Suggestions for those developing Parish Websites

The following are suggestions that those who have, or are considering, developing parish websites might find useful. They are intended to be helpful, but can of course be ignored if you wish, as we have no desire to try and arrive at a dull conformity when it is the very diversity of the sites which is such a delight. Of course many sites already include the points made below.

• Although those involved with the parish are clearly aware of its place within the wider church many who are searching the national index will not have the same knowledge. It might be helpful therefore to include the name of the diocese on the home page. Additionally, either in the same place, or perhaps on a 'Contacts Page', one could include the name of the benefice, deanery and archdeaconery. In connection with this it is also sensible to include a fairly prominent reference to the fact that the parish is in the Church of England as search engines might throw up a mixture of C of E, Catholic, Methodist etc. and some users may be confused as to the denomination of a specific site.
• A 'Contacts' page or link is always a good idea. It should contain, or just be, a 'mailto' which can be used to generate an email for contacting the webmaster of the parish. However, due to the fact that some software can be used to trawl through websites seeking such 'mailto' addresses for supply to spammers, you may wish to show the email address as text without an underlying hyperlink.
• It should be possible to return to the Home Page of a site from any other page within the site by a simple click. Sometimes users become somewhat lost and it is helpful to know that one can always return to the original entry point without the need to use the 'Back' button an indeterminate number of times.
• Try to avoid the need for horizontal scrolling, which is often an irritant. This does call into question what resolution should be used when designing the site, the most common size being 800 by 600.
• When adding images use formats which are of as small a size (in terms of the file) as possible. It is quite possible for a file to be 1 megabyte and the same picture in a different format to be 60k. Those using fairly slow modems do not appreciate pages that take a long time to load and may very well give up and move on. This concept should be extended to any graphics added to a page as a pretty homepage that takes seven minutes to load will be less effective than a simpler version which responds in seconds. However you should be careful that changing format does not lead to a significant loss in quality. It is generally best to use a decent package like PaintShopPro when processing photographs and it is possible to download JPEG optimizers from the web which will reduce the size of a JPEG file by as much as 50%. Obviously you should satisfy yourself that the final result is acceptable before adding to the site.
  
• You must remember that there is no such thing as a public domain photograph and copyright exists in photographs which appear on websites as much as if they appear in a newspaper or in an art gallery or shop. One parish has received an invoice for more than £3,000 for the unlicensed use of just two copyright photographs which were included on their website. Under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act and international copyright law, copyright exists the moment an artistic work - including photographs - is created.  The artistic work does not need to contain or include a copyright notice nor does it need to be formally offered for sale by a publisher. You should check your website to ensure that no copyright image is included and also to ensure that you are aware of the requirement to ensure that written permission is obtained before any copyright material is used. You should also be aware that some photographic agencies and photo-library CDs use misleading terms such as "Royalty Free".  This term does not mean that a licence is not required; but often means that a licence fee must be paid but only once; whereas other images require a licence fee plus royalties for each use or period of time. Photo agencies are not consistent in the terms they use so you must read the small print and ensure you are fully aware of the terms and conditions applicable. It can often work out cheaper to commission a news agency or professional photographer to take photos for you rather than use library agencies.
• In addition, for child protection reasons, no names of children should be associated with any pictures, this also providing another reason for images to be saved in a small filesize, as they cannot be enlarged and printed out. If you register your website with one of the safesurf networks it will then be viewable from schools and libraries.
• As the site can be read by all and sundry it is probably best not to mention any valuables or portable antiques held within the church, unless you are completely confident that your security arrangements are adequate
• Provision of a map on a 'Where to Find Us' link is likely to be popular as we do receive requests at the centre for such information, which we do not have the resources to provide for thousands of parishes, but which individual parishes can supply on their own site. If you do not have a map available you can find them by using the internet site multi maps (http://uk2.multimap.com/) or the Ordance Survey at http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/getamap/
• A 'Links' page is also quite a good idea. As well as links to worthy sites you may wish to advertise, you could include a link to the main Church of England Site, the Diocesan website and the website of the Bishop. Additionally you could consider adding direct links to the parish website index  and to the index of information sheets in order to assist those who are interested in examining a variety of parish websites, or are searching for contact details throughout the church.
• The addition of a 'Date last updated' on the home page is often appreciated, as regular users will then know whether changes have taken place since their last visit. In connection with this a separate page showing a list of significant changes to the website in reverse chronological order can help where the website is large.
• Accessibility issues - many websites completely ignore people who use some form of voice recognition or have limited hand mobility. Read the WIA guidelines and/or use the Bobby accreditation scheme (please not the Bobby scheme is no longer a free service you may wish to use http://wave.webaim.org/,  currently in beta). All websites should be viewable with noframes. (If you try this with some high profile websites you will get some very interesting results, or a message saying that 'your browser does not support frames').
• Ensure that you remove out of date information, as users regard sites which refer, for example, to forthcoming events which are in the past, as very poor, however much effort may be put into other parts of the site.
• Request that your site be added to both the diocesan website and the main C of E index and use metatags to enable search engines such as Google to identify it easily.
• In addition  the following three sites offer useful advice on this subject (the C of E is not responsible for the content of these sites and any queries should be addressed to their webmasters)

• http://www.communitykit.co.uk
• http://www.anglican.org/domain/index.html
• http://www.cofeguildford.org.uk/html/resources/web-creation/website.shtml

Weblogs

The following suggestion has been received from a member of Flecknoe PCC, a Warwickshire parish within the Leam Valley Benefice, part of the Coventry diocese.

"We have decided to opt for a free weblog instead of a  paying website for the parish, and have launched our site at http://flecknoeparish.blogspot.com

We felt the informal chatty tone of a weblog would be more amenable to the non-church-going members of our very small village community who will access the site for local photographs etc., than a more sombre official website which they would be unlikely to revisit. And weblogs are free, of course, which is always a bonus for small parishes like ours!

It occurred to me that a similar thing could be done even by bigger parishes who already have a website, by creating a blog elsewhere and linking it to their official website. I seem to recall that St. Andrew's in Rugby (also Coventry diocese) has a weblog attached to their main site. That way, you get the best of both worlds - both formal and informal views of the local church community"

Audio Streaming

The website administrator for Coley Church, Halifax, in the diocese of Wakefield, has sent details of how audio streaming may be used by parishes when constructing their web sites.

In addition the web administrator of Christchurch LEP, Clevedon has found another program that is cheaper than Audio Video Streams.  He recommends Hoo Technology's "MP3 to SWF Converter" which he bought for £23.17 (as at January 2007). An example of its use can be found on his web site

Email addresses

Jamie McRobie, who has designed one of the parish websites, makes the following suggestion for hiding e-mail addresses:

Use the following javascript in the html:

<SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript">

emailE=('contact' + '@' + 'website.com')

document.write('<A href="mailto:' + emailE + '">' + emailE + '</a>')

</SCRIPT>

This makes it quite hard for page scanners to find the e-mail address

He also suggests that one could embolden sections that have just been updated

If anyone has suggestions of their own which they think might be worth adopting more widely please send them to me and I will consider adding them to this page: IT department