Welcome – we’ve made a few further changes to the appearance of the site including a new colour scheme. Please read on for more details.
Widgets and Plug-ins (march update)
This may look an odd title for a church article but these are things Gwen & Fred had to come to grips with on their recently finished Web Development course.
We built several offline ‘Wordpress’ web sites from scratch to try out the new skills as we learnt them.
We become skilled at how to write coding in HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language) and in CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). These help with the size, font, colour and positioning of text, pictures, etc.
The overall layout of a website comes from a ‘Theme’ that can be downloaded, copied or built from scratch. Page layouts are assembled from the ‘Widgets’ which are the building blocks. Things to create forms or link to say ‘Facebook’ come from the ‘Plug-ins’. We touched on PHP, Java, and Wamp.
This course has given us the opportunity to become familiar with our web design software (WordPress) and gain a basic understanding of how a website works, plus enthusiasm to expand the Circuit Web site without fear.
Fred Hartshorn.
HINCKLEY METHODIST CIRCUIT WEB PAGES AND FACEBOOK (September update)
When Gwen Coley and Cynthia handed over the reigns of the Circuit Office to Christine Bacon, it was decided to keep the Web Page Management separate.
Thus Fred Hartshorn & Gwen have been joint Administrators for the last few months. With the help of ‘Editors’ for each of the Circuit
Churches we have been keeping our pages up to date.
We have tried to keep the look of the site ‘fresh’ and change the Front page Theme for each Church season. (Easter, Pentecost, Harvest etc.)
The ‘Contact Forms’ have recently been updated to ensure that queries reach the local churches, particularly in view of changes within the circuit. Gwen & Fred are booked on an 8 week Website Development course at Wigston Magna Library run by Leicestershire
Adult Learning Service to hone their skills.
Facebook is also being kept updated by Fred with large numbers of ‘Hits’ from the various Circuit Churches and further afield.
Digital pictures of any Church or Local events would be gratefully received for both the Web Site and Facebook.
Fred Hartshorn (fred-the-webman@virginmedia.com) & Gwen Coley
Website Coordinators
Site Content
Each church has its own area of the site, and each church has their own people looking after it and providing content – articles and pictures – to help make their site fresh, clearly identifiable and unique. If you’d like to help with this, you can contact us here. A Featured post area on the right hand side has been added to each churches sidebar. This has room for up to 3 posts of special interest.
Search
To help you find what you’re looking for, there’s a large Search box at the top and bottom of every page. Just type in what you’re looking for and hit Enter/Return on your keyboard.
Your web browser
To get the most out of this new site, you should be using the latest version of a modern web browser – such as Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, or Internet Explorer 11 or later on a PC or Mac, or the latest mobile browser on your tablet or phone. Whilst most of the site will work in earlier versions, you may not see all of the site in the same way.
Behind the scenes
You’ll have noticed the visual and layout changes, but the most important changes are behind the scenes – the new platform for the site will make it easier to add new content, adapt the layout as we grow, and far easier for the people at each church to interact with the site and make their own contributions.. Each cluster has an editor with extra privileges to modify their ‘cluster of churches’ Static Pages, to keep them up to date with changes to groups, facilities, contacts and Leadership.
Responsive Design
If you view the site on different size screens – such as a mobile phone, iPad, laptop – you should notice that the appearance of many parts of the site changes from one screen to another. This is intentional, and it means that the site is adjusting the content to best suit the device you’re using. So you won’t have lots of tiny information to fit into a small phone screen, and there will be much more content available to fit in to a large desktop screen.
Updates and News
We’ve made it much easier to post regular news, articles and updates for all of the churches. We’ve trained members of our churches to learn how to use the system and post their own updates. This will help to keep the site fresh and useful for you and make it attractive to those looking to join a church.
What’s On
We’ve created a What’s On guide that covers everything from Sunday worship to coffee mornings and small groups and external events. You can see what’s on around the whole circuit at a glance in the sidebar of the circuit pages, and each church has its own guide too. You can also see a listing of what’s on by choosing What’s On>All Events from the main menu. Either way, just click on an event to see more details, times and a location map.
Contacting Us
You can still email or telephone the people you want in each church and the circuit office. You’ll notice that some people – e.g. Ministers – now have new ‘circuit’ or ‘church’ email addresses. We’ll be expanding this system over the coming months so that you can easily remember how to contact different functions in each church (Hinckley have been using this system for some time).
You can also contact us directly from this website by using the simple Contact Form. Just complete a few details and click the Submit button. We will develop this page shortly so that you can direct your query straight to the person or church you want.
Facebook & Social Media
The circuit Facebook page is back in action and can be found by clicking on the Facebook logo at the foot of each page.
As well as liking the Circuit Facebook Page, you can also share items from the website directly by clicking the buttons below the article – so you can tell friends on Facebook, Twitter, etc. about what you’ve seen on the site.
All of this helps us to publicise what’s happening around the churches and the circuit and build interest in our churches and the work we do.
Several of the Circuit Churches have their own facebook pages.