Website Brings Churchs Vision to Life

Parish Gains Inviting, Invaluable Community Resource

Santa Monica, CA May 18, 2004--A usable, well designed website in the religious community can be well nigh impossible to find. When Los Angeles St. Paul the Apostle Church decided their site needed a complete redesign to better reflect their spiritual mission, they turned to premier web development company A Far Site Better. (http://www.afarsitebetter.com)

The warm, welcoming home page serves as an entrance to either the new St. Paul the Apostle Church website, or the churchs adjoining school. Colored sketches of both historic buildings set a friendly, peaceful mood. Entering the church site, a visitor finds a wealth of news, events, archives, and information at their fingertips everything from a church calendar, to archived homilies, to next weeks readingseven an online member registration!

The multiple forms of navigation give the users multiple ways to find their way through the site, said Steven Laff, A Far Site Better president. We coded in a drop-down list, breadcrumbs and left menu to create a robust application.

How It Was and What Happened:
When the Rev. Tom Jones took over the parish several years ago, he inherited an antiquated website. Not only did it fail to convey the churchs overall feeling, but also it often took months to make changes or updates.

Jones invited A Far Site Better president Steven Laff and designer Julie Keehner over to his church for a closer look. Religious communities dont normally contract high-end web development companies, but I couldnt stand not having a site that truly served our parishioners any longer, Jones said. What made it worse is that I had never seen a site anywhere else on the web that was remotely correct for our purposes. It was time to do it right.

The challenge of this project was not lost on A Far Site Better. We felt it was essential to show visitors just how different this Paulist Catholic community was from the way many lay people think about the Catholic Church, said Laff. They are truly a warm, open, non-judgmental and accepting community, and we needed to make that visually obvious on every page of the site.

Laff and Keehner photographed the church thoroughly, spent hours meeting with key persons in the churchs ministries, scoured church archives to find the right way to convey the ideal message, and even had editors help the church develop content for their web site.

Are church officials happy with the end result? To merely say yes would be an understatement. The feedback on the site (http://www.sp-apostle.org) has been just what wed hoped for, with its bright feel and positive voice, said Jones. Many people have gone out of their way to compliment us extensively. The layout just makes sense. This is especially important for our senior parishioners, who can be rather web-wary.

Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, the days of waiting for a third party to make vital page changes and updates are over. Using A Far Site Betters web-based Content Management System, the church staff finally has the power to edit its calendars, bulletins, events, and even the priests sermons online, and on time. We are finally experiencing the promise and power of the internet by making the constant changes we need ourselves, in a matter of minutes, Jones said. Its simply awesome.

About St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Parish:
There are currently about 2,100 households registered in the parish. The adjoining school has an enrollment of 540 students. The Paulist Fathers and Daughters of Mary and Joseph continue to staff the parish, but are now joined by dozens of dedicated men and women who volunteer.

About A Far Site Better:
A Far Site Betters charter is to improve and revitalize, or in some cases, resuscitate a companys existing website and online profiles. By analyzing a companys needs, especially in light of previous experience, A Far Site Better takes their clients to the next level. Services include evaluation, high support, and customized content management tools so that the clients own personnel can easily make changes, updates, and manage their own site.