Welcome to our new website! We have completed testing of the new design, which has been in the works for quite some time, as part of our Website Redevelopment Project. A few of you joked that our former website (promising that “A new website is coming soon…”) went on like that a bit too long…
But! All delays aside, our new website is here, and we hope it will become a great asset to our parish community. It is far more robust than any previous version of our website, implementing the latest technology from around the Internet. If you’re interested in the specifics, here is an overview:
Google Apps
We have been able to set up a new account with Google’s non-profit service. The biggest improvement here is for our email accounts: formerly, we had one account which was difficult to access, but now, we will have several email accounts which are all served through Gmail. Additionally, we can use the Calendar and Docs features to coordinate between the liturgical, Sisterhood, and Church School schedules.
Scribd
This is an online document sharing service, which specializes in PDF conversion. This is especially helpful for us, as we have many documents (our newsletter “The Cupola” and our monthly calendar) which we can now share online in PDF format, in a user-friendly interface that doesn’t require special software.
Picasa
Using Google’s photo service, we have finally been able to make our large collection of photos easily available. Picasa will offer us flexibility and vast amounts of storage for our online photos, as well as making it very easy for anyone to upload photos. We are also able to make our Picasa albums automatically viewable via our website’s photos section.
Vimeo
We will use this video-sharing service for any video content we produce. This is a well-established and more robust alternative to YouTube, and also features an online community which is generally more respectful and has a higher standard of quality for content.
WordPress
This is a very well-established blogging software, which we are using a custom installation of. WordPress makes it easy for updates to be made to the website without an extensive knowledge of web design, so that, for example, Fr. John, or the Church School, could easily update the website without needing help to do so.
Thesis
This is a specific theme framework for WordPress, which is Search Engine Optimized, meaning we have a greater degree of control over what parts of our website are included in search (such as Google) results. It also enables easier aesthetic and functional modifications.
RSS 2.0
Visitors who use RSS can now receive instant updates when our site is updated. Learn more about RSS.
Validated CSS
Our website’s code conforms to the validation standards written by the W3C. This ensures a high degree of performance and compatibility across browsers, which was something that previous version of our website did not consider.