Excellent post! Could we also eliminate all those photos of Father looking sinister and the parish tea/BBQ where everyone looks as though they’re having anything but fun?

Could not stop laughing. Excellent post!

But…but…donuts!

Have the words “Roman” “Catholic” and “Church”, in near proximity to one another, preferably in order, after the name of the parish’s patron. This is a complicated formula, but it would look something like this, e.g.:

“Saint [Patrick’s] Roman Catholic Church”

or perhaps

“Our Lady of [Mount Carmel] Catholic Church”

We know that you have a parish community. That’s implied by the existence of the website.

Have the times for Mass and Confession on THE FRONT PAGE.  Don’t bury them where no one can find them.

Great post!  I agree with Howard: Mass and Confession times are the two main things that I suspect most people go to a parish website for.  And related to that: have an index page that is friendly for mobile browsers (I hope the folks at Masstimes.org are reading this too!)—when one is on the road, say, and is looking for Masses while traveling (assuming that one has stopped and is obeying all local laws about using the phone while driving :)), getting to a java heavy parish website that is not smartphone friendly just sucks.

I once was searching on a parish web site and could not find the times for Mass or Confessions anywhere near the front or in proximity to the main page.  I had to search through several drop down menus to find this very important info. Then I realized they didn’t even have Confession times on their bulletin! I thought that was really sad.

Really, the best guideline (which you encapsulated nicely) is to move away from something that looks like it belongs in 1998. Quite frankly, as long as the site produces the information that people need (Mass and Sacrament times AND exceptions to those) visual annoyance like a non-centered page, or the fact that this link opens in a new window or tab can be forgiven. When I make sites for churches, the following list of “stuff” is what I find to be the most applicable: home page, calendar of events, ministries, functions/activities (annual), staff, history (if particularly old or storied), and maybe a links page to the diocesan website, masstimes.org, and other local organizations like food banks (I’m not usually a fan of link pages, but I think parishes earn an exception because the Catholic Church is an exceptionally networked institution!). Making sure the site is valid (X)HTML and CSS never hurts either (which means staying away from Flash), and ease-of-use on mobile devices will benefit also.

Slightly off topic but aimed at ALL web page designers. 

I know you think that we think you are cool when you use drop down menus.  But it is nothing but an irritation when you use them for the state in an address box.  Trust me, we all know the name of our state and can spell it or abbreviate it properly faster than using your drop down.  If you must use them, put the name of the state where the parish is located so that it will be the first choice given to the visitor.

Make it easy for an out of town visitor to find your Church.  Include a good set of directions in a front page link. 

Many people will visit a web site just for the basics—what time are Confessions, what time is Mass, what is the mass schedule for holy days.  A link to the week’s bulletin is always nice.

And this might be a deadly sin, but…I’m always interested in a Church’s history.  What did the Church look like when it was first built?  What is the significance behind the stained glass windows?  Who created the stained glass windows?  Who carved the statues and the stations of the cross?  Somewhere on the website should be some historical information for the adult or child that wants to learn more about the foundations of their Church!  History doesn’t need to be on the first page, but it should be somewhere.

Oh yeah, and if you do take pictures of your Church, make them large enough so people can appreciate the beauty.  A small, distant photo of a huge stained glass window does not do it justice and leaves the viewer wondering what is in the detail.

I am forwarding this link to our webmaster for http://www.kofc-12963.org/index.html

Most Knight’s website are not up-to-date….see ours….Knight of the year from the year 2008-2009!  I guess I got to do it myself!
George
DGK Council 12963 in Clifton, VA

We travel.  Nothing is more irksome than a Catholic church website with errors for mass times, confessions and addresses.  Keep your info current or destroy it, but do not publish without updating.

Wonderful post!

Parishes should also invest some time looking at their site stats. Is anyone really looking at the photo gallery that was last updated 6 months ago? Or downloading the PDFs of PSR registration forms that get handed out after Mass anyway? It may be “nice to have,” but if people aren’t actually using it you’re just spinning your wheels.

Music can work, but only if it is Ave Maria and your parish worships at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis.

http://cathedralstl.org/intro/

This website makes me want to cry.

