Media Outreach

Ladies and gentlemen of the Internet, your beloved Best Practices blogger has been accused of chicanery and shenanigans!

<Pause for horrified collective gasp>

I know… I know… I can’t believe it myself. Unfortunately however, it’s true. There are, sadly, those out there whose jealousy runs deep in the black cavernous tunnels of hatred they call veins. I know that most of you wish that you had been shanghaied into were able to dispense pearls of internet wisdom known as Best Practices week after week after week with no foreseeable end in sight. That particular honor has been forced upon granted to me though, and to those who would launch malice-driven attacks on my character out of spite, to you I say, “nanny nanny boo boo.”

Most of you, of course, are probably wondering what in the world it is that I’m talking about. “Surely,”  you might think, “Andy is not so desperate to have an introductory paragraph that does NOT mention the weather in Austin that he’s gone off the deep end entirely and developed paranoid delusions!”  No, dear reader(s), I have not. After last week’s post, it was suggested by some that I’d chosen 2 of faithHighway’s largest custom sites to feature, and that I would not dare feature a smaller site. Despite what you may believe, I am not a horse. Therefore, please keep your nay-saying to yourself. The truth is, it doesn’t matter if your site has hundreds and hundreds of pages, or just 5 or 6. Good content is good content, no matter how you slice it (graphic designer pun for the win). Without any further adieu, here are some of faithHighway’s smaller sites that, while small in size, pack enough punch to make the Kool Aid Man give them a resounding “Oh yeah!”

1. Epic Faith Church – When you first arrive at the home page for Epic Faith, you might notice that there is no conventional written content area. Epic Faith utilizes faithHighway’s Ruth theme; a theme being a pre-determined layout with 100% customized graphics. The Ruth layout can be somewhat tricky from the client’s end, as the main image area that dominates the home is under their control. In this case, Epic Faith has done a fantastic job with this area, as the graphics they’ve created in the flash events rotation are a brilliant complement to the banner, button, and background graphics created by faithHighway designers. Moving onto the inside pages, you can see how Epic Faith has created an excellent look and feel within their content areas. Their written content is well formatted, professional looking, and devoid of typos, spelling errors, and other grammatical sins… impressive to even the harshest of literary critics (Hi Mom). All this is complimented by excellent interior graphics that perfectly complement the text around them. Overall, Epic Faith has more than held up their end of the bargain in partnering with faithHighway to create a remarkable looking website.
2. Inn on the Green – While I can already hear the critics sounding their lofty instruments of war about this selection, I will endure nonetheless. If you haven’t figured it out yet by my constant references to this site, it is the website of my parent’s inn up in Middlebury, Vermont. Nepotism aside, it doesn’t change the fact that my mother has done an excellent job with the content on this site. Her experience as a technical writer highlights a point I’ve tried to make often in this blog: the rules of good writing do not change from one medium to the next. In looking at their inside pages, you can see that the Inn on the Green utilizes the same headings, colors, styles, and fonts throughout the site, which creates an excellent sense of continuity. Although they do not supplement the bulk of their content with images, each page is clean, well organized, and is not over populated. In addition to this, the Inn utilizes faithHighway’s Group Content Manager to great effect on their Rooms and Suites page. The tool allows them to describe each unique room at the Inn on one page without creating an annoying long scroll bar.  Finally, the inn features a simple yet effective Virtual Tour page, where images can be displayed in a flash setting with the added benefit of being able to add captions to each section. Although the tour is currently something of a lying abomination since Vermont is under about 20 inches of snow right now, it is nonetheless a dynamic and pleasing image gallery. Overall, Inn on the Green has created a simple yet elegant look to their site by simply observing the simple rules of good, well-organized writing. On a personal note, if anyone would like to scour the site looking for a typo or grammatical error, I will happily plug them and their website in my next blog. The thought of correcting my mother’s grammar is just too good to pass up.

So there you have it, reader(s) and critic(s). Good content is by no means limited to large, custom websites. In the end, although some sites may have many pages and some may have few, it is truly how you use them that really counts. If you think you’re not capable of doing the things that these sites have done, you’re wrong. If you’re a faithHighway client, and are having trouble with the editor, please don’t hesitate to let us know. That is, after all, what we’re here for. That and to write this blog every week amidst nonstop distraction because some of us work in cubicles and not offices. That, however, is a story for another day, dear reader(s). Until next week, may your days be happy, your nights be restful, and your slap shots always go in from strange angles.

Photo By: srqpix