Church Website Design a la Nathan Smith

Information architect and interface designer Nathan Smith has been working for years to dispel "the myth that publishing on the web must be difficult and expensive." His latest contribution is an article for .Net Magazine for which he created "a hypothetical home page for a real or fictitious place of worship"—in his case, a new home page for his home church Spring Valley UMC in Dallas, Texas. (View the actual Spring Valley site.)

The Spring Valley mock-up (see below) is based on the 12-column example of Smith's 960 Grid System, which is an excellent free resource.

Smith writes in the article, "If a newcomer were to visit the site, they would immediately be able to find out what time the church services are, where the church is located, and what events are happening that month. Another thing that would-be visitors tend to wonder is what the unspoken dress code is like." That's good advice for anyone attempting a church website redesign in the future.

Here is Smith's design with explanations (click to view at full size):

—Steve Knight, International Communication Coordinator for SIM (Serving In Mission) and Kingdom Journalist

Comments

[Cynthia]

I'm often surprised by the number of church websites that do not have their location on their home page. Or, somehow they have it located below the fold. I love that the example here has directions located at the top in an easy to find place.

[Mean Dean]

I like what I'm seeing here, as there's as much thought given to the content as there is the eye-pleasing delivery.

There are some aspects that I think may create site maintenance hurdles though - I need to go experiment - probably going to port a version over to WordPress and see what can be done to whittle down some of the back-office operational issues this design may create.

Still, head and shoulders above most designs I encounter. Good work .. no strike that ... excellent work!

[m]

a wordpress theme for this one please someone :-)

[Mean Dean]

I'm working on in 'm' ...