WELCOME TO THE NEW national website of the Canadian Unitarian Council, built in WordPress. The site went live in December, 2011.
This new site includes many advanced features. Multiple staff members will be contributing, using their favourite web browser, without a need to learn high-level web skills. The tables you’ll see — on the Congregations page, for example — 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. The menu system is highly flexible.
Other highlights include:
- social media integration
- the ability to print, at the bottom of each post and page
- moderated visitor commenting on many posted news items
- image and content ‘sliders’ for dynamic display of various kinds of content
- strong search capabilities, that will steadily improve as content is updated
- automated backups, revision tracking on every post, and an editorial control system
- easy, integrated surveys, and a system for building complex forms
- integration with our e-newsletter provider (MailChimp), our event registration system (EventBrite) and Google Analytics
- image galleries, slideshows and video support
The list is long, even down to on-line ‘hover’ footnotes on lectures and sermons, and a largely responsive design, that adapts well to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.
There is also very much more to do. The next two major features to appear publicly will be a better events calendar system, and community discussion forums. A number of important content areas will be radically updated by staff, Board members and volunteers during 2012. (For example, improved Social Responsibility pages will appear in the next few weeks.)
Most of the old site, maintained with dedication for many years by Bert Christensen, will be available for a transition period, at cuc.ca/archive.
Please e-mail me, or use the commenting system on the site, and let me know what’s wrong, and right, so we can put our best foot forward to Canadians with an interest in our faith.
— Ben Wolfe, CUC Communications Director
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!