Our latest project at Black Hills Web Works is a new website for Parkview Evangelical Free Church in Rapid City, South Dakota. Parkview recently changed the name of their church and moved into a brand new building, and the new website was timed, more or less, to coincide with these significant changes.
The Parkview website, www.parkviewefc.org, is powered by the Joomla CMS (Content Management System) and was built using the Crystalline template from RocketTheme. Crystalline is built on the Gantry Framework and I have to say that I am impressed with the flexibility and power of this framework for building websites.
An Online Resource
The website is designed to be the “go to” place for resources and information about Parkview, keeping church members and visitors alike informed about what’s happening at Parkview.
Some key features of the website are:
- an embedded online sermon audio player hosted by Sermon.net
- an embedded Google map for directions to the church
- embedded Google calendars displaying schedules for the church and its ministries
- an integrated sign-up form for church email newsletters powered by MailChimp
- multiple slide shows for displaying photos of various church ministries, activities, and trips
- a pull-down Quick Menu which serves as a site map on every page
- weekly bulletins in PDF format
- archives of forms and newsletters as PDFs for the Student Ministry
Client-managed Content
Parkview really wanted a website that would enable them to manage and update their content on a regular basis, and Joomla CMS is a perfect solution for this requirement. Of course, like most technologies, using Joomla does involve a learning curve, and this project includes on-site training and a custom User’s Manual to help the Parkview staff become familiar with how to use their new website. That training is scheduled for this coming week, and after that we’ll be “handing them the keys” to their website and its content.
