Berea Church of God Website Refresh

Jun 17, 2021Blog, Case Studies0 comments

Just like you need to take your car in for a tune-up, you need to do a tune up on with your online presence by getting a website refresh. Berea Church of God’s website was originally designed in late 2016 and while the design still looked good and worked for the church, the theme and some of the plugins used were starting to show signs of not working together when newer versions were released so a website refresh was needed.

The basic problem was the theme, how the website looks, was not able to be updated to use the newer PHP code. PHP is the code that WordPress and a lot of other websites use to generate the content when you go to a page. The issue was that one of the plugins wouldn’t work with the older PHP code so it couldn’t be updated. So you have to leave older code in place to keep the website functioning.

They also were running into issues with the page that contains their online messages. When someone tried to go to that page, the site would basically go offline due to lack of resources with the older hosting plan they were on.

5 steps for their website refresh

Changing hosting plans
Move current site over to new hosting
Rebuild site with new theme
Move to latest PHP version
Upgrade calendar plugin

First the church moved to a better hosting platform with A2 Hosting to get more resources available for the site. After the church purchased the new hosting plan, Jordan Web Solutions moved the current site from the old host to the new one.

After the current site was up and running on the new host, design work started with a staging site with a new theme that could be upgraded and use the latest PHP code. Divi from Elegant Themes was used and by using the theme builder, we were able to recreate the same look but have more functionality.

We recreated the homepage along with the other pages on the current site with the exception of the online sermons. We needed to add more functionality to that so we didn’t recreate that page and went a different direction with it. More on that here shortly.

Once the pages were recreated, we were able to then take the new site live and replace the older design. We needed to make the change at this point so the PHP version could be moved to the newer version and then we could upgrade the calendar plugin and get it running again.

One of the things we wanted to add to the new site was the ability to podcast and get the church on iTunes, Google Podcast and other podcasting sites. We needed to make this as easy as possible so we went with PowerPress for the podcasting functionality and also added the plugins Advanced Custom Fields along with Custom Post Types UI.

This allows the end user to just have to worry about uploading the audio file to the website then create a new podcast page for the site using the Custom Post Type Podcast and then just filling in the blanks and publish.

This will then add the podcast to the RSS Feed so that iTunes and Google Podcast can pick it up. Power Press will also generate a subscription option for people who want to subscribe to the podcast by selecting the service they use. Other than iTunes and Google, the podcast can be found on Spotify and Pandora.

If your current site needs a website refresh, feel free to book an appointment with us for a free website consultation today.

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I was most impressed that Darrell was able to take the pages from my website and get them to a point where we could take the next step to refine the pages to my ideas. I was very happy with his response to my suggestions and requests on various components of the page; images, text, etc.

After updating my site, he took some time to show me how to do my own editing and use the tools he put into place. Kudos, Mr. Jordan!

Michael Beall
Jordan Web Solutions does a fantastic job of not only illustrating content, but also making sure to use phrases and words that will get your site to pop up in search engines. Professional, knowledgable, and quick. I would recommend them to anyone.

David Kibler
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Darrell was extremely creative, he had a lot of ideas for my website, which was fantastic because I didn't really know what was possible, or what exactly I wanted. He filled in a lot of gaps! He was also extremely patient with me, since I am not as tech savvy as some. I would definitely work with him again!

AJ Mortara
Darrell Jordan has designed and maintained our church website for the past several years. Darrell is creative, efficient, and very accommodating. He has gone “above and beyond” to give us exactly what we’re looking for. I recommend him highly!

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I’ve worked with Darrell for nearly 7 years. He has hosted several of my business websites, and I have recommended him to several family members and friends. He is professional, and very accessible, which is important when you need help with a business website. Much better than working with a large, faceless corporation.

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I want to thank you for the work you did building us a new website. We are very pleased. The site looks so good. We are proud to call it our’s. I appreciate how agreeable you were to work with. You didn’t make us feel dumb because we knew so little about what we were doing. Thanks for that. Our new website is going to serve us for years to come. Once again, thank you.

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