-Tim-

If one wants to take over the responsibilites of updating a website and perhaps even design it, what program(s) would I get?  Please be specific.

And I forgot to mention, make sure that visitors know as soon as the front page loads that the Church is CATHOLIC.

Pictures of happy, smiling twenty-something young men wearing fashionably untucked shirts with their hands raised to the sky <insert sunset at the beach or mountaintop view here> screams “Jesus was only speaking symbolically” Evangelical rock band spirituality to me. 

Please, a picture of the Pope or a crucifix Mary with a crown or a priest raising the Eucharist or something. 

-Tim-

George,

Programs to help you design and manage content include Microsoft FrontPage (not exactly an ideal solution, because it generates a lot more code than is really necessary, contributing to less-than-ideal cross-browser rendering and slower loading times), Adobe Dreamweaver, which is a great solution, but a horribly expensive one, and Nvu, which is free and will probably be sufficient. I have made websites for churches, and if you need any other advice or have any other questions, you can email me at john@johnminnich.com, unless it’s something that would benefit and be helpful for others as well (I’m not trying to solicit business or make this an advertisement). There are a lot of churches that use managers like these to update the site, but the absolute best way to ensure that a website will work well in mainstream browsers, including mobile devices is to actually have the site coded in valid XHTML and CSS, which also makes it easier to find in search engines and can make it easier to update, because once the code is in place, there are online solutions like CushyCMS that let everyone update the content they need without having to touch the code itself like they would be able to in something like Nvu.

I do not want to Follow You on Facebook nor do I wish to Donate via PayPal.  I don’t want to see all sort of little buttons to click on….I just want to see word Catholic somewhere and the inclusion of Mass (and Reconciliation!) times please.

Please forgive me for not wanting to Further The Spirit of Web 2.0

For truly awful web site design see the following.

It is a schismatic traditionalist Catholic site.

Warning: Wear sunglasses

http://www.dailycatholic.org/

Don’t include so many widgets on your website that I can’t view it with my mobile device.  Sometimes I need to double check an address or number while I’m out.  Nothing is worse then loading the website and having it blank on my mobile device because everything is a widget!!

Like most others have said——-Have Mass times and Confession times on front page!  Also, please keep up to date.  My parish has things on their website that should have been deleted off 2 years ago!

I’d vote for moving #4 up to #1 - out of date is the worst kind of deadly sin.

Burying times for Mass and Confession in some maze of twisty little passages, all alike, is pretty deadly but frankly, automatically starting music when you get to the site deserves highest ranking after ‘out of date.’  (Or is it lower?)

Constructive suggestions:

Blogging software does 95+% of what a parish web site needs.  Forget paying $500 on DreamWeaver or FrontPage - totally forget it.  Don’t even think of it!  You’re running your parish on low-paid crypto-volunteer labor - please don’t tell me you’ll shell out for top-tier web design software.  That junk has too many features and is generally convoluted and will frustrate your staff until you shell out thousands for a “web designer” and/or thousands for training.

The ENTIRE STAFF must be comfortable posting to the site - instead of Father making excuses for the kindly old parish secretary.  Most people use stupid Microsoft Word to write, then print out text for the ‘webmaster’ or secretary to transcribe and “upload.”  WordPress is really, honestly, easier than Word is!!!

Blessings!

Please stop sounding (acting) like a 70s/80s advertisement, using, “Catholic Community”, or some such things, leave out “Eucharistic Meal” and put Holy Sacrifice of the Mass… come on, we are Catholics, use Catholic termonology.  There is much more, but hopefully the point is made.

Keep the page current. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve found “this week’s bulletin” had changes to mass times or other things that conflicted with the site’s web page.

Keep historical bulletins. If I am away I want to be able to read what happened the week I was away.

Make a hierarchy of landing pages. Non-parishioners, parishioners, and parish council members have different sets of links they are interested in.

Make sure the site works on all browsers, not just IE.

Either get rid of the meaningless “mission statement” or at least re-write it to include something that indicates that this is a Roman Catholic parish, not an encounter group, an AA meeting, or book discussion club. How about “Our mission is to save souls.”?

