church of love's new website

[chockedup]

Hi everyone.
I just finished designing our new website and i would like some feedback on it.
at first when i started creating the website i was 100% certain about the way i wanted it to look like and i achieved what i had in mind. but now when i look at other website i feel like they are alive but when i see our website it does not feel good and feels rather lifeless (that's a word! right?). i would appreciate any comments in regards to that. and also how the content. the website is 90% functional and will be up and running by 11/4/2010 (this coming sunday).
this might be the longest critique request in this forum. thanks for your help.
Here is the link:
churchoflove.com.au/working/COL

[LeAnn B]

The use of tables seems a bit old fashioned to me, and the images should be resized to reduce load time and also proportional. (dove image seems a bit squished). In Firefox the text seems to overlap the table cells in some areas. I am a Joomla fan so I would recommend using that or another CMS. Makes updating a breeze and you can find some awesome templates to have a more modern look.

[[Admin] osborn4]

i agree with Leann on a lot of it. But I do like the pictures you have. And you're using a nice clean font.

You do need to be careful with spelling.

Very text heavy. I see that much text and I generally keep moving, unless I'm REALLY interested.

Need more pictures and more space between text boxes.

The logo on the News page doesn't appear on the front.

Service times, location and a link to directions should be clearly visible, not have to be scrolled for.

Email addresses could be made into mailto: links.

But the main thing would be breaking up those links. I don't think the 5 column look works well. I wouldn't go with more than 3 columns.

[[Admin] osborn4]

Here's an article on the Top 50 Church websites.

Take a look and see if there is any inpiriation there.

[chockedup]

Leann and joel thank you so much for you reply. i will get editing as soon as possible (must be finished before this sunday). to be honest i was thinking of using CMS but my only fear was lack of control and flexibility. When doing something from scratch i can add more customized things to it. would you no if i can do the same sort of things with CMS (jommla)?

[LeAnn B]

I would be willing to bet you can do anything in Joomla that you could do from scratch with the right knowledge. There are literally hundreds (thousands?) of extensions to make your site do just what you want. And as far as the look goes you are only limited by your knowledge of CSS.

[chockedup]

Thanks LeAnn. I just downloaded joomla and will start working on a new template by tomorow. i let everyone know what happens.
thanks again.

[greg4god]

I would definitely recommend going with a CMS at this point just from looking at your code. It's not a website, it it chunks of html markup in a file. Don't get me wrong, we all start somewhere, so I'm not trying to put you down, just letting you know. This would have a huge effect on the search engines.

(Most browsers are good at "guessing" what you meant to do, how to handle broken markup, etc. I remember back about 10 years ago there was an article listing that more than 50% of the code behind IE and Netscape (the big browser back then) was to figure out improper HTML files.)

I would recommend you check out this site for learning how to make the page complete, it takes time to read through and learn, but the end result will be worth it:

http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/default.asp

Even if you go with a template, knowing the proper use of code is always a plus!

If you decide to not go with doing it by hand, but still want a custom look, I'd recommend the program here: http://www.artisteer.com If it does as well with Joomla templates as it does with WordPress and Drupal, may be worth buying.

Good luck with the venture, and keep us updated!

-Greg

[chockedup]

Thanks for the wake up call Greg. It has been a while i've been writing HTML codes but mainly small things (maybe a single page). so i never took XHTML seriously. after learning HTML i though "I don't need XHTML" but here i am back to the first step. I appreciate your comment and will most definitely look in to XHTML.
I downloaded joomla and I'm still working on the new template (it is not as easy as i thought) but i think it will be worth it, because if i leave the website with the current code no one else can help me with updating and stuff but with joomla it will be a lot easier.
Can someone please comment on the content as well. because im not sure if it is inviting to non-Christians.

[greg4god]

Glad to help, even if you don't take the route of XHTML, they have a section for regular HTML that will help as well.

One thing with CMS templates for drupal was that frustrated the crap out of me was once I thought I'd get it looking good, I'd hit a page that has a different "block" that would throw it all out of whack LOL.

I'm a tad impatient for Drupal/Joomla/WP for my needs lol

-Greg

[KeckCreative]

The home page needs the church logo that appears on the "News" page. The color scheme for me is a little dark. I'm not as much a fan of the font as others, but I tend to like san serif fonts for web and video. I agree with the need for more photo/graphics but in the correct proportions.

[chockedup]

Hello everyone and thanks for all your feedback.
As i promised i looked into joomla and tried a couple of things but I decided not to use joomla (at least not for now). I took what Greg has told me into account and learned XHTML and started redesigning the website (ohhhhhh here we go again). I am using mostly CSS formated items and A LOT less tables. I ran my code in a XHTML TIDY tool and it only returned to error (OH YEAH).
Anyways i told everyone in church that our website is up and running with a few minor fixes(some visited the website and i got a posotive feed back from them). I would like to upload the new home page,which i will hopefully finish before this saturday and i would love to read your feedback. it has 70% less text and every page has the logo (you will see what im talking about).
OK, i better go to sleep now.
cheers.
Sam