I’ve been doing my local church’s website for the last five years, maybe six…I’ve lost count.

Anyways, about a year and a half ago I found a great resource for a church WordPress theme in churchthemes.net. I immediately put Lakeview on the Antioch theme because it fit the church the best. The built in sermon archive and podcasting features is what drew me to these themes but lately I’ve been wanting more out of the homepage experience for visitors.

I began tinkering with how the homepage was laid out. Before it was just a large slider area with three widgets below. Messing around with the responsive code wasn’t too bad either as I learned that it was fairly easy to adding more ‘widget’ areas that will work well on any device (well, not IE8 from what I’ve learned but I don’t care about that browser…only 3% of the LCC visitors use that browser).

I started out by creating a new logo, combining the EFCA tree logo with our text.

Screen Shot 2013-10-02 at 11.23.26 AM

So far here is what I have below the original three widgets.

Screen Shot 2013-10-02 at 11.18.09 AM

Below the latest sermons are also the latest news updates from the church. While changing up the layout on the homepage I did some research of some top designed church websites to see how other churches were displaying items on their homepage. Most did sliders, a lot did CTAs (call to actions, very similar to the three widgets), but all had some way of displaying their latest sermons and news.

The only draw back to the change is expanding the length of the homepage. For some that is a good thing as it requires you to scroll more, while for others that can be an annoying thing to have to deal with. Some people like the simple lack of scrolling while others were indifferent about it.

The next item to change is the fonts, I want to clean them up a little more. I’ve already removed some of the built in fonts to this theme. I’d also like to get more photos of things going on in the church posted on the site again. We kind of got away from that in the last year, not to anyone’s fault but just because. Sometimes it is hard to get recent photos from a church that is so small (LCC is only ~80-100 active attenders).

As the MLS season continues to roll on I’ll keep having items to add to my various writing samples on here. I recently added more samples to the FCDallas and MLSSoccer sections of the portfolio. Last week I was asked once again to step in for MLSSoccer.com and write a game recap and sidebar for the FCD-Colorado match.

I have to say the sidebar was a challenging one to write seeing how Dallas played down two-men for the majority of the game. Players were exactly too eager to talk afterwards as one might imagine.

Still it has been a fun experience this season getting to write for both outlets, definitely in a way a dream come true that one sense.

A cool little video put together about the company I work for.

My five month project is near blast off…

My acting debut…sorta. I got asked recently to “sit-in” on a commercial for Baylor Health. It was a fun time, here is the commercial for their no texting while driving campaign.

You know I am always amazed at how other people do work. One client today at work wanted to publish a 40 page “release” as one single document to their media newsroom. Yes, one whole release that was 40 some odd pages. Amazing. Not only did it look hideous it was hideous.

But the important thing is it is what they want.

I can’t complain too much about the clients I have to work with. Most have a decent head on their shoulders and only a few I really dislike working with. Okay, really, there’s only one that I don’t like to deal with yet I end up doing a lot more work for them then they actually know. I’m nice like that I suppose.

…for now…I thought this theme was kind of neat. If it stays the header image will probably leave.

At least Rigby is happy about the change…

…title that is. Yup, in a way you could really just call it a promotion. That’s kind of why I haven’t written on here lately. I’ve been super busy with work and life after work that I forgot about this little blog. Oh well, sometimes in life you just have to roll with it.

Now I am the Assistant Editorial Manager on my team here at work. Before I was just plain ol’ Editorial Support. And thankfully it is no title like Dwight Schrute on The Office (Assistant To The Regional Manager).

Yeah, during the week I’m a Mac. And for the time being on the weekends (and in the mornings before work), I’m a PC.

I will probably get a Mac down the road once they release their new line up laptops.

Microsoft decided to release this ad to debunk the I’m A PC stereotype, if you want to call it a stereotype.

I still like the Mac commercials better though…

Yeah, its been a few days..or a couple weeks if you are keeping score at home since my last post. Just wanted to write a quick update on a few things:

  • Austin City Limits (ACL) is next weekend…I have my three-day pass and I am ready to go!
  • Get to see the Foo Fighters, Vampire Weekend, Beck, NERD, Gnarls Barkley, MGMT, and The Black Keys there to name a few.
  • WVHooligan.com is currently down (but not out). Had to redo some things and am currently trying to come up with a new design.
  • The Lakeview site is coming together quite nicely, more things are being added here and there.
  • Rigby (pictured above) is growing every day here, he’s a little over three months old now too! And he still bits everything and wants to chew on anything he can.
  • Today is my one year anniversary at Wieck Media. Yay, time for a raise!

Okay, that’s all for now.