Welcome to the new national website of the Canadian Unitarian Council, built in WordPress 3.2. The site went live in December, 2011, and is in a period of testing and design refinement.
The contents of our previous website, maintained for many years by Bert Christensen, also remain available for a limited time, at cuc.ca/archive.
We have made the site live to test our development work in real-world use, and gather comments from leaders and members nationally so we can make further edits, updates, and feature additions.
A lot of what the site will become is now visible, thanks to the work of staff and the capabilities of WordPress. The menus are fully functioning and can be refined and updated at will. The table features you’ll see on the Congregations page (among other places) simplify the presentation of structured data throughout the site. The document viewer built into the Canadian Unitarian page gives new life to recent issues of our newsletter. And — one of the main reasons for choosing WordPress — multiple staff members are already contributing, using their favourite web browser, without needing to learn high-level web skills.
The site includes many advanced features:
- excellent search, which will steadily improve as content is updated and search engines index the site
- moderated visitor commenting on all posted news items (with spam blocking in place)
- social media integration
- the ability to print, at the bottom of each post and page
- automated backups of the site, revision tracking on every post, and an editorial control system
- sophisticated image and content ‘sliders’ for dynamic display of various kinds of content
- easy, integrated polls and surveys
- a system for building complex forms
- integration with our e-newsletter provider (MailChimp), our event registration system (EventBrite) and Google Analytics
- image galleries and slideshows
- video support
The list is long, even down to on-line ‘hover’ footnotes on lectures and sermons, and a design that adapts reasonably well to mobile devices at launch.
There is also very much more to do. As some visitors will know, the old site contained over 1,800 pages of content as it ended its run, much of it unchanged for a period of years. A great deal of outdated content is hidden for now on the new site, while we continue a review process that will take staff, Board members and volunteers a few more months.
Even some of our core content remains in mid-edit. But we have begun.
Please e-mail me and let me know what’s wrong (and right) with the site, so we can put our best foot forward to Canadians with an interest in our faith.
Thanks,
Ben Wolfe
CUC Communications Director
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Sneak Peek P.S.: Here’s a quiet hint of what’s next to come… Early in 2012, an advanced commercial plug-in that adds long-hoped-for on-line calendar features will be turned on.
Soon after that, a system of community discussion forums will also be launched for trial use.
I have just looked quickly at the site and wanted to say I think it looks fabulous! Thank you so much for all the hard work it must have taken to put this all together. It looks professional, and current. I liked the clean and simple lines of the congregation and staff contact pages. My only request would be for more images.
Well done and a great start. I spent about half an hour visiting. This is an impressive development. The menu categories seem clear to me, and I especially appreciate how vastly improved the access to the Governance section is. I like the revolving story summaries on the front page and the opportunity for comment holds the promise for more return visits and broader discussion and feedback.
Though far from a newcomer anymore, I found that section especially welcoming and easy to access. In the same way I think the congregational listings is much improved with the hidden local information removing the need for lots of scrolling.
Really, really great work, folks!