About Page Text

Documentation of the Development Process

The purpose of this site is to encourage believers by providing relevant content to biblical truths and current prophetic utterances for the edification of the body of Christ. This is a necessary form of communication in the body and a great use of technology for this communication to occur. Most everyone these days has a computer, tablet, or smartphone to benefit from this type of site. Secondly, this site will provide links to other ministries, making it easier for them to check out what other churches are doing, and lastly, to purchase materials for growth, edification, and training, as well as clothing and accessories that interest or speak to them personally.

The first thing I did for the development of this site was to create an initial site plan. This outlined the purpose of the site, the goal of this site, and the target audience of the site. This site plan helped me stay focused on the content of the site because I had something to look back on while I was developing the site. Such things included what I wanted to offer viewers like scriptural references, encouraging testimonies, a blog, and a store.

The next step I took in the development process was to develop site structure and navigation. I started with a theme where I used the hub and spoke hierarchy of web design. This worked well because there was to be around 5 or 6 pages for this site. I did decide to eliminate the breadcrumb trail originally proposed because it was unnecessary for a small website such as this. If my site was large with many pages this would be a necessity. I have included my proposed site navigation wireframe below.

Proposed Site Navigation Wireframe

Being a “hub” and “spoke” hierarchy, each page will be directly linked to the home page, as seen in the diagram above. I may modify this a bit by allowing for navigation independent of the home page. This would technically make it more of a mesh design, allowing the user to jump from the about page to the blog page (or any other page) without having to go back to the home page. Following is a list of the specific pages.

Home Page – This page should initially capture the visitor and give an immediate sense of what the website is about and what it has to offer. This is a good place for the message of the week, inspirational scriptures, and links to other ministries.

Testimonies – This page will hold the latest testimonies of what God is or has done in their lives. Either as a direct result of the teachings or ministry they received here or through a partner ministry.

Blog – This page will be the landing spot for all but the most current blog. This will include teachings, encouragement or anything on the pastor’s heart for the week. The order will be newest to oldest from top to bottom in chronological order.

Partners – This page will be a full list of our partners and a description of their ministry. It will also have links to their pages, which will open-up in a new tab, so the user will still have our page open in the browser.

Store – This page will be where users can purchase teachings, music, and other encouraging clothing and accessories. It will have images of the items, a brief description, the price, and a shopping cart with checkout options.

About – This page normally would have the History, What we Believe/Statement of Faith, Contact information, and availability of the pastor. For the purposes of this class, this page will have:

A. Documentation of the Development Process.

B. Defense of the Final Product.

C. Opportunities for Improvement and Growth.

Defense of the Final Product

To be truthful, much of the design choices made creating this site come from my limited understanding of such an overwhelming amount of possibilities and understanding of code. I can only hope I utilized the resources available to create a site that is useful, even though maybe not elaborate or responsive as many website developers are creating these days.

From this understanding, I created a site based on Flexbox technology. I was having trouble making my pages flow and keeping the background page color consistent and found flexbox allowed me to add content while expanding the elements evenly. I knew the basic design I wanted to have which was embedded links on the sides and textual content in the middle, making use of whitespace to keep everything from looking too busy.

The home page was to give the user an overview of what they could expect throughout my site, with featured content that can also be found on other pages. Going into the design of this page, I knew I wanted every page to share the header container, navigation container, and footer container. This would keep pages consistent.

Following this flow, I continued this into the Testimonies, Blog, Partners, Store, and About pages. I have the same colors, typography, graphics, and images in all the containers listed above. The differences come in for the main page content for each of the pages. I will explain my individual design choices next.

For the websites main image, I chose a sunrise with the clouds around it. The name of the ministry is Upward Momentum and just as the dawning of the day dispels the darkness of night, so does the illumination of Christ in our hearts dispel the darkness of a soul without God. I wanted to keep the colors similar to the image, which reflect a natural, subdued warm and inviting feeling. I feel that the chosen color scheme has achieved a soothing or calming effect. This was confirmed by two of my peers who reviewed the site in the discussion forum.

I initially was going to use the Papyrus font for both the name of the ministry and for the scripture verses in the banner below the navigation. After seeing this on the page I realized it was not as easy on the eyes and decided to change the font for most of my pages to sans-serif. I found this change to make a big difference in readability. I left the name of the ministry in the Papyrus font for uniqueness and it doesn’t seem to take away from the readability of the pages.

I used as much whitespace as I thought would promote separation and readability without making the pages look too busy, distracting the user from the flow and causing the user to be uncomfortable spending too much time at the site. I also found that adding borders around the content provided enough separation to call them distinct but keep the page from looking divided and busy.

To make my page engaging, professional, and easy to use, I tried to keep most of the relevant content in sight when a user first hits the page. They immediately know what page they are on and can see the interactive content, knowing there is more to explore as they browse the page and the site. Statistics show users scan pages they arrive at from left to right at the top of the page and then down the middle of the page. I tried to focus on the content being centered on the page and the most relevant information to be seen as the user scans down the center of the page. The fact that there is no distracting content as the user scans from left to right across the top aids in the calming affect of the pages.

The links to other partners websites and embeded links to worship music and teachings make the website engaging, not to mention the written teachings, testimonies, scripture verses, and other interesting content one can explore.

The navigation and hyperlinks help make the site easy to use and navigate. Each page is layed out so the user immediately knows which page they are on even if they don’t remember how they got there. All hyperlinks are interactive in that they change colors when hovered over and after having been visited.

Opportunities for Improvement and Growth

If I were to continue to develop this site, I would consider adding podcasts, video testimonies, links to articles from other Christian leaders, and generally add to the amount or content available. Having a testimonies page and blog page naturally assume the page to grow over time because new content is being added daily or weekly. Archived posts should be readily available as well.

The store certainly should be developed in greater detail with more content available for purchase. The development of a more interactive shopping cart and the ability for users to haver an account would be helpful as well. Considering the shopping experience, one has at Amazon or other major retailers gives an idea of how much goes into the development of a webstore. Again, I don’t even come close to having the skills at this point to develop a site at that level.

Adding dropdown links would be helpful as the site grows. An example of this can be found at this website: https://www.awmi.net/ This site has interactive and dynamic dropdown links that allow you to find a lot of information in a hurry. His site is also clean and simple for the most part. One drawback I see for his site is some pages seem too busy or overwhelming, like the home page. I like the banner slideshow he uses where each image is a clickable link. This I would incorporate into my page having more time to develop it.