Greeting from the Archive. It  is hard to believe another summer has gone by and we are coming up on week 17 of Pentecost and what an exciting summer it has been with outdoor worship, Corn Roast and Rally Day.

In a previous issue I introduced the new website and it has been a journey from the project beginning in April till now. There have been a few challenges to resolve by Ministry Brands and some learning on my part but I am please to announce that the end of the journey is near and it is now slated to launch the new website in October of this year.

Hopefully, you browse our current website stpaulslutheran.info  from time to time to stay current on what is happening. The address won’t change but there will be an all new fresh, modern design which hopefully will enhance our online presence and make a better impression brining in new members as in this modern age is how people find a church home.

The template is based on Amplify Ministry Brands “Hillside” design which is the country church package. Our old design was Elexio’s “Voyager”. Both have Amazon AWS backend storage and the ability to be customized, but Hillside has a new color scheme which we can change, offers much more control of the appearance of the editor building blocks and animations. The Editor in Amplify is all new and thoroughly modern based on the WordPress Elementor Technology instead of What you see is what you get Easy/Advance Mode style of Elexio. This will give St. Paul much more ability to express ourselves creatively and easier maintenance as WordPress is a more widely know editor.

However, enough under the hood shop talk. Seeing is believing as they say, so following along as I try to illustrate the change in pictures in the following panel and page. You are invited to test drive the site at: https://stpaulslutheran-1-31320.mydraftsite.io

The first thing you will notice is our new pen and ink rendering of the church logo and a eight item top menu bar. (No more hidden menu options.)

The eight top level menu items are:

• Home
• Plan a visit
• Ministries
• Serve
• Media & Events
• Contact Us
• Give
• Search 

You will also notice we have columnar “Call to Action” widgets with icons and buttons to make navigation to key areas of the site all in the top fold of home page to engage the viewer.

The three Call to actions on the homepage are:

•  I'm New
• What to expect
• Connect

I have attempted to tell our story in over thirty pages blending content from the old site into the new format and introducing more recent and exciting images. The banner section of each page contains an animated slide show and has the possibility of short video clips as well.

Here are some featured screen shots:

I’m New—Our Introduction with an accordant Welcome Message from Pastor Jim.

Serve—Pop-up articles about our various social ministries and how we are involved in the community

Blog –Featured Blogs from Pastor, President and other Ministries Pop-Ups.

Pray Cloud—Presently under construction

Respectfully submitted,

Kerry Griffin

Archivist