
@dans0622 I think this is the starting point for the dislike of the direction to bubble up to those who have the authority to make the necessary changes. It is not ranting for the sake of ranting, or prejudicing people’s opinion of the site. If I could humbly speak on Matt’s behalf, I believe he was expecting (as was I) a complete overhaul w/ this redesign. Instead, of doing an overhaul, it’s like rubbing a little bit of touch up point.
While you are right that you didn’t join the church because of the Vatican’s website, you are assuming that the website can not be a tool in which the initial seed of conversion is planted in someone.
If someone can’t come to the site, and find what it is they are looking for, and find it quickly, they will leave, and the church will have lost an opportunity to show someone her the magnificent beauty that she is entrusted with, because of a website.
You hit the nail on the head Matt. When I heard that the Vatican website was remade, and visited the website, it was a big letdown. It needs more simplicity. I agree, that background has to go. They also need to put all of these documents into ePub, PDF and html. Technology is changing fast and we need to be on top of the wave.
@ dans0622 - They were suggestions for improvement…not just complaints. And publishing them in a national online newspaper read by hundreds of thousands of people is a little different than your private complaints to your wife at home. They are here to start a discussion and get feedback and to hopefully learn something and help each other out as a Church.
Vatican City State has it’s own website (it’s actually much better, btw). The Vatican, the Holy See, the Pope’s office is that of the head of the Catholic Church on Earth. If it’s website is not the website of the Catholic Church, I don’t know what is.
And these suggestions for improvement are not for the purpose of serving “my” needs (as you mentioned the website serves “my own needs just fine”). These are to work to hopefully serve many, many others much better.
@Chris Duffel - I’d love to see a design competition! I’d love to see the Vatican pull together the best from around the world to see what they could come up with. I’ve no doubt it would be something very impressive and effective. However, it might be a bit presumptuous for somebody else (i.e. The National Catholic Register) to hold a competition designing somebody else’s website (the Vatican’s). If it were to happen, I think it would need to happen in conjunction with the Vatican itself. But maybe not. It could perhaps work. Depends on how it was done I suppose.
I did enter correctly the word “defense19” which I see in the image below, contrary to the rejection page I got !!! and I am clicking “Submit” again ... and again (it is 1308343753.3333.jpg). One more try: this time I am deleting “defense19” and retyping it.—I am not giving up… this time I reloaded the ncr page and I have a new checkword: “sure77” (reminds me of something about 77x7).
I did enter correctly the word “defense19” which I see in the image below, contrary to the rejection page I got !!! and I am clicking “Submit” again ... and again (it is 1308343753.3333.jpg). One more try: this time I am deleting “defense19” and retyping it.—This time I did not get a rejection page, just a reload of this blog page, with a new checkword: “hes63”. If this is again rejected, I rest my case:
vatican.va may not be perfect, but ncregister.com has no right to criticize the speck in its eye.
@MatthewWarner
- A design competition for someone else’s website presumptuous? You bet.
- Filled with potential problems and a need to be delicately approached? Absolutely.
- Better/more productive use of peoples energy than commenting on a few blogs? More than likely.
- More likely to make a difference and be seen by those over the pond who can make a difference? That’s the hope.
With all the things going on this is important? I went to the site as you provided. The layout is new. period. Navigation is easy if you can read. The parchment bothers you? Good grief! Get a life. I am looking for information and the site delivers it, fast. That is all I care about. I am 65 years old, and I get it. If I can use it any idiot can so all you tech geeks should be able to stumble around and find it.
Better that they just leave it alone than to change it and make it worse. And it could be worse. To be sure, the NCRegister website is not better than the Vatican site. And places like the Anchoress or InsideCatholic only ended up making things worse with their “new and improved” sites.
——————-
If one wants a dumbed-down version for non-Catholics, etc., they can build a second site.
I see what you mean about the appearance. I’m not Catholic but to be honest the site is not very inviting. Its kind of dark ages and scary. I wanted to learn about baptism and yes i got google results from the search. A bit dangerous for the integrity of Catholic doctrines because anyone can write anything about Catholic baptism and it would end up in google and then non-Catholics might take it as the official position of the church.
Yes, a bit of colour is also needed if you want the non-Catholics to take interest.
The Vatican site has always been a train wreck. Links that are not intuitive. Search engine that is clueless. It is designed like site from 15 years ago.
I think you are being too critical. It is much better and easier to use than the previous one.