Tell a bit about the life of the parish, show pictures of events. It gives prospective members (transplants) a snapshot. I’ve seen many some websites that show pictures of “Santa’s Visit” and the only thing I see are a bunch of old ladies sitting on Santa’s lap! What, no children? Guh!

Having just moved to a new area, I’ve often had to look up Mass times and also directions.  Here’s a suggestion: my guess is that a large majority of people access the website to find out when Mass times are.  Yes, I know what the word “Eucharist” means, but most people still call it Mass.  So use that word.  Then make it very, very, very easy and quick to find the Mass times.  That’s pretty simple, right?  Regarding directions, skip the not-to-scale map that looks like it was drawn by one of the fourth graders and create a link to Google Maps.

In addition to Mass and Confession times on the front page, please, please, PLEASE make it easier to find Mass times for Holy Days of Obligation. Often they are non-existent or buried in last week’s bulletin.

I design parish websites on the side and couldn’t agree more. A more pressing matter: how to convince Father that he needs a real website? Most priests I’ve encountered have no idea how tacky their sites are because they don’t understand the internet as a medium for information or advertisement.
“Well, Father, what do you want on the index page?”
“What?”
“The main page, Father.”
“Oh, everything.”
“Everything?”
“Yes, everything should be accessible to the user right up front.”
“Which makes nothing accessible to the user, Father.”
“Oh, and let’s add advertisements for all the speakers and catechetical programs we endorse. Also, I want pictures of the patron saints our parishioners have ever taken at Confirmation and I don’t want you ever to update the site except when I call you the day I need information posted and expect it on a prominent place (but not more prominent than everything I’ve already mentioned) on the site within 5 minutes.”

The only thing worse are Catholic school websites. I once had a client who wanted impossible things for no extra cost, demanded that the website function perfectly on all platforms with all browsers in all versions without sacrificing appearance or functionality, and asked for an intro. When the images for the intro took a moment to load, they asked me for an intro to the intro. “Well, do you ask a server at a restaurant for an appetizer while waiting for your appetizer? At some point, you have to let the poor guy go get your food. It’ll take a minute, but it’ll be worth it!”

1. Take the National Catholic Reporter, Richard Rohr, and Code Pink links off the main page!

That was hilarious!! The best laugh I have had in a long time. and the follow up comments are priceless. It is sad that it is soooo true! Thanks to Rob for the link to http://www.dailycatholic.org/ with the ‘I can’t believe they did that!’ dripping blood animated gif. From my experience when someone’s brother’s uncle’s friend’s sister’s nephew gets involved it is always a disaster waiting to happen. I build my websites on Joomla - Great Flexible CMS for websites.

What’s a stained glass window?

What’s Confession?

I thought our with-it pastors dumped all that stuff.

We try to make the websites clearly different. By adding links to daily and Sunday readings, local weather, MapQuest, etc. I think adds some neatness to the sites. But I agree that keeping the format simple and concise is more important than trying to be everything to everybody. I use our stain glass windows to be part of the website and a picture of the confessional to illustrate that we have one, ha! I also like using PDF files for the bulletin, schedules and calendars so that those are taking three pages of information. We only have 6 navigable pages, with a lot of information. And it doesn’t cost the parish anything, I do it for free.

Be careful who you let design your website, especially if they also run your e-mail. They can easily see all your e-mail communications. Keep your e-mail out of the hands of others.

Great article, and even better comments. I’ve taken a few on board: ensuring the front page is mobile compatible; building an archive of Sunday bulletins.

Tim is spot on. http://cathedralstl.org/intro/ is stunning! I’ve never been a fan of flash pages, but given the beauty of that church, maybe there’s something in it. I think I will play around with developing one for our own parish.

And I’m with Matt. Joomla! is the CMS to go for those webmasters with the patience and willingness to learn.

Here’s one: Do not onder any citcumstances take control away from the user—or at least make them feel like they’re in control. Newbies and computer science majors alike hate—HATE—having control of their own machines wrested from them.

That includes refreshing my browser at arbitrary intervals when I’m trying to type a comment. Seriously, NCR, what’s up with that!

