... and I’m happy to report that both father and progeny are doing well.

Greetings all,

Well by now you have probably noticed that we’ve done a surprise redesign of the web site. Hopefully it won’t be an unwelcome surprise.

Web Designer Rob has been beavering away in the vaults beneath Your.sydneyanglicans.net designing our gradual emergence into the New Media that are beginning to characterise much of our Internet experience. The fruits of his labour are now on show for all to see.

Chief amongst the additions to the family at Your.sydneyanglicans.net is a ‘New Media’ centre at the top right of each page that gives easy access to a range of new media rich products, including:

- The Media Library, including a brand new culture podcast (with something special on the way) as well as easier access to all of our audio titles

- Sydang TV, with videos, videos, videos including Connect 09 updates, quick excerpts from our library of programs, resources info, the best of the Ignite film festival and the ability to finally catch up on all those synods you missed - with more titles added each month

- Sydang mobile, a link to the super-slim Your.sydneyanglicans.net site for your mobile - with a sign-up facility on the way that will send the URL straight to your phone.

- News-to-you email, a one-step sign-up box for those who like their Sydang news home delivered. It’s an easy way to join the 1700+ people who already receive our News Bulletin containing all of our headlines and freshest articles every Monday morning.

The banner has undergone some cosmetic surgery to help you keep in touch with Connect 09, the mission campaign that is going to challenge the way we see our communities for the next two years. And of course we’ve paid some extra attention to all of our old favourites, cleaning up a bit of the clutter so that you can see the latest articles in our Mission Thinking, Indepth, Culture and Media Library sections at a glance.

We’ve also added a you-beut site-map cum section finder at the top of the home page which puts you two clicks away from any part of the site. It will be making its way out to all of our pages shortly.

That’s just one of the usual tweaks that will take place over the next few weeks but hopefully everything will be synched up and running smoothly just as you’re tucking into your second slice of Christmas pudding.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of the web team - Steve Mason for his fine design sensibilities, Grand Master Lukey-Luke for his copious hand-holding and Al Dowthwaite for endless supplies of caffeine and other stimulants. But most of all we’d like to thank God for getting us through this last two weeks and pray that what you read and contribute will continue to bring glory to His name. None of this would be worth the handful of excited electrons that make it up if it didn’t point people to Jesus.

Feel free to pass on your impressions and suggestions here, particularly your well-wishes for Robert who (in the best tradition of Your.sydneyanglicans.net web designers) has promptly collapsed from exhaustion. We can’t promise to implement them straight away but since the next redesign is only ever a few months away, you’re in with a chance.

Cheerio, I’m off to bed.

Thanks Robert and everyone else for your work on the site!

Gordon.

Sorry, missed this thread, you can kill the topic I started above.

Well done to everyone - superb work!

Wow
This is serious steroidal growth happening!
Excellent!

Thanks to all concerned for the hard work. Overall, the new look is great.

However, I find flashing ads (eg CMS Summer School) very distracting and annoying, so I’m afraid it’s a thumbs down there. Also, the rapid auto-tab changing of “New Media” is also pretty distracting. Could I suggest much less frequent auto-tab changes there (eg q 30secs).

Also, a trivial cosmetic issue: it appears that the corners of the info/link boxes on the right hand side in the forums are using the blue corner images. (I suspect this is because the background on the right is blue on the front page whereas it’s a pale grey-brown in the forums.)

Ok, I’m checking it out at work now. Got some formatting issues - basically the right-hand column is appearing below the left-hand column, rather than to the side.

I’m running IE6 on Windows XP, at a res of 1024x768.

I agree with Angus that the rapid auto tab change is too rapid.

I’m not sure that 30 seconds is the right time length as one wants people to see all the tabs and it would take over 2 minutes of staying on that page in order to see all of them. I think that it is now 5 second intervals, and would suggest maybe 10 seconds? Probably can’t please everyone, though!

Cheers,
Andrew

Hi all,

Thanks for the compliments, and the suggestions :)

Angus, Andrew - the tab change was occurring at 6 seconds; we’ve slowed it down to 8 seconds. But like Andrew notes, too much longer and people won’t notice that it moves at all given the average time spent on the front page.

Craig - yes, we’re having issues with some versions of IE6. I could say, ‘Have you heard of Firefox?’ but that would be far too cheeky. We’re hoping to have it sorted soon. However if you update to IE7 or use Firefox, Safari, or Flock, you should be ok.

And as for the colour issue in the forums, we’re on to it.

But - and there’s always one - I’m afraid that the advertisers are very keen on Flash ads (actually animated gifs, but I understand) and they do tend to contribute a certain something to the site ... I’m sure you understand.

Thanks all, and keep the insights coming.

Hi guys,

RE the colour issue, could you do a forced refresh and see if the problem persists? If so, could you send a print screen to webmaster-AT-sydneyanglicans.net?

Cheers

Mark Hadley - 10 December 2007 10:56 AM

RE the colour issue, could you do a forced refresh and see if the problem persists?

All fixed. Thanks!

Well done all concerned

Superb!

G’day,

What I’ve seen looks good so far (thanks for the hard work), but I’m wondering why this update hasn’t solved the issue of the page not being centred on the screen.  I have 8cm of nothing on the right of my screen (I’m using a 17 inch monitor).

Yours in Christ,
Mark

There have obviously been some very talented people involved in the development of this site. I like how it looks very modern, as though it’s keeping up the pace with the rest of web. I would suggest adding a picture box on the left of the forum comment box so we can see who we are talking to. Although everyone may not be keen on this, so perhaps the picture box would only show if the user selected this. To have an empty picture box would not look visually appealing, so perhaps not even showing an empty box if the user does not want to show a picture.

Congrats to the team for getting the new site out the door! (My contribution was merely a bit of help with another site, so I’m not sure the mention is warranted, but thanks in any case ;) I understand the deadline was quite tight for this & Robert has put in a super-human effort to make it happen, so hat’s off to you Robert, and enjoy your holidays!

T’dah!

The IE6 issues are now (God-willing) fixed, so everyone on that platform can now enjoy the site with the rest of our users ... almost. We’re having trouble with the CSS for the Forum pages, so that’s going to take some more work. IE6 also doesn’t support some of the nicer graphic flourishes, like semi-transparent floating section finders, but it’s all there for the browsing.

If you’re using IE6 make sure you do a forced refresh before you view it, and if problems persist please send us a screenshot at webmaster-AT-sydneyanglicans.net and we’ll get on to it.

Thanks for your patience!

Come to think of it, I have a few more suggestions. Perhaps all Anglican churches could be encouraged to have RSS on their site in regards to news and any other posts they have. We could then view on your site what is happening with all Sydney Anglican churches via one feed sourcing feeds from other churches. This could go further with a calendar of events across Sydney of all Anglican churches. These things could help us keep in touch and aware of activities so we can more effectively collaborate.

I have noticed on Facebook the rise of Christian social groups that organise social events within one church or include an open invite for anyone to come along from any church. It is quite a popular thing for young adults as we like to meet new people at our age… So a calendar of events with an open invite would help us young adults to build a stronger and larger network, meet new people and not feel an urge to move to a bigger church e.g. Hillsong. Doing these sorts of things might help attract a younger audience to this site as the forums at least seem to be dominated by older people.