Perhaps a dry run with someone who is not Catholic and not an internet maven would have helped.
Mary, all criticism is valid as long as it is constructive which is clearly the case here. Even negative criticism can be constructive.
I agree with Matt’s comments - the site continues to be horrible in terms of design. That said, Making a coherent design out of so much information in multiple languages and having it all work is a *tremendous* undertaking! Kudos are in order to the people who have been working on it for the aspects that have been improved. I wish there were some way I could help them.
thank God the site was usable when i came back to the faith 7 years ago, i made a ton of use out of it in studying the things one must know to be a Catholic. then they started changing something with the physical archives, i believe, and for some reason this affected the digital archives(why i can’t imagine) it got to the point that i quit even going to the site after about ninety failed attempts to use archive materials that i had successfully used previously. sounds like its just gotten worse.
As to whether or not the redesign is more user-friendly I don’t care to speculate. It seems that if people think it is then it is. However, I can’t disagree with you more about content. This is NOT “the Catholic Church” website. It’s the website of the VATICAN. This is the website you go to in order to find out about the papacy, not the Church. This is the website you go to in order to find a speech the pope gave or look up who works in the office of the Secretariat of State not the place to be looking up the meaning of Baptism. If non-Catholics visit this site at all it should be to find out about the office of the pope and the functioning of the Roman Curia as the government of the Church. It is not the place to go looking for information on Jesus. If you Google “Jesus” the Vatican website is not the first thing that comes up so why would anyone go there looking for information on Jesus when there are a plethora of better resources? The Vatican website is an informational not necessarily an evangelical tool. Just as the Church doesn’t only exist in the Vatican it’s a little extreme to be afraid people will judge the entire Catholic Church based upon what is on the Vatican website. If people wish to know about Catholicism, the Sacraments, the Bible and theological teachings there are better and more appropriate resources on the internet than the Vatican website. That’s as it should be.
The website designer is more than likely a priest or brother supervised by an Archbishop or Carndinal all of whom have 0 background in IT. They need to hire a professional team of layfolk to start from the ground up.
You’re right about this one and also the design of many religious orders are terrible too.
I don’t like the new Vatican website either…I have a question: this is Vatican.va - meaning, I think, that it’s an American website…does the Vatican itself have its own website or is this the official website? I’ve never quite understood…however, whatever its problems, it still shines…not easily navigated though.
I don’t agree that we should remove the image of Pope Benedict…he is the representative of Christ - the descendant of St. Peter. A Crucifix could be added…there are many good things about the website. The resources are incredible…perhaps there could be a ‘user’s guide’ icon which would help people navigate…unfortunately, it will never be appealing to everyone but if someone really wants to search out something, and if it’s worth their while, they will keep at it…I did and it was well worth it.
A comments on some of the comments. vatican.va is *the* vatican web site, not just for Americans. And though it may be the Vatican, not the Church’s web site, to most of the world the two are synonymous. If there are “better” web sites for explaining the Catholic Church and its beliefs, there should minimally be links to them from this site, although I would make the case that there is no *more appropriate* site for explaining Catholicism than this one.
Most of these are valid criticisms. #7 is just stupid, although the giant picture of the Pope takes up an awful lot of space that could be better used. But that doesn’t mean that there should be a picture of Jesus, rather than the Pope, on the Pope’s website.
Part of the problem is the enormous amount of data included there. Perhaps, part of the solution would be to set up a website with clearly doctrinal content and another one with news, Church organization etc.
Definitively, I would prefer a column on the left with the main blocks of information.
- Deo gratias - It’s not in Latin
- Why the Virginia News? (NEWS.VA)
- In the Western world, we read horizontally, not at odd angles up and down
- Who is that Adam’s(sic) family character leering at us and why? From Genesis?
- It’s too bad they are isolated in Rome and couldn’t get any IT help
- They should have plagiarized the best they could find after a day of surfing universities, govt., big libraries and companies
er ... “this is Vatican.va - meaning, I think, that it’s an American website … does the Vatican itself have its own website or is this the official website?” What?? .va = Vatican’s own domain! Doh!
NEWS.VA = “Virginia News” - done a google search?? Doh!
Adam’s (sic) family - I’m surprised the reader is in any way interested.
I have to say that I can now find the weekly audiences much quicker and more easily than before: it seems to me that the site is about projecting the activities, primarily Rome-based, of the Holy Father and the Curial Departments
PS the You can find Latin - if you really want to!!
