TESTIMONIAL
In July of 2021 I became President of our church Board of Trustees. At that time, we undertook a review of all the various committees and services of the church. Our website was one of the first areas we visited. With the guidance of Kathryn Neel, McGyver Labs, and the support of the entire Board of Trustees, we concluded that our website could not be updated and needed to be replaced. Kathryn was asked to recommend the most appropriate format, platform, and policies. She agreed to the task of creating a delightful, user-friendly Website which would not only serve our members but would inform and attract new members.
This task was a challenge on many levels. As with many churches, we are served by several standing committees and interest groups all of whom had specific requirements for their section of the website. For example, our membership committee has specific forms which a potential new member needed to fill out with the expectation of confidentiality. To fulfill this need Katheryn created a confidential email address as well as an online form which could be easily filled out and returned online. She suggested an internal policy which created limited availability to this email address to assure the privacy of the applicant.
Security was an issue. Our original Web site had problems with this. I can assure you that we are now as safe as Fort Knox. We are triply protected. Since the new website came online, there have been no incidents of a successful infiltration of our site. Kathryn attended to the routine maintenance of the site; so, we were safe.
An ongoing focus was to work with folks who have limited understanding of technology; I am one of them. Kathryn held classes and offered individual sessions so that the average person who had the interest could create a new entry for the website. Even I learned how to do this.
I particularly like our home page with photos on a loop, as well as photos which drew interest to specific areas of interest such as stories of members, books to read and important meetings. Visitors to our church universally stated that they were drawn to our church because of our website. Tabs were included to direct attention to the calendar, the Minister etc.