Question

Topic: Website Critique

How? Merging Different Divisions Into 1 Website?

Posted by Anonymous on 12/14/2010 at 10:30 AM ET 250 Points
Hi there,

We are busy updating our website for New Life Ministries - www.thenewlife.co.za
...but, the website was originally designed for our Church, called 'New Life'. But now, we are incorporating more and more 'ministries' into our 'global ministry', called 'New Life Ministries'.

We now have a Bible College, Church Planting Organization etc. etc. which we have now 'legally' merged with New Life Ministries, to keep everything centralized...

So. how do we merge all the 'different divisions' into a single website?

One of our major problems is that many people studying with us, through our Bible College might not totally agree with the (Charismatic) doctrine of our church, as they might be more 'reformed' - therefore we do not want to 'offend' them...

Also, if you currently look at the frontpage of our website, you will mainly see info and links about our church...How should we change it to look more like a 'global ministry' with many different divisions (or ministries), without it just looking like a church?

And also, how can we change the navigational links to incorporate the other divisions?

Then, we were thinking about incorporating a 'Community side' to our website, using www.jomsocial.com (similar to Facebook) to get users talking about Christian things...but we obviously don't want this part to 'interfere' or worse, conflict with our message - any ideas on how we can incorporate this without having these troubles?

If you require more info, please let me know...

Thanks so much for your help

K :-)
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Peter (henna gaijin) on 12/14/2010 at 1:59 PM Accepted
    One thing you didn't talk about was what are the benefits to merging the sites. Presumably there are some. if they outweigh the costs you mentioned, it may be worth doing it anyway and trying to minimize the downsides.

    If the different "subsidiaries" don't really have a lot in common or would otherwise not help meet your goals by being show together, one option would be to keep the separate pages, but link each to a parent page. One example I can think of from the business world if General Motors. If you go to their web site (gm.com), one of the options is to go to the brand's web site (such as chevrolet.com). On the Chevrolet web site, there it says that it is owned by General Motors, and gives a link to go to the parent web site. In this case you are linking the sites, not merging the sites.
  • Posted on 12/14/2010 at 2:49 PM Author
    Hi Peter,

    It's a good point you're making...Thanks

    I would just like to shed 'light' on this issue - there currently doesn't exist any websites for the Bible college or church planting organization...That is why (since everything has been 'merged' on paper/legally), we wanted to re-design our website, www.thenewlife.co.za to incorporate info of all the 'divisions' and not just the church...

    I hope this helps to make our 'situation' more clear...

    Thanks again
  • Posted on 12/15/2010 at 2:33 AM Accepted
    You need different websites for each audience and each purpose. You will confuse people if you try to do multiple things on a single website.

    If you feel the need for a "corporate" website (not sure why), you can make it a very simple one that states the purpose and links to the individual "division" websites.
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