The end of January will see the implementation of several changes to the General Synod website (www.anglican.ca), including a new look for the home page.
Website visitors should note that on Jan. 31, the website will be down for most of the morning while the changes are implemented. “It should be back up and running by noon,” said Brian Bukowski, website manager.
Initially designed in 1997, the anglican.ca website has gone through a number of modifications, but this is the second re-development and it is visually different, said Mr. Bukowski.
The current site is more focused on General Synod’s organizational structure making it hard for people to find information. This is because the site was developed and modified at a time when the national office was going through a lot of uncertainties, including structural uncertainties, said Mr. Bukowski.
Although the new site has been designed in the context of the Framework for the church’s mission and ministry which was adopted by General Synod last year, “we have made sure that it is easily adaptable to any changes the organization will be going through in the next years,” said Mr. Bukowski.
The new design includes cosmetic changes and features aimed at making the site user-friendly. “It is more modern and cohesive than before,” said Mr. Bukowski, explaining that the anglican.ca website is the parent site of a number of smaller websites, such as those of the Anglican Journal, MinistryMatters, Anglican Book Centre and ABC Publishing.
With the new design, most sections of the anglican.ca site and the subsidiary sites will be more clearly identifiable as parts of the national church’s site.
Besides the graphic changes, the biggest new feature on the new site is the creation of a comprehensive list of documents that are downloadable. “Instead of navigating to a particular department and getting the document from there, visitors will now easily look for the document on the comprehensive list and download it from there,” explained Mr. Bukowski.
Mr. Bukowski said the changes that will be implemented Jan. 31 still represent a work in progress which will include more future modifications. He urged visitors to the website to contact him if they encounter problems such as broken links.
“We hope that with the new site we will increase the number of visitors which were averaging about 70,000 visits a month … with over a quarter million page views a month,” said Mr. Bukowski.