Bellevue First Congregational Church

Emphasizing the community within the church as well as the community around it, we designed and built a new site to help the church reach out to current and potential members.

Click image to enlargeNew Design

Click image to enlargePrevious Design

Bellevue First Congregational Church in Washington has a long history, and the city of Bellevue has grown up around it. David and Bob approached Web Inception having already figured out that ExpressionEngine was the right tool for their new site. In fact, they had spent almost a year planning a site before deciding that they needed professional assistance to create the site they were hoping for.

We took over and, after some extensive getting-to-know-you meetings, provided three rich designs for them to choose from. The design they chose is rich and engaging while providing plenty of room for the vast amount of information on the website. A few revisions later we had a solid design that was ready to be integrated into the ExpressionEngine template system.

The site is a combination of static pages and dynamic data. Lots of dynamic data. Announcements, events, sermons, pastor reflections, members directory, and much much more. Combined all that data with over a dozen content managers on staff, and and regular website could turn into a disaster of content management. Instead, with ExpressionEngine, different content managers can access just the sections of content that they need access to, reducing confusion. When content is created or edited, managers are notified via email so they can verify and approve the changes. The result is a multi-level system for creating and verifying information as it goes live on the website.

Some of the features the church requested were not native to the ExpressionEngine system. Thanks to the flexible architecture, we wrote several custom plugins for the website to create the desired results. These functions really helped to bring the community aspect of the website into focus. Members can join church groups, right on the website. Once joined, the member automatically will receive mass email messages from the group leader to the group. The member can also leave a group at any time, or even create a new group that suits their own interests.

Calendaring is very important with the church. We developed a standard events calendar, and a more advanced volunteer calendar that allows members to volunteer for events where help is needed. The event coordinator is always kept in the loop on their volunteer list via email.

We also wrote a neat plugin for the sermons and pastor reflections sections of the site. By supplying a short list of biblical verses referenced in a given sermon or reflection, the website will display the entire text of the verses referenced. As well, we implemented a podcast of the weekly sermon audio, allowing members to subscribe to new sermons and be notified automatically of new sermons in iTunes or any other feed reader.

The beautiful design, in concert with advanced functionality and social elements have resulted in a rich, engaging new experience for members and visitors to the Bellevue First Congregational Church Website.