The Church of the Incarnation is an Anglican Church (ACNA) in Harrisonburg, VA.
The previous website was build using CloverSites, but the staff felt the options that came with the platform were limited. As I looked into making various requested changes to their layout, I had to agree – it was very limited in what options you had for customizing the site. I did some research and realized that the company that runs CloverSites, MinistryBrands, offers a more robust platform, ShareFaith, so we decided to do an upgrade. ShareFaith is a hosted WordPress site, which means I have been able to make almost any customization I’ve needed to on the layout. Thankfully, it meant we didn’t need to start over with their giving portal. MinistryBrands was able to rebrand what we already had from CloverGive to ShareFaith Giving, and the transition was fairly seamless.
The only downside to making the switch was that their sermon audio would not carry over, but there was no getting around it. I set them up on SermonCloud, and re-imported all 11 years of sermons, and reconnected it to our iTunes listing.
The site design was geared toward the church’s mission….to be a church for our city, and to seek the good of the city. Since we’re located in the heart of downtown Harrisonburg, I made an aerial view of the downtown area (including the church) front and center on the home page. Special care was taken to arrange information in ways that would be helpful for someone coming to the site knowing nothing about the church.
I’m especially proud of the Small Groups page. I created a map that has markers for each of our small groups, to allow people to easily find the group closest to them geographically. When they click on any marker, it shows them the group name, address, meeting times, and contact info. Because I want to make sure it’s accessible, I also included an accordion listing of each small group, with the same information.
Many of the pages – youth, Arts Incarnate, etc. – included listings of events specific to the ministry, which helps people see anything coming up related to just that ministry or group. There is also a main calendar that allows people to search, and to filter, all of the church and community events. I’ve also utilized the event category feature to display the next starting date for things like Welcome Lunches and Essentials Classes.
To view the website, visit https://theincarnation.org.
Project Images
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