Explore Changes: Home Page

Hover the numbered pins to learn more about each change.

Added a temporary banner at the top to announce that the site was being actively redesigned. Since home page is the most visited page, this is an okay place to put it, but ideally, such a banner would be better placed at the top of the layout so that it would be visible on all pages and more out of the way on the home page.

Was requested to show temporary announcement for new donation bins at the top, so I compromised by adding a small banner at the top with a link that, when clicked, scrolls to the bottom where there is a more detailed version of the announcement.

Before my changes, there was no introduction for site visitors who land on the home page. A home page is the first impression any visitor has of your site and the business or organization it's connected to. So I added an introduction section that provides an informative snapshot of what Saint Peter and Paul Orthodox Church is all about, along with a welcoming message to invite visitors to explore the site and church more.

The image group was moved below the welcome section to create a more logical flow of information. The welcome message and introduction provide context for the images, so it makes sense to show the images after.

Information about the OCA was included in the legacy version, but it wasn't relevant to most visitors. Rather than removing it, I reframed it as a question and answer for terminology that was included in the introduction section. Later, I was also asked to include information about the Diocese, so I figured that information could be paired with the OCA info since they are related.

The only real significant change to this section was leveraging YouTube's embed functionality. Before, the video was just a link that users had to click and be taken to YouTube to watch the video. Now, users can watch the video right on the home page without needing to navigate away from the site. However, embeds can break down depending on uncontrollable factors, so I still include a caption below the video with a link to the video on YouTube as a backup.

This section of the home page is more relevant to current parishioners than new visitors, so I moved it down to the bottom of the page. The section was also restructured to be more concise and skimmable, and the information was updated to be more accurate and relevant.

Right now, this section is statically written on the home page, but ideally, it would be better to use a news widget that's sorted by last published date. For news items that I want to keep on top for a while, I could still have that be static content on the home page or see if it's possible to pin news posts in the news widget.

There's nothing special about this box other than the fact that I wrote some JavaScript to go down the list of dates. If the date is in the past, it gets strikethrough.