Ministry Website
Too often Web-sites have no clear organization and it's easy to get lost in the maze of pages. This discourages the reader and unless your page is pretty incredible, will probably mean that they are going to exit quickly and never come back. If you have a simple and clear organizational structure you won't frustrate your web-surfing friends.
Hopefully by now you have a sense of direction and purpose for your web-site. If so, then it's time to think through the design of your site. Before you design that first page, it's important to have some idea of your web-site's over-all design. You might think of it as a flow chart.
Let's say your purpose is to "provide sermon
resources to busy pastors". To begin with you are going to provide
a page of quotes, a page of illustrations, a page of sermon outlines, and
a list of links to other sermon resources. If you were to make a
chart of your site, it might look something like this:
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The point here is to keep it simple. The index page (or "home page" as it is often called) is the gateway to the rest of your site. It is the page people first see and is the most important page on your site. If it doesn't grab the attention of the web-surfer they probably won't bother to look through the rest of your site. More on that later.
You will probably add more pages later and the flow chart will undoubtedly get more complicated as time goes by, but try to keep things organized in major categories then link to those major sections from your index page.
You may want to try to be creative with the sections of your web-site. For example, in Pastor Jeff's Neighborhood each major section is given a name that ties in with the Neighborhood theme and gives some hint as to what you might find in that section (although only a hint in this case....I like surprises). The Office is where I keep Pastor's resources, the Woods is where I keep articles and prayer resources, the Playground is where I keep the fun stuff...you get the idea. Feel free to be creative.... but also try to keep it easy to navigate.
Over time, you may want to add layers to your flow chart as the site becomes larger. Because my site is large (I've been at it for a few years), each of the major sections serves as an index page to the rest of the pages in that section. For example, Click on "The Office" on my index page, and it will take you to a page with links to "Tozer Quote of the Week", "Illustration of the Week", "Quotes of the Month", and other pages in that section. Click on "The Beach" and it will take you to a page with a whole new menu of choices.
One of the important functions of your index
page is providing links to other pages. I'll help you put one together
in one of the next articles. If you have a clear understanding of
where you are going it will make putting that index page together a whole
lot easier.
Introduction: Do
You have a Ministry Website yet?
Step One:
Defining Your Purpose: The Key to a meaningful website.
Step Two: Smooth Sailing: Designing
Your Site for Easy Navigation
Step Three: Tool
Time: HTML Editors and other software to get you started.
Step Four: Creating
Your Index Page.
Pastor Jeff's Neighborhood
Faith
Alliance Church
New
Hope Ministries
