The Calvary Chapel Miami Beach web site has been updated (finally!) featuring a new look and content management system.
The old look was clean (white background) and featured images of South Beach in the header of each page. However, it was the way we did web sites back in 1998 with your traditional and unmanageable Dreamweaver/FTP combination that required a web developer (me) to make simple updates. Hence the content on the site was not that fresh. It served a purpose for out-of-town visitors and newcomers to Miami Beach, the majority of which gave us feedback that they found the church because of the web site.
The new look does not feature any images as part of the page framework which is a minimal monotone look. I did this because we wanted to use images as part of the content to draw attention the content rather than the background. I also moved the most important information for visitors (schedule and map/directions) to the header. A hierarchical page menu is located in the footer and easily accessible by those who frequently visit the site.
I have been wanting to get CCMB using a content managment system and I decided on WordPress because of the simple back-end administration. I also liked the new templating system and page heirarchies. So, I created a custom WordPress theme for the site and by using the Get-a-Post WordPress plug-in we can modify the home page feature, sidebar and various page category sidebars by using the WordPress admin. Our assistant pastor has been cranking on adding content to the site as well as creating the feature images for the sidebar and various pages.
😛