Whaddon Way Church has had a website for over ten years. Its purpose has always been to inform visitors about the activities of Whaddon Way Church. During that time it has undergone many revisions as skills have increased and fashions have changed.
The most recent, Spring 2009, revision is underway at present, and the site currently consists of new-style pages and those still to be converted.
Each redesign is a result of the tension between a 'clean classical' text based site and a more colourful, picture-filled site. This version returns to the simple format.
The site has evolved technically from simple HTML through using tables for formatting, JavaScript for complex menus and standard text, to its present form using XHTML mark-up for the text and cascading style sheets (CSS2). There are both printer and screen style sheets, so each page should look OK on any screen and printer. If it doesn't, please tell me.
One of the reasons I enjoy IT is that it is continually evolving and there is always something new to try out. As I'm not currently employed by a business, my desire to innovate towards perfection is partially satisfied by continually evolving the website. The most recent innovation is multiple style-sheets.
Books I can recommend for those interested in web design are:
In addition there are many excellent websites. I recently discovered "A List Apart" which has links to many more sites.
The site is being developed using the "Expression Web" tool, which is proving a useful tool for developing CSS based sites. I am still using version 1 of the tool. If I get to PHP I might upgrade, but version 1 does all I need it to at present.
Paul has been recording the readings and sermon each week on his laptop, using the sound system at FMC to capture the sound through the microphones. He has copied the files onto a website in the mp3 format, which is the format used by most music players.
The sermons are being made available by a process called "really simple syndication' (RSS). This is equivalent to subscribing to a magazine, except that instead of the magazine being posted through your letter box, your computer detects whether a new issue is available.
How it does this depends upon the your web browser and other software like Outlook.
Internet Explorer (IE) will display the web page and show the list of mp3 sermon files. Double -clicking on these links will load Windows media player to play the sermon. If you subscribe IE will interact with Outlook to set up a RSS feed file alongside the inbox.
Firefox is similar to IE, but unstead of using Outlook will add a bookmark if you subscribe.
In both cases, subscribing will mean that a new entry in the outlook folder or firefox bookmark will appear when a new sermon is added.
It is not easy designing a web site that meets the needs of everyone, as people have different displays set at various resolutions, and layouts that look good on the designer's screen may not fit other systems.
How a web page appears depends upon two things: the style sheet that is created by the web designer, and the browser settings that you decide.
All modern browsers allow the web page to be made bigger or smaller - often called zooming in and zooming out.
To zoom in - hold down the keys Ctrl shift, and press the "+" (plus) key and the fonts should get bigger. Do it again and they will get bigger still.
To zoom out, reversing what you have just done, hold down the Ctrl key and press the "-" (minus) key and the fonts will get smaller.
This can only be done if the designer has created alternate style sheets. This site currently has two - the standard style sheet and one I called "Yellow on blue, Comic" that I hope will help those with difficulty reading web screens.
There is also an option of ignoring style sheets completely.
Selecting a style sheet is easy, but different browsers do it slightly differently.
Internet Explorer: On the "view" menu, take the "style" option, and a list of the style sheets will appear. Click on the style sheet you want to use.
Firefox: On the "view" menu, take the "page style" option , and a list of style-sheets will appear. Click on the style sheet you want.
Copyright © Whaddon Way Church 2010 Author: Michael Kelly, last updated on March 17th 2010
Sermon recordings