Re “vatican.va”: why do so many people automatically assume that “.va” exclusively pertains to Virginia?
Come on, are we really that provincial?
I agree with your assessment 100%. What exactly did they improve? It’s worse than their old website! Well maybe not that bad, I was just excited to see what was going to be done when they made the announcement of the website rehab. Where’s the face lift? Am I missing something or is there no RSS feed option…even on the newspaper? There is way to much activity on that front page and there are no sharing options. The Pontifical Council for Social Communication and the Holy Father himself have addressed the presence of social media, why is this website seemingly avoiding it? This website looks similar to something from the early 90’s. Who is the designer?
I’ve always found the site difficult to navigate and they’ve made it worse. I usually only go there if I am looking for a specific document, and I know I have exact title. Otherwise, most things I’ve looked for are just about impossible to find.
Oh boy! Once again the Vatican adheres to it’s maxim regarding media communication: 1)Put out foot. 2) Shoot it.
100% agree!
Obviously, the new Website re-due was an appeasement and like most things, was not taken seriously by know-nothing overseers. Please hire some professionals to re-due the whole thing.
And try to put Christ in the picture. The picture of the Pope is goulish. Get a better one.
Remember. You only have 3 or 4 seconds to catch the browsers eye. His decision to stay awhile will be in a blink of an eye! Vatican. Do you care? Then get with the program. The world is watching. Isn’t that what you wanted? Adjust to that fact. Re-due this site for 21 Century surfers.
Robert
I happen to like the vatican web-site. I have always liked it. Maybe it is because I am not a tech geek or web-loser. I am just a person who loves God and have some intelligence, allowing me to use the internet without opining and whining about everything. If you want a better web-site, make your own. As for vatican.va it is great the way it is. The fact that it is different is a big plus. The type of web-site all of you seem to like is not the kind that the rest of us prefer. Over one billion Catholics in the world, how many do you think really care about the background colour of this site? For the record I like the parchment. If you don’t like it, don’t use it.
The #1 thing that kills me the most is that the designers of the website seem to have some rule against giving us a left margin! Any time you read a document or any page with a lot of text, they bring the text right up to the left side of the screen. They should be making the documents of the Church EASIER to read, not harder? Ugh!
The Pope does not seem engaged and inspired at all.
I like that I can see quickly everything that Pope Benedict has written/spoken. However, when searching the documents, I understand that our official language is Latin, however, I don’t know that many people who actually know Latin. So when I’m looking for documents about something, I have to click on every single one just to see the English title first, which makes searching tedious. I’ve seen other websites that have a front page asking which language you would like to view the website in. Maybe that would make it easier.
Oh, and I have a question. Why has the distinction been made (in a few of the above comments) that the Vatican’s website is not the Catholic Church’s website? The Vatican exists because the Church exists, and the Church exists because of the Vatican. It’s a relationship where one would not survive without the other. I would think that as Catholics, the first place we should go when we want to know official Church teaching would be the Vatican’s website.
I agree with you about the aesthetic. It’s also frustrating that the site is not accessible, either by vision-disabled users or machines. There is actually no text on the home page - not even one word. Every bit of text is actually an image of text, and I only counted a handful of “alt” tags on the images. This makes the site very difficult or impossible to use for vision-impaired users. And it looks like a blank page to Google’s crawler, which means the site may not be properly indexed by search engines.
I agree with you,The Vatican exists because the Church exists, and the Church exists because of the Vatican.
nice post ,, with that post i have learned allot
The most important thing for the new pope, is to let priests marry. So the abuse of children will stop. The next important thing is to start pray to Mother Lord. I cant see Father Lord have done much. He is a man, and man are
the cause of not wanted children. I don’t think Mother Lord would accept the womans dangerous situation on Earth. More brain, less sex, less anwanted children. The Church has is still att 1400 yr. Bless Mother Lord, talk about her and pray to her. It will be a change. Amen
To RPersson; Your post is rather confusing, the article is about the Vatican web-site not the new Pope. Pope Francis is not going to allow priests to get married. Priests being celibate is/was not the cause of abuse. Homosexuality is the main cause, and a very small percentage was pedophilia. Most of the abuse was between a priest and a post-pubescent boy, which means its a gay problem not a celibate problem.
As for this “Mother Lord” nonsense in your post, God is referred to as Father in the original languages of the Bible, therefore we pray to God the Father. Also, Jesus taught His disciples to pray, “Our Father who art in heaven…”, so guess what? that’s right we pray to God the Father.
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