Hey, jsut wanted to give you guys a little peak at the project I just started, my Catholic Apologetics site. I have very little written, and no content visible yet, but I wanted to know what you guys think about the layout.

the website is: www.geocities.com/jacobrainey3

If anyone has any ideas please post, any help would be appreciated.

-- Jacob R. (jacobrainey3@hotmail.com), April 23, 2004

Answers

Maybe that link should read: http://www.geocities.com/jacobrainey3/index.html

-- Jacob R. (jacobrainey3@hotmail.com), April 23, 2004.

Jacob,

Your site looks great! I love the idea and seeing your commitment to promoting the Truth. Also, the icons are great - I absolutely love them, especially how they light up when you hover over them - cool! You might have a problem with the icons though if you are trying to reach Protestants specifically, as some Protestants will shy away from such pictures, especially since they look so "Catholic." Other than that, I think they are a great asset to your site.

A few points of feedback:

1. I noticed that you used the same background color as vatican.va uses. Personally, I find their documents and yours a bit difficult to read because of the dark colors mixed in to the background color. Otherwise, the background color is nice. If you're going for the rustic, old paper look, perhaps try a lighter color such as cream or antique white. Just be sure that there isn't any black or other dark shades mixed in with the background color, that is if you are going to continue using black fonts.

2. Is the name of your site "Presence"? If so, I think you should use your name somehow in the web address, if at all possible. Or maybe you should consider changing the name altogether (see #3). I don't know if it's feasible at this point for you to change the name on the web address, but if it is, I would recommend doing this. It will make it easier for people to find and remember your site's address. A basic principle of marketing is that you want to keep in mind who is your target market and why will they come to your site? For example, you could try:

http://www.geocities.com/presence or

http://www.geocities.com/presencecatholic

These are by no means limiting you to these webaddresses, but simply to say that your webaddress and name should definitely reflect your purpose or goal as a site.

3. I suggest that you think about the name of your site, in regards to a few criteria before choosing it.

a. Who is your target audience? What type of person will read this site, or who do you wish to reach most with this information.

b. What is the goal or mission of your site? Do you want to equip Catholics to defend their faith? Or educate Protestants about the Catholic faith? Is this mainly to reach non-Christians? It's fine to want to do all of these or something else, but I think one should be your main focus. If you try to do everything you may be stretching yourself too thin or creating confusion for viewers about the purpose of the site. Once you determine who your main audience is, then it will help you decide what to include where, what types of icons to use, what kinds of articles to include or exclude, etc.

c. How often do you hope for people to visit your site? Will there be a message board on which visitors can comment and exchange opinions with one another? What do you have or plan to do that will keep people coming back? (eg. a "feature of the day or month" article, recommendation, Bible verse, history of a saint, etc. Perhaps write about the upcoming Catholic holiday). How can you get people excited about the site, enough to share it with others?

4. Be sure to get permission to reprint anything that is copyrighted. I noticed at this page (http://www.geocities.com/jacobrainey3/50.html) you have something by Dave Armstrong. That's fine, as long as the terms of his copyright allow free distribution. Otherwise you will need to contact him or whoever owns the copyright to get permission. Same thing with Bible verses - you will need to check the copyright terms for printing material on your site. If that doesn't work, you could use King James Version or Douay-Rheims Version, which are both public domain I believe.

6. On my computer, everything looks great. You will want to try viewing the page under different resolutions (640, 800, 1040 I think, or the numbers are something like that) and with different webrowsers. The two most common are Internet Explorer and Netscape. This is to make sure that you will get the best possible viewing for everyone who views your site on all types of computers.

5. Overall, an excellent setup. I love how you have the page laid out simply, especially the one called "truth." I think it's important to not have too many links on one page. It's better to have multiple pages, divided into categories, than to have one page cluttered with everything. This you seem to have done very well. One thing you might want to consider is the "Controversy" item at the bottom of the "Truth" page. This is somewhat hidden and requires scrolling down, so it might be missed. It is better on a main page with links if there is no scrolling of the page required. For articles it is ok however. The layout of vatican.va is a great example because almost all of their main links are accessible without scrolling down.

God bless, and good luck with your site! Emily

-- Emily (jesusfollower7@yahoo.com), April 24, 2004.

Beautiful job!! I guess someone has to say this: Check the links often to ensure no one hooks them up to porn (or worse).

-- Mark Advent (adventm5477@earthlink.net), April 24, 2004.

Thank you very much Emily, you were very informative and I plan to take all that you said into consideration.

The basic setup is still being thought out. And as for the background, yeah, I ripped it off the vatican site...hehe. But I wasn't really planning on using that for the final product, I'm still at trying to make a good background in photoshop, and of course using your advice about color.

The name of the site is my online nickname, and I don't really want to change it, but who knows... I do plan on registering a new website though.

My target audience is mostly friends that I have online so I have somewhere to point them to. I never expected more than that, but we'll see. I will eventually get a guestbook up, and a link for submitting questions. If I was ever hoping to make it a popular site to come back to then yes, I might want to add some more features like a forum and weekly updates.

As far as I know the article by Dave Armstrong is allowed free distribution, but I did make sure to give credit to the author.

So again thanks so much Emily, you've been very helpful!

Jacob

-- Jacob R. (jacobrainey3@hotmail.com), April 24, 2004.

Good job Jacob. I think that this is awesome. One thing that I really like is that if you enlarge the text in your browser, it actually enlarges your text. This is very important for people that don't see well. However, the text does not enlarge for your links. But overall, a very good job.

-- Scott (papasquat10@hotmail.com), April 25, 2004.