Church site critique

[littlepeople]

For some time now, I've been working on our church's web page. Pinehavenpres.org. I'm looking for feedback/critique of two sorts. I know many of you are skilled developers, and I would love to hear your technical advice. I'm pretty sure my load time is poor. I'm using a modified theme, and I know there is a lot of fat I need to trim. Wordpress cache plugins thus far have only made the page elements explode everywhere on the screen - maybe it loaded faster, I'm not sure, but it looked horrible.

On the other hand, ANYONE please let me know if important information is missing, or dead links, or it's just ugly, or hard to navigate. I really appreciate any direction you can give.

Also if you are on flickr, twitter, facebook, etc please friend/like/follow us!

Pinehaven church is a relaunch of the combined Mt. Salus of Clinton and St. Paul Presbyterian church of Jackson, MS (Greg Bahnsen was there once upon a time). Thanks guys

 

[Jack K]

Looks nice. Loads a bit slowly. Specifically, I couldn't find much information about what it would be like to visit for a Sunday morning. There are times given for Sunday school and services, but no instrucion about what you generally do with kids, or how people tend to dress. These are things first-time visitors tend to look for before they visit. and the site doesn't provide it.

Generally, it gives the impression of a nice, generic church. You need to ask yourself what ONE THING most makes this church better and different from other church options in the area.... and then emphasize that ONE THING in several places in your website. Avoid being a generic church.

 

[Wayne]

At least judging from the way the site shows up on an iPad, I would suggest tightening up the verticle aspects of the display.

In other words, pages appear to have wasted space the then requires the reader to have to scroll more than necessary.
An example would be the Elders page.

 

[Romans922]

Doesnt wordpress offer a mobile option? Right nowlooking on mobile and it doesn't go to mobile page.

 

[littlepeople]

Jack I think we ARE a generic church ha!. thanks that was helpful. I think I will add a "I'm new here" button that contains that missing information. I agree it's important to have that available.

Wayne, you are exactly right. I've lowered some margins and shrunken the logo. I also realized I set up the "Retina" logo improperly and it was eating up a ton of space. It's a start - thanks for that.

Andrew, not quite. different elements can be responsive to mobile devices, but it gets fairly complicated to design a 100% responsive site. Some things are responsive - I think the navigation becomes a drop down on mobile. I don't have a phone to test it right now.

 

[Edward]

I'd add a tab under 'About us' giving a history of the church (or in this case, churches).

 

[littlepeople]

Edward, yes that's good, someone is actually supposed to be working on that for me. I just haven't received it yet.

 

[Andres]

I think your site looks great! The pictures are large and bright. I like the color scheme too. I'd also like to add that your new building is absolutely gorgeous!

 

[littlepeople]

Thanks Andrew! We're really proud of the building. We literally built it ourselves. The architect was an elder, the contractor a deacon; most of the work was done by members of the church. We owe about $15,000 on it.