Project Clover

The church needed a new website.  That was clear.  And so began Project Clover, our side experiment that we believe turned out pretty well.  As a resource to other churches, here is how we built this site for just a few hundred dollars.  Almost every tool we used is open source or, at least, freely available, though we did donate to the code authors as a way of saying thanks for their work.

Design Principles

Form and function

• We want to improve both aesthetics and functionality
• Not sufficient to make it look nice if we do not gain functionality

Easy to update

• The new site needed to be able to edit and update – and not just for Damon
• Need a way to let everyone in to edit it and yet still maintain quality control
• Solution: backend with user permissions

Multimedia and multi-sensory

• We want this to be an image-driven, visual experience
• Lots of videos and pictures

Interactive

• We wanted a site that would build community – 2 way street of interaction
• Not just us pushing information to the user

Clean / not cluttered

• Especially the homepage needs to be simple
• Not an information overload
• This means that not everything makes the cut for the homepage!

Inexpensive

• We wanted a lot of functionality yet were constrained by budgetary considerations

Easy to use

• We want simple navigation and accessible content to keep the site easy to use for visitors to the site

 

Solutions

Content Management System

Wordpress – Wordpress provides a free, easy to use, frequently updated content management system that is highly customizable through the use of themes, plugins, widgets and custom code. It’s easy to use backend proved a perfect choice allowing us to leverage the latest web technologies and keep our content fresh and the vast developer base allows for rapid introduction of new features and options to improve our site.

Theme

bChurch theme from iThemes – iThemes offers premium Wordpress themes.  We have heavily customized the bChurch theme to get our current look and feel, especially on the home page.

Plugins

Akismet – Protects site from spam.

Audio Player – Used for playback of mp3s of sermons and media.

cforms – Highly scalable/customizable contact form plugin.  No other plugin offer the customizability of cforms.

CMS Navigation – We are using this navigation plugin for the breadcrumbs and for the sidebar navigation.  It offers the ability to set “minihomes” to keep the navigation simple and focused.

Countdown Timer – Allows us to display the time till our next live service that will be broadcast online.  In the interest of full disclosure, we did some customization on the plugin to get it to display the way we wanted to.  The plugin is nice, but it does not offer much in the way of customizing the output, so we modified the code slightly for our purposes.

FAQ-Tastic: WordPress FAQ Plugin – Just what it sounds like: a plugin to control FAQs.  Works well and even has a built in rating system that bumps highest rated questions to the top of the list.

Flash Video Gallery – Allows Flash content to be displayed in a Wordpress site.

Google XML Sitemaps – This is important!  It allows Google to search all the pages on your site.

IFrame Widget – Enables iframes within Wordpress.  This allows us to embed other sites within ours, giving us better control over the look and feel.  We are using this for our sports registration and scheduling website and for our online giving.

Multi-Level Navigation – There are a lot of dropdown navigation plugins for Wordpress, but none with this level of customizability and this level of support.  We asked support a question and they rolled out new version of the plugin within 2 days that incorporated our requested feature.

Sermon Browser – Among the most impressive plugins for Wordpress! Sermon Browser is a database of sermons and media that offers extensive filtering, searching and podcasting options. 

Twitter for Wordpress – Allows us to post Twitter updates on Wordpress.

WordPress Database Backup – With all this work, this plugin makes sure that we don’t lose it all!

WPTouch iPhone Theme – Cool plugin that optimizes display of the site for viewing on an iPhone.  It includes the option to select which pages are viewable, allowing us to offer the most relevant information to mobile users.