But seriously, your best bet is to look at resources like Jakob Nielson’s Alertbox (useit.com) and nonprofittips.org. Here you will learn such helpful tips as using contrast to make text readable, avoiding gadgets and gimmicks, writing for the web, making pages responsive enough that users feel like they’re controlling their own computers, and not putting anything (like intros—or intros TO intros!?—or uncontrollable page refreshes) between the users and the information they want.

Bottom line: Your Web site exists to get (a) information into your users’ brains and/or (b) money out of their wallets. (For parishes, I’d hope they mostly stick with a, but donations are always nice I guess.) If you’re not doing that, then because you’re wasting money and irritating your users, your site is WORSE than not having one at all.

Did I mention don’t refresh the page?

And no…repeat, NO!!!!...mousetraps!

Hey, linebyline, my page refreshed while I was reading your comments. It was hilarious.
You are all free to rejoice with those who rejoice (which is me, right now).

Glad I could bring some joy to your life. ;)

I can’t resist submitting my own parish’s website as an example of what to avoid.  I love my parish—the priests are awesome!  But http://spcomv.com/ makes it look like the scariest place on earth.

Amen to Kim,  the thing that needs to be on the front page of absolutely every church website is its address and MASS TIMES!!!!!  yes yes, church has all kinds of activities but the most important one is MASS!  AND WHAT TIME DO YOU HAVE MASS?!  and then how do I get there?  Because clicking through nine obscurely labeled menu links to find out is no fun. 

Great article, I am a huge fan of letting people know that websites are important and should be designed and maintained properly ;-)

I agree with Jing.  Make it easy to find Mass Times and a few notes about the Masses might be good.  For example, if it’s a School Mass, which might make the traveler uncomfortable, that’d be nice to add.

Also, Confession times would be nice.

Last, if you just can’t spend money to get a professional website, then just go super simple.  I agree with Matt that you can have a great site for a lot less than you spend on donuts, but it might be a political issue where you have to fight for money to spend on the website, but the donut money is untouchable (dare I say sacred?).  Something you do in Word (save to HTML) with just a simple background and links to the main information would be better than trying to patch up a bad site with duct tape and chewing gum.

Having something is not always better than having nothing. If you have a website, it needs to have the RIGHT information first. This means updating when necessary. Having a website doesn’t just mean having a way to communicate Mass and Sacrament times (those can very easily be found on masstimes.org, for the most part). It means having a piece of your parish on the Internet for visitors. Whenever I’m traveling, I go to masstimes.org, and, as soon as I find a parish that I’m interested in visiting, I see if there’s a website, and visit it, because I want to get a taste of the parish (large/small, etc.) before I even go there. You don’t want to give visitors the an inaccurate impression, because that will turn people off before they can get a chance to experience your parish community and what you can offer visitors and new parishioners. Having something mean and basic may serve a utilitarian purpose, but it will also yield a distorted perception as to how your parish community really is.

I so want to approach my parish about redoing their website, for free! They make so many of these mistakes, and it’s really just kind of painful to look at their website. Not sure how to approach them though, since the website was originally done by one of the main guys who takes care of the office work and doing the bulletin. :/ Any tips, anyone? Bueller?

Have a place where people can voluntarily sign up to recieve an email from the parish with a weekly update. Kind of like the Parish Bulletin. Lets face it, event though electronic media is easy and fast, it is getting way too diluted. Everyone has e-messages coming from all sides. I can’t count the Favorites Links I have that I have never gone back too.
Mike in Moore, Oklahoma.

What a great post! This information is so on-the-nose and it’s nice to see somebody like yourself bringing it into the light. I think most church leadership folks just don’t comprehend, or have the desire to do so, the impact their website can have. And hiring [volunteer] ol’ Gertrude who sits in the admin office all day to do the website coordination is just an all too common mistake.

I wrote a small piece about website design considerations, A Different Kind Of Sinning, that has some very complimentary points to what you wrote here.

Bottom line, be relevant, be simple and be accessible!

Scott
http://safehouseweb.com/2010/11/a-different-kind-of-sinning/

Hi, im working on a custom open source CMS for church, needs sponsors to share my project and see ideas from people. God bless you all,

Dairon

Design a narrow page that can automatically expand to fill the browser pane, instead of a wider page that automatically generates a scroll bar on the bottom of the pane.  I prefer to read a web page that looks like the default size of an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper in Word, instead of reading neck-twisting tennis match style. on the super-wide screen that will come with my next computer.  I run almost all applications in less-than-maximize display, so that I can deal with several on one monitor screen.

