Riverside Community Church

If you’ve frequented the Riverside website in the past you will no doubt notice that we’ve recently gotten a bit of a face lift. From an event calendar and personalized directions through Google Maps to a back end administration panel for easy updates we’ve made a lot of changes. I though it would be a great idea to detail some of those changes here to help you work your way around here and talk a bit about the direction of the website and what’s coming up next.

New Look

Here and there we’ve touched up the graphics on the site to give it a modern feel. The biggest change with the look is the new “fluid” size of the screen. If you resize your browser window you will see the website shrink and expand to fill the space. This allows those with larger screens to view more and those with smaller screens will still be able to view the whole site without issues.

Event Calendar

We have a lot of things going on at Riverside and up until this point there was no real way to keep track of all of them at once. We now have a fully functional Event Calendar that will automatically show you the upcoming events on the sidebar of the website. During times when we have A LOT of things going on the sidebar will only list the 5 most recent. However, you can always view the whole list of events by clicking the Events link at the top. Past events will automatically move off the page so you can be sure that everything you’re viewing is completely current and up to date.

The event calendar also allows us to provide even more information than before. Each event will have an address listed that automatically connects you to Google Maps where you can find directions from your house or see where it is. Some events will have related posts that link specifically to announcements made on this blog. And with most events you will find a short bit of information about each event directly underneath of it.

Admin Panel

In the past updates to the Riverside website have been a bit, shall we say, sparse? Part of the reasoning behind that was because it took someone who “knew websites” to make those updates. This is no longer the case. The Riverside website now features a complete administration panel that will allow approved members the ability to go on and make changes to specific pages, post announcements and updates, and add/remove/edit calendar items from the event calendar. We are even able to view important statistics about who is visiting the Riverside site and where they are coming in from!

The administration panel is simple to use. If you can type out an email or logon to a website I’m confident you can use it. We will begin training specific members tasked with the responsibility of updating certain sections of the website. This allows the Riverside website to remain “fresh” and removes the responsibility from a sole individual of managing the entire site.

Reaching out in a Real World

You will begin to notice Riverside start to branch out to other websites for specific content. The first of these websites is our Facebook group and many more will come. The idea behind this is that the community of Farmville and the surrounding counties will not regularly check the Riverside website, so we need to reach out to them. 85% of the college community uses Facebook and it has risen to become the 4th most trafficked website ever. In addition to that there are over 50,000 Facebook users that are not a part of a college. This makes for a perfect opportunity for Riverside to begin making connections. If you’re a member of Facebook I encourage you to check out our group!

In the coming weeks we will be rolling out tons of new features and content. We currently have been testing support for viewing the Riverside website on your mobile phone say make sure to check that out if you have the opportunity! We will be linking to a photo gallery soon via Flickr, and will continue to experiment with current popular social sites to reach out to real people in a real world. If you have any comments or suggestions I encourage you to submit them via the contact form on our Contact page. This website is nothing without the help of all of the members of Riverside Community Church and greater things are still to come!