The Boardwalk Chapel in Wildwood, NJ is an evangelistic ministry of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Every summer since 1945, the Boardwalk Chapel has proclaimed the good news of Jesus Christ to people vacationing on the New Jersey boardwalk.

It was a privilege to be part of the website redesign project for such a unique ministry, as innovative today as it was in 1945. Features of Boardwalk Chapel’s new website include:

• Responsive design for smartphone and tablet users
• Homepage Slideshow
• Photo Galleries
• Events Calendar

Our recent project for Harvestwood Covenant Presbyterian Church in America in Floyd County, VA was somewhat unique. Harvestwood Covenant already had a static HTML website designed by graphic designer Tara Rimondi. The logo and color scheme of the website reflects the rural, agricultural setting of Floyd County, so we decided that there was no need to reinvent the wheel.

That’s where Five More Talents came in. Harvestwood Covenant recognized a need to be able to update their website easily by themselves, without having to fuss with the technical details of HTML. So we converted Harvestwood’s static HTML website into a WordPress website, using their existing design as the template.

Now Harvestwood Covenant can upload sermons to their online sermon library, add upcoming events, and edit pages using the convenient WordPress administrative interface.

Westminster Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Johnson City, TN celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. A lively congregation, WPC has a large and active ministry in the mountainous “Tri-Cities” area of eastern Tennessee.

Some notable features of WPC’s new website include:

• Mobile-friendly, responsive design — easy to use on a wide range of devices from computers to iPads to smartphones
• Bold, distinctive typography
• Fresh color scheme
• Password-protected members area

Emmanuel Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, DE has been around since the 1890s. In 1936, it became one of the original congregations of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Today, Emmanuel Presbyterian Church is a vibrant and growing congregation committed to the worship of God, connecting people with the church, helping believers grow in grace, and living out the gospel through practical deeds of service.

We were delighted to work with Emmanuel Presbyterian Church on their website redesign project from October to December 2012. We are happy now to present to the world their new website, which you can find at eopc.org.

These are some representative comments from readers of The Aquila Report after Five More Talents redesigned the site in June 2012:

“I like the new format, cleaner, more up to date in appearance.”

“I love the new look. It is very distinctive on my Kindle Fire and it works on my iPhone (the old sight was odd to navigate on my iPhone). Don’t change a thing.”

“Delightful to read on my iPad.”

Founded in 2008, The Aquila Report (TAR) is an online publication which syndicates news and commentary from and about conservative, orthodox evangelicals in the Reformed and Presbyterian family of churches. Guided by co-founders Don Clements (Editor-in-Chief) and Dominic Aquila (News Editor), The Aquila Report has experienced considerable growth since 2008. Today, The Aquila Report has more than 1,400 Facebook fans, and tens of thousands of unique visitors each month. By any measure of success, The Aquila Report is a successful web publication.

Reasons for Success

First, TAR’s editorial team has committed themselves to an aggressive publishing schedule since the inception of theaquilareport.com in 2008. Don and Dominic post several new articles each day on theaquilareport.com, and promote them via social media and a weekly email newsletter. TAR’s mission “to diligently seek,  find and publish news and commentary” obligates them to post new articles often. Because TAR’s editors have been able to do this consistently day-in and day-out for more than four years, they have been able to build rapport, earn trust, and gain traction with their readership. Great content delivered daily is at the heart of TAR’s success.

But by the end of 2011, TAR’s success was causing web server problems. Every Wednesday, Don and Dominic would faithfully email their newsletter of the week’s top 10 articles to their growing list of subscribers. As the number of email subscribers grew, so did the number of people who clicked on the links in the emails to read the top 10 articles. Soon, so many people were clicking on links from the email newsletter that the web server couldn’t handle all the requests at once. As a result, the web server kept going down, and TAR’s loyal readers weren’t able to read the latest news and commentary.

On January 31, 2012,  TAR appointed Douglas Vos as President and Publisher of The Aquila Report. To solve the web server problem, Doug leveraged his extensive experience as an IT systems engineer to diagnose its root causes and create an upgrade plan. In the process, Doug enlisted the help of the Five More Talents team to upgrade the design and migrate the site to a new content management system.

Design Upgrade

Early in the redesign process we asked the question: “How can we improve visitor engagement?” For the Aquila Report, the strategy was easy to identify: Make the content as readable as possible for as many people as possible.

To improve the reading experience, we  did a number of things:

• Selected attractive, distinctive, readable fonts for headlines and body text
• Made sure that the width of the content area is not too wide, but narrow enough for easy reading without eyestrain
• Added subtitles to article headlines; this can help readers find what interests them more easily as they scan the homepage
• Implemented a cutting-edge responsive design

What is Responsive Design?

Responsive design needs a bit more explanation. With mobile and tablet devices becoming as common as PCs and laptops, we are using responsive design techniques for almost every project now. Simply put, responsive design is a way to provide an optimal user experience to people visiting your website, no matter what kind of web device they are using: desktop computer, laptop computer, tablet, smartphone, iPad, iPhone, or Android.

Simulated image: Responsive design makes the Aquila Report readable on smartphone and tablets

New Content Management System

Last but not least, we did some “behind-the-scenes” work on the Aquila Report, as well. From 2008 to 2011, The Aquila Report ran on Joomla.  Joomla is one of the top three open source content management systems, and it works well for many sites. But we prefer WordPress whenever possible. Plus, we figured that if WordPress is good enough for the New York Times, Forbes, and Reuters, it is probably good enough for The Aquila Report, too!

Migrating several thousand articles from Joomla to WordPress wasn’t easy. It took a lot of trial-and-error using hidden test sites. But with patience, elbow grease, and some custom programming, we were able to engineer a smooth migration process. We even implemented HTTP 301 redirects to ensure that the Aquila Report didn’t lose the huge long tail of articles bringing traffic to the site.

Have you seen tried out the new Aquila Report yet? If so, let us know what you think by emailing doug@fivemoretalents.com.

Organized in 1979, Grace Presbyterian Church in Stuart, Florida is a vibrant, well-established congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America.

Launched in summer 2012, the Grace PCA website features:

• A Spanish-language sermon library in addition to their English sermons.
• Custom graphic design by Jason Roddy, pastor of Pilgrim Presbyterian Church in Metamora, Michigan.
• Distinctive typography using the latest advances in web fonts.
• A password-protected members area.

Other websites we’ve done for PCA churches over the past few years:

• Christ the King Presbyterian Church, Roanoke, Virginia
• Providence Presbyterian Church, East Lansing, Michigan
• Bay Street Presbyterian Church, Hattiesburg, Mississippi
• Cornerstone Presbyterian Church, St. Louis, Missouri

Visit the new website of Pilgrim Presbyterian Church, OPC - Metamora, Mi.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

“Thank you so much for your help with the website. As I mentioned before it was a HUGE help. We ended up with 630 folks attending the conference and over half registering online. What a blessing!” – Linda M., event planner

In October 2012, a dozen churches in the Roanoke Valley and New River Valley region of southwest Virginia banded together to host a marriage conference with Paul David Tripp. This was a team effort, a beautiful cross-denominational partnership, and a great encouragement to hundreds of families in the Roanoke Valley and beyond.

Machen Retreat and Conference Center - McDowell, Va.

Visit the new site of the Machen Retreat and Conference Center

Visit the new website of Grace & Peace Presbyterian Church, OPC