Any thoughts?

[Mikalee]

Hello everyone,

I just created a new Church site using the Mambo CMS and was wondering if you could give me some (constructive) criticism. I'm currently using a stock template (which looks decent for a template), but I plan to customize it. Before doing so, I'd love to hear any opinions on the feel and functionalities of the site. (The content is still lacking...).

link: www.thechurchontherock.ca

Thanks in advance,
Mike

[Vin DSL]

Interesting choice of colors!

Orange
Symbolic of endurance and strength, orange is the color of fire and flame. It represents the red of passion tempered by the yellow of wisdom. It is the symbol of the sun.

My site, on the other hand...

Black
Said to represent the absolute, constancy, eternity or the womb, black may also denote death, fear and ignorance. Black is the liturgical color of Good Friday.

If I was making a church site, I would use a purple theme.

Purple
Speaks of fasting, faith, patience and trust. It is the liturgical color used during seasons of penance, Advent and Lent.

[Gwaihir]

I think the colors just came with Mambo; they like orange..

[Spathiphyllum]

If I was making a church site, I would use a purple theme...

Hmm. In that case, might I recommend some decorative Boswellia and Commiphora stuck in a corner somewhere to complement all of that original yellow, er, gold.

[Connie]

Personally I like the colors that you have now. I'm partial to blue and blue/ gray. The color is pleasing. I notice that your home page link goes to http://www.thechurchontherock.ca/ind...tpage&Itemid=1 but http://www.thechurchontherock.ca/ is your actual home page. You may not be concerned about SEs but this can cause problems. You need to link back to the home page from all internal links consistently using http://www.thechurchontherock.ca/. You should also do a 301 redirect so that http://thechurchontherock.ca/ points to http://www.thechurchontherock.ca/. SEs will see all 3 names as different pages even though they are the same page. What you have is duplicate content. Sometimes a SE will choose one name but sometimes they may penalize you because of duplicate content. SE spiders are not to smart. Help them all you can by making things simple for them.

Otherwise I think you have a good start for a user friendly site. You might also want to look into a mod_rewrite to make you URL user friendly.
?xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx =xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx is not user friendly. It is also not SE friendly.

[Vin DSL]

Yes, I like that theme MUCH better! I REALLY like the logo too!

Church on The Rock - I assume 'The Rock' is Jesus Christ. I know the Holy Bible refers to Him in that way, and countless others. The logo looks like it could lead to a mountain top, 'The Rock', or the feet of 'The Rock', so it works on several levels.

Anyway, much better!

[Spathiphyllum]

Nice and clean with a "marbled" tone... very professional and calming. Was that the effect you were seeking? Yes, the aqua is much better. Renders very well in Mozilla at 1280x1024.

[Mikalee]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. At first I was most concerned with getting all the functionalities that I thought we needed. I'm basically done with that now and focusing more on the looks.

clssam, I will definitely do those things you mentioned...thanks for letting me know. It comes with a mod_rewrite function that's supposed to make the url's SE friendly, but it doesn't work. Anyone good with that stuff?

This blueish theme is the one I was using at first, but it wouldn't resize to the 800*640 properly, so I had to edit it and put it back on.

Vin, not sure if you were being sarcastic about the logo...as there is none really, just plain text of the name. That is something I have to make (a logo that is), but I rather leave that 'till the end.

I guess this current theme is good enough to work on and customize as most of you seem to agree.

Thanks again!

Mike

[jason]

I think he' s referring to that diagonally ascending line on the right side of the header. It kind of gives the subtle impression of a mountain.

--Jason

[Connie]

Put this in your .htaccess file. If you don't know what that is we can help you with that. This will work for your index page which is which is either htm or html. What this does is redirect all request to domain.com to www.domain.com.

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

As far as the index.php page I think that is going to have to be taken care of from the software. Hopefully it will allow you change the link to point to the htm or html page. If it does an easy way to do it is to use this. <a href="/">Home</a>

If your interested in learning how to optimize your site I highly recommend this SEO Forum.

If no one here can help you with the php rewrite for SE friendly URLs you can get help there. I don't know anything about php so I can't help you in that area.

[Vin DSL]

I think he' s referring to that diagonally ascending line on the right side of the header. It kind of gives the subtle impression of a mountain.

--Jason

Exactly!

[digitalcrease]

I like the integration of the search button field and the layout.