... I'm tired and I'm going to bed.
If you have a moment, check this out - the fruits of this evening's labour - and let me know what is good and/or bad about it.
Cheers, and sleep tight!
[GPCNZ site]
Re: the above, if you had any questions:
It is currently based on the existing GPCNZ site content. There are currently a few small bugs, especially when scrolling if opened in a small internet browser window, and I have not fully tested the site in browsers other than Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla.
A number of key points I considered in designing of the site:
- Simplicity:
I have endeavoured to stick to a maximum of 3 colours, 3 font sizes, one font face (excluding the title bar graphic).
Following the cue of the big corporate sites, such as http://www.microsoft.com, http://www.ibm.com and http://www.symantec.com, I have steered away from Flash animations and animated gifs as these can be distracting, and also affect the speed of the site(see below).
- Screen Resolution:
I have designed the layout of the site such that the reader can see all(or at least, most) of the content on each page without having to scroll, even at a screen resolution of 800x600(which some people still use).
- Speed:
I have used minimal images; only two - one for the title bar, and one for the map. All other colors, mouseovers, borders and formatting are implemented with CSS(Stylesheets), which is much faster than Javascript, Flash etc.
I have tried to keep the image file sizes as small as possible (title bar image is 8kb, and the map image is 11kb).
This site should perform very well on a 56k dial-up connection.
- Recommendations/Going forward:
- Email addresses. Publishing email addresses on websites is becoming a bit more risky these days, as many spammers have 'robots' that automatically troll webpages looking for email address to add to their spam lists. Depending on where the site is hosted, a script can be used that allows the reader to email a specific contact without the contact's email address being made available to spam bots.
- Logins. I'm not sure where the site is currently hosted, so I don't know what can be done to implement secure user or church-specific logins to allow access to restricted material and information, but this is a possible enhancement. I is also possible to give specific people(via a secure login) the ability to manage specific details on the site, ie: contact details, local church news items etc.
- A Logo. I'm not sure if GPCNZ currently have a logo that can be used on the site. If so, it can be added. If not, I would be willing to put together a few quick ideas. I am also able to make up letterheads etc with the logo, if required.
There are many other potential enhancements and/or features that could be implemented going forward.
