Holy Cross Lutheran Church
What a privilege it has been to work with Holy Cross Lutheran Church in building a new website. This group is willing to accept and embrace technology to help meet their mission of sharing God’s love through faith in Christ. Katherine, Web Administrator and Technology Coordinator, handled the change of learning a brand new website CMS – WordPress – with grace and style. The church staff understands the importance of adapting and changing to serve the needs of their membership, young and old alike.
The Process
- We began with an evaluation of the existing website, which had previously been built with Joomla. The content needed to be organized, the design needed updating and the functionality needed to be improved.
- A sitemap was created, reviewed, revised and approved.
- An initial design was proposed; the layout was readily accepted but it was the colors – the visual look and feel that we struggled with. This website needed to appeal to young people, but also strive to serve multiple generations – and have a sense for those with a serious love of Christ. We went through three design revisions before deciding on a bold and colorful scheme that wasn’t overwhelming, but had airy feel with jovial splashes of color behind the strong Holy Cross logo.
- A new, custom designed WordPress website was built and coded according to the final design.
- The website was tested with popular browsers and devices.
- A home page slide show is provided, with links to featured articles.
- A feedback option called “Share Your Thoughts” is available on every page of the website.
- A special login area was created for members only. This system included a registration and approval process before accessing internal documents.
- Sermons are now posted to the website instead of previously sent as email attachments.
- WordPress training is provided as needed by appointment.
- Maintenance and support is on-going. Currently we are working to make sure that the website is accessible for those with a vision impairment.
We look forward to working with Katherine and Kent to continue to build the online presence for Holy Cross Lutheran Church.
As the Technology Coordinator and Web Administrator for Holy Cross Lutheran Church and School, I have worked with several business professionals in the field of technology. Of those I have worked with Mia Lee has proven to be one of the most knowledgeable, creative, attentive and personable professionals I’ve had to joy to work with. Our business manager and I sat down with Mia to discuss our options with a new web site in the beginning of this process. We had previously been clued into her excellent reputation by another colleague who works in the technology industry. Our immediate impression of her was one of skill, confidence, and excitement which told us she would accomplish our church’s goals in building a site that would reach out to the community, “Sharing God’s Love Through Faith in Christ”. She not only began the process by helping us organize our site to benefit our needs, but she also designed, built, initiated the launch, and followed through with personal training and continued support throughout the modification process. Her schedule was flexible and I never found her unavailable when she was needed most. She and her team made the beautiful site for our Church a success. We plan on upgrading our School website within the next year and I will look forward to working with Mia again to obtain the same success we had with our Church’s site. Holy Cross has recently upgraded our technology in which during this time we were looking for some additional help training staff. We felt comfortable calling on Mia for help in this area and will certainly not hesitate to do this again in the future if needed. I would recommend her and her team to anyone looking to grow and develop a site that will achieve the needs of their business with a personal touch.