The Church of England and The Methodist Church
in the
Parish of Sturry with Fordwich and Westbere with Hersden
Parish of Sturry with Fordwich and Westbere with Hersden
For those of you who view this website periodically, this page highlights the latest additions to the website. Minor changes to the format or text are not highlighted, nor are the regular updates of the special service times or the Recent Events pages.
Looking to make a church website? This page contains some advice on what should and should not be in a church website.
The Sturry church website is now a relatively large church website, and it certainly receives a large number of visitors - over 3,500 unique visitors per month by the end of 2004. Now (in 2007) this is nearer 5,000 different visitors per month and it is unusual for fewer than 150 different visitors to view this website each day. Note that this is a measure of 'visitors' and not 'hits' - the number of 'hits' (a meaningless measure) is over 50,000 /month.
This website was started in 1998 and gradually grew. In 2002, it was upgraded it be completely accessible to all (including partially sighted people using screen readers). It was also redesigned for minimum maintenance - a very important consideration. The current website requires just 3 hours of effort per year to keep all the information up to date. It does not require an expensive web-editing program to make changes - notepad or a simple HTML editor are used.
One of the advantages of a church website is that it provides an information resource for the increasingly large percentage of the population online. This saves the Rector or Minister from dealing with as many routine enquiries about Family History, wedding fees and advance service times.
During holiday periods, we often get visitors who have been able to track down service times without driving around looking at church notice boards.
The most popular pages are always the weddings and baptism pages. Throughout the year other pages become important (for example service times near Christmas). Large numbers of people visit the website to find out about the joint Anglican Methodist LEP (Local Ecumenical Partnership) and Methodist confirmations.
This website is larger than most church websites need be, mainly because it has grown gradually since 1998. The following are useful considerations when creating a church website:
The following are smaller local church websites which may give a more realistic example of what a church website can look like. Most of the following are maintained by members of the local church:
2008 - New pages include Easter Pilgrimage and Spring Harvest 2008
2007 - updated homepage to include slide show and added Events 2007 page
2006 - added new Events 2006 page
2005 - added new Events 2005 page
- most new additions can be accessed from here
Sep/Oct 04 - added Bike Ride and Harvest
August 04 - updated WebLog, added photo of new Methodist Minister, updated service times.
June 04 - added photos of Summer Fair.
April 04 - added photos of Easter Pilgrimage and Sunday school Easter Gardens.
March 04 - added sermon 'What is your lifestyle' and Traidcraft stall photo.
February 04 - added extra photos to Sunday school and various news items in weblog.
December 03.Added in finance and giving page Added pictures from Seekers video to the Seekers webpage. Added events to past events page.
Added a search facility to the homepage. Added in Family History page, updated Flame photos.
November 03.
Added in a weblog.
Replaced side menu bar with drop down menu.
October 03. Added in Christmas 2003 and Spring 2004 service times. Added page on the accessibility features of this website.
September 03. Upgraded the contents menu bar.
August 03. Added in Baptism or Christening information.
August 03. Added in Desert detectives photo gallery.
May, June, July 03. Updates to Past events pages, including Bell Ringing, School and church summer fair and visit of Rene from Argentina.
Apr 03. Added Easter Monday pilgrimage to Seekers photo gallery.
Mar 03. Added in Fairtrade pancake race around Canterbury Cathedral.
Mar 03. Website now has over 30 pages, so remove the historical information on the church buildings and create separate websites for St. Nicholas church, Sturry, All Saints church, Westbere, and St. Mary's church, Fordwich. Also create a site-map page for ease of navigation (2 or 3 click principle).
16th Feb 03. Added in Seekers photo gallery.
1st Feb 03. Added in Jammers photo gallery.
27th Jan 03. Created extra past events page, and added in Burns night photos.
16th Dec 02. Major upgrade to improve accessibility features, so that website makes sense in text only browsers, speech synthesis programs, and enlarged text.
24th Nov. 02 Added First Communion photos, Bric a brac and book fair photos, and divided the past events in 2002 into 2 pages as the large number of photos were slowing down the load times of the pages. Also added link to Cornish WebServices. Updated Special Service Times to include Christmas services.
11th Nov. 02 Added Address on Sturry LEP at the joint Anglican Methodist Synod, and Remembrance parade photos.
14th Oct. 02 Added Tour of Sturry Church, minor changes to Midweek activities and new Flame photos.
8th Oct. 02 Converted to using Frames - but put in a noframes option.
28th Sept. 02 Added to Jammers pictures.
14th Sept. 02 Added to Pram and Buggy photo gallery.
6th Sept. 02
Updated the page of Useful Links.
Added information on Seekers to Children's Groups
3rd Aug. 02 Added MegaQuest frontpage, and pages for the MegaQuest theme, and MegaQuest photo gallery
13th July 02 Added Royal Maundy picture, now in Past Events.
29th June 02 Added Summer Fair pictures, now in Past Events.
27th June 02
Children's Groups
updated to include photos of Sunday school, and photos of Jammers.
The text of the Church Times Article on Sturry LEP added to The LEP pages.
This page added, detailing recent additions to the website.
Removed Future Events page, and added planned future services to the page of Regular Services.
Added photos of the inside of Sturry church to Church Buildings.
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