We needed to shift the website to a new software platform, because we were having technical support difficulties with the old platform. This kind of shift is a large undertaking, with every page having to be transferred from the old system to the new; every link re-linked; and every file and image re-uploaded.
It made sense to update the design of the site at the same time, because the design would have to be rewritten for the new platform anyway. We choose to give the site a cleaner look-and-feel, so that it would be easier for you to find the information you’re looking for.
Our website has a huge amount of pages and diverse array of information, and we’ve restructured and recategorised this content with the needs of our users in mind. We hope that you will find navigating the site both simpler and more logical.
Some tips, tricks and innovations
At the very top of the page, you can see a black tab labelled “find something fast”. Clicking this tab brings up links to our most frequently accessed content.
When you’re looking at pages in the site, you’ll see a menu down the left hand side. This menu highlights the page you’re looking at in red, as well as showing you all the “child” pages of that page, which will contain further relevant information.
On the right hand side of a page, you’ll see a list of “related links”. One exciting feature of the new website is that pages that relate to each other can be grouped and displayed in this way, even if they sit in different parts of the site structure.
You’ll find the search facility of this website a vast improvement on the old version. If you want to search for a particular phrase, rather than just one word, you can try putting speech marks around it. For example, “Presbyterian Foundation”.
You can also subscribe to the RSS feed of the site in the top right hand corner. This will bring the latest news items straight to your RSS reader. Want to know more about RSS?
You’ll notice that you can access the search for a minister or church straight from the front page, on the right-hand side, and the display of these search results has been revamped. This data is pulled from our main database, with changes uploaded to the website once a month.
Feedback
Your thoughts and comments on the new website are very welcome, as are suggestions for improvement. Please email Communications Manager Amanda Wells.