If a link goes to somewhere on the same site, use the same browser instance.  It a link goes offsite, start up a new browser instance.

DO NOT CHANGE any of my browser settings!  At least, not without my explicit non-default permission.

If I have to change any of my browser setting to view your web site, that means that I and thousands of others will waste more time accommodating your lack of effort than the few hours it would take you to do it right the first time.

Pray for God’s guidance before each work session, like Grace before meals.

Edit check your work several times, then ask God to help you do more edit checks, and a final edit check.

An edit check means going through every character, word, sentence, paragraph, picture, link, and whatever else, just as if your were a first time visitor, to the site or that section of a webpage.

Make sure that all of your links are accurate, correctly described, and still current.

God bless you for doing the work that you do.  The better it is, the better people will respond to your effort.

The two parishes I have attended have good to excellent websites on the scale of “Catholic organisation website design”:

http://www.holyfamilycolumbus.org/ (currently, Tridentine and Novus Ordo mass every day, in full Communion - one issue is the lack of bilinguality of the site, as there is a strong Latino/ESL element)

http://www.spxreynoldburg.com

I used to be an Orthodox and their site used to be a shining exemplar of how to do Apostolic Church Website design but has deteriorated and become worse and worse and worse the more information they’ve tried to cram in to it: it now includes everything up to and including Bible software for searching the Bible in about 150 translations in a dozen languages, in a two-language Parish (Greek and English):

http://www.greekcathedral.com

Matt
My first comment is to be careful about slamming volunteers updating the web.  In fact many churches now do not build their own sites, rather subscribe to a couple of professional organizations that do the design formats that are tied to a more professional look and user friendly. 
Also, many parishes are using volunteers that are very business savvy and heavy PC users and very adept at updating the web.  Truth of the matter is many of the parish staff is not at the level to do their own web updates.  I have found that too many hands in the fire tend to create exactly what you are saying not to do…utilize different fonts, colors, etc. that take away from the message.  Yes you do want input from the staff but also from others that are technically up to date.  I am not talking social media as it has become a crutch for too many…sort of like email.  Email was to have reduced the work load and cut costs and in truth the opposite has happened.  More time is spent on email and its spam and less more important face to face/one on one contact is lost.

I have discussed this with several parishes and many of their staff are entry level users on the computer and they do not want them taking away from their assigned work load for which they are being paid and now taking on something they are not ready to tackle, let alone added responsibility not in their job description or capabilities.  One parish website is updated by the Office Manager due to limited abilities by a staff that mainly does email and word documents.  Another is using gifted youth ministry members.  Several are using the services of the vendor they got the basic layout from.

Yes, some staff members are very gifted with the ability to do their job and have the knack to do web updates quickly and professionally and they are utilized exactly for that reason.  It does not impede their job nor require extra overtime hours.

Also, as I have discovered the tabs that burrow down beyond two levels tend to, similar to some of your comments, cause the user to stop looking.  Many parishes have dozens and dozens of organizations and ministries and the easiest way to follow these is to group them.  It does not good to have a website if users cannot find information on the ministries and organizations in their parish so some websites will have a drill down with that information.  eCatholic is looking at new structure tied to groups so as a webmaster we do not have to do all that manually.

You also have to be careful you are not alienating long time members by removing things they expect to see up front and are easy to find.  This is especially true for those that basically use their PC for email and looking at web sites such as the parish web.  I have some that tell me they only want to see news, events, Mass times, albums, etc. 

So caution to you and the other readers intentionally or unintentionally about slamming volunteers.  Remember that a church will not function with just staff but rather it flourishes with volunteers and organizations and ministries.  A church staff can become much like any other business and becomes too political or set in their ways that is detrimental to their purpose.  Ever wonder why so many churches (and many other businesses) still are using outdated software and such.  It is not just the cost of the software here but a tendency to become too comfortable in their ways meaning they will never grow or move up and out.  Outside volunteers help to keep visibility and opportunities of growth and knowledge.