Groovy Sputum

The Blog That’s Not A Blog

Sunday was supposed to be our launch of the new church website, but due to many things, it has been put off until March 2nd. I think that date is pretty solid, mostly because Pastor Mike announced it from the pulpit on Sunday, gave out the web address, and said it would be up on that day. I figured that I would spend some time explaining a few things about the site that I think are rather unique.

When you think of a blog, even a church blog, you typically think of a Blogger or WordPress layout: a header image that changes with the seasons, one large column with the 5 or 6 latest posts, and a side bar filled with widgets and such. This is fine for a personal blog, but it’s not what I had in mind for our church site. I wanted to have an area where we could put static data (like service times, a map, statement of faith, etc.) but reserve the majority of the page area for posts. Here’s the catch: I wanted to display a number of posts from a variety of categories on the page in a way that readers could see them all.

After investigating many themes available for WordPress, I found that 99% of them don’t separate posts based on category nor do they display posts in multiple places. Then I discovered the phrase magazine style theme. After a Google search with that phrase, I found a number of themes that would do what I wanted. They all are built primarily for newspapers or magazines that display their info in separate categories. Some of my favorites are The Morning After, Mimbo, Structure, and Grid Focus. Others I found are Gridlock, Visionary, and a number of themes by Upstart Blogger.

After trying a few, I finally settled on the Mimbo theme due to it’s classic styling and use of custom fields. If you are a Seinfeld fan, you will recognize the name. Funny stuff. Anyway, I made a few changes to the sidebar and the CSS file, but not many. The first thing you see when you go to the site is the latest post from the pastor. Below it are the three latest testimonies as well as the latest post from the children, youth, and adult categories. The announcements are in the top right corner and are actually posts with only theirs title showing. The nice thing about this is that they show up on the page as bulleted lines, but are sent as posts via the rss feed.

When visitors come to the site, they have access to 12 posts from 6 different categories as well as navigation and special event banners. This is exactly what I wanted. A traditional blog format shoves all of the content to the bottom or the archives and the viewer has to search for the content they want. With a magazine style format, the viewer always sees the latest post from each category, regardless of when it was posted.

The static info that rarely changes is confined to pages and can be accessed via the drop down navigation bar at the top. The titles showing are the parent pages and the drop down choices are children of those parents. The only pages that will change much will be the events. I am planning to create a new page for each special event we have and then link the side banner ads to them. When the event is first presented, it will be written up and categorized into either the children, youth, or adult areas as a post. As the event approaches, I will create a post in the announcement category so that a reminder is sent to any one subscribing to the site feed.

So, that’s it. I think the overall visual appearance is nice (conservative, yet modern in a techie way) and it functions the way I had it in my head. I would love to hear what you think about the concept and design. We haven’t gone live yet, so who knows, maybe something you suggest will be worked into the final product!