Comments on: Problems, resources at unitarian.org.uk

By: Scott Wells

Scott Wells — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 17:08:28 +0000

Sorry Philo, I’m not buying it the easier-by-constituency logic. The last-but-one version of the Episcopal Church’s site tried the same thing, with a miserable dose of Flash animation to boot.

I rejoiced when that short-lived experiment folded in favor of their new format. See it at http://www.dfms.org

By: Philocrites

Philocrites — Fri, 11 May 2007 16:49:20 +0000

Good web design is not at all easy.

A lot of what you may be expecting to find on UUA.org may not actually be there yet: Only a small fraction of the content has been published on the new site so far, but the general principle of organizing material by audience should make most of the content easier to find than before — once it’s there.

By: Elizabeth Gish

Elizabeth Gish — Thu, 10 May 2007 14:29:25 +0000

I’m so glad I’m not the only one that wondered what in the world the UUA was thinking with the new website. At least before I could remember where relevant information was. Now it isn’t clear where it is and I don’t know where it is kept. I’m not trying to be mean, but seriously, is it that hard just to hire a really good web designer and say “Make this look good and make finding things obvious.” I guess it must be harder than I think. Sigh.

By: Scott Wells

Scott Wells — Thu, 10 May 2007 12:29:30 +0000

Since writing the original blog post, I reviewed the text templates. Rubbish. Some default templates with the new logo and fake details. Assuming you have the skill to customize these in the first place, it would be easier to make something special for your church from scratch.

Also, the main page is built on tables. What is this, 1999? I wrote about this at http://boyinthebands.com/archives/uuaorg-degrades-nicely/ because UUA.org moved from tables to a logical, orderly divisions. Heck — Blogger can do it. It should be a required web design skill.

I’m not done.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Thu, 10 May 2007 12:03:17 +0000

Ha ha! I’ve been meaning to blog on this, and wanted to get your opinion on the site since its been up.

It has diappointed me. Mainly because it isn’t actually new. They did have a design for a different website a year ago, but that would have needed a permanent paid webmaster to maintain I was told so they scrapped it. Apparently this site is easy to update so they will be able to do it. Let’s hope it gets done soon and often. I’ll probably have some more thoughts on this later.

By: Scott Wells

Scott Wells — Wed, 09 May 2007 20:49:52 +0000

I preferred the UK site because it delivered what it promised attractively. Now it looks like a crazy quilt with candles.

Sure it didn’t have as much — and I agree about the ancient photos and news — but for the British Unitarians’ size, I liked it. I prefer the new one, say, to the websites of comparably-sized Canadian Unitarian Council or the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland.

By: Jaume

Jaume — Wed, 09 May 2007 20:07:59 +0000

I can’t agree with you about the virtues of the previous site: always the same dismaying photos on the homepage, news which were almost 1 year old, no visible updates… I have not checked the new website yet, but after your telling that content has not been updated, I think I will wait for some more time.

I agree with your evaluation of the new UUA website. I complained about the disappearance of most international information and the almost total lack of resources in Spanish (so much for a journey towards diversity…), but I was reassured that the website contained only a small part of the intended content and that migration was still going on. But weeks are passing and I see no relevant changes.