My friend and I are officially in charge of building the website for a sister church to my church...

[Lox]

<div style='font: bold 9pt ; text-align: left; '>It's also his girlfriend's church.

The site looks like crap right now.

<a href="http://www.epcbaltimore.com">http://www.epcbaltimore.com</a>

The pastor said some 17 year old that goes there put it together.

Anyone have any suggestions? We're definitely going to use CSS, possibly Flash for small pieces, javascript, maybe, etc.</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>Rule #1: Do --NOT-- put some damned "Site Under Construction" sign!! A site is ALWAYS under construction, and putting a sign there just gives you an excuse to not do anything about the crappy web site. Furthermore, if you are under construction, do not put links to pages that don't have any information in them. Design the page first, THEN link to it.

Also, don't use Flash. This is a church web site. You are not going to show off a "Jesus vs. the Space Aliens" video game, so there's no need to go for a multimedia medium that not every church lady is going to have. Nor do you need to force these people to download Flash. Know your audience and design for them. No need to try to bring up the "latest technology", unless you actually have a use for it.

Javascript and CSS is fine. All of the browsers support it now, so it shouldn't be a problem. Only dive into CSS2 if you really need it, since IE may choke on this 6-year-old standard. (Every 10 years or so, Microsoft decides to steal ideas...I mean "innovate" and improve their crappy browser a little bit.)

I would ditch the yahoo.com and juno.com addresses, and set up the addresses for the domain. If you have a domain, you have e-mailboxes or, at the very least, e-mail forwarding. epcbalto@yahoo.com looks unprofessional. parham@epcbaltimore.com looks much better. Sure, it's a little longer, but at least it looks like the Reverend is actually a part of the church, instead of some guy with a yahoo address.

A friend of mine maintains <a href="http://www.okolonacc.org/">Okolona Christian Church's web site</a>. (Although, it looks like they might be redesigning or something because there's not too many pages.)</div>

[Flip]

<div style='font: 10pt Tahoma; text-align: left; '>You cant go wrong with MS Frontpage!</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Don't use Flash. It's not necessary for a site that is there to just convey information.</div>

[Lox]

<div style='font: bold 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Thanks for the pointers.

There will never be one of those lame construction signs on the page. They just scream "unprofessional". That's the first thing I said to my friend. heh

The thing about the email, oh yeah, those are definitely going to be something like what you said. Whether I have those forward directly to other addresses or what, I haven't decided, but the @yahoo.com stuff is gone.

I hear what you say about Flash. That was my main concern. I'll have to discuss it with my friend before we make any final decisions anyways.</div>

[Lox]

<div style='font: bold 9pt ; text-align: left; '>I really want to learn Flash, so maybe I'll create some Flash content for the site just for myself even if it never goes up on the site.

The site is also supposed to bring in new people to the church, so I was thinking that something that would really catch their attention would keep their attention long enough to get them to come visit, but the back of my mind kept saying that the problems when people need to install Flash probably aren't outweighed by the gains. If anything, the Flash would have been nothing more than a bar with a picture of the church and some cool animation and that would be it. I wasn't thinking any more than that.</div>

[Lox]

<div style='font: bold 9pt ; text-align: left; '>I'll probably use that for coding, though I prefer to not use their built-in stuff if at all possible.</div>

[Shellie]

<div style='font: 10pt georgia; text-align: left; '>Sure you can :) Use Dreamweaver, not FP!</div>

[Flip]

<div style='font: 10pt Tahoma; text-align: left; '><img src="http://www.sickinfatuation.com/buddychrist.jpg">

You cant go wrong with this on the first page!</div>

[Zeus]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>I gotta get me one of those for my car :-)</div>

[Lox]

<div style='font: bold 9pt ; text-align: left; '>I believe that was a Catholic thing in Dogma. :)</div>

[Baldarov]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Haha, yeah.  Damn that was a good movie.  "But you didn't say God bless you!"</div>

[Imakeholesinu]

<div style='font: 10pt Arial; text-align: left; '>Bah! Use NOTEPAD!!!! :P j/k</div>

[Shellie]

<div style='font: 10pt georgia; text-align: left; '>People who dont know how to do html at all use FP, people who know html use notepad. People who know html and web design enough to know that managing a very large site is near impossible just using a text editor for everything, and its faster to use a GOOD wysisyg like DW! :)</div>

[Shellie]

<div style='font: 10pt georgia; text-align: left; '>People who dont know how to do html at all use FP, people who know html use notepad. People who know html and web design enough to know that managing a very large site is near impossible just using a text editor for everything use DW! And its faster to use a GOOD wysisyg like DW! :)</div>

[Lox]

<div style='font: bold 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Well I know HTML so DW sounds interesting. Do you know anyone with a copy online?</div>

[Flip]

<div style='font: 10pt Tahoma; text-align: left; '>i know alittle html so i modify FP a little. What MS needs to do is to make a FPpro that has more options, though. Any other non-codeing webpage builders out there that allow you to do a lot?</div>

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Loki!</div>

[Shellie]

<div style='font: 10pt georgia; text-align: left; '>You can use DW in Code view only if you like. It's very clean, as in it doesnt put a lot of junk code in like FP.</div>

[Shellie]

<div style='font: 10pt georgia; text-align: left; '>I have Dreamweaver MX, you can find that on P2P stuff though.</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>(*beats Flip with a crowbar*) *THUD* Yes *THUD* you *THUD* fucking *THUD* can! *THUD*</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>People who are managing a very large web site use Perl! :)</div>

[Flip]

<div style='font: 10pt Tahoma; text-align: left; '>No, i said i like visual programs that allow me to build without codeing. Thus, i like FP, but wish it had more options of stuff to add.</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>You can build without coding in DW. The options there, but you don't have to use it. The actual code in FP, though, is a TOTAL FUCKING MESS!! Trust me on this one.</div>

[Shellie]

<div style='font: 10pt georgia; text-align: left; '>Like Sine said, you can switch between Design view (WYSIWYG like FP), Code view (like Notepad), and a split screen of both, which is what I use.</div>

[Shellie]

<div style='font: 10pt georgia; text-align: left; '>Bah, Perl is old and busted. PHP is the new hotness!</div>