The website of the Episcopal Church has been nominated for a prestigious Blue Drop Award in the category Best Non-Profit/Education Website Built with Drupal.
 

 http://www.episcopalchurch.org

Working with Duo Consulting and Mike Devencenzi, creative director for Atmosphere Design of Cincinnati, the Office of Communication launched the new website on Tuesday, December 27, 2011, utilizing Drupal open-source technologies.

“Our team, led by staff member Barry Merer, Manager of Web and Social Media Services, delivered a website that for the first time offers an experience of our church,” noted Anne Rudig, Director of Communication.  “We are honored by this recognition for our work.”

Of special note in the design of the Episcopal Church website is that it appeals to both current Church members while also evangelizing to newcomers and seekers.

“What We Believe, What We Do, and Who We Are are right on the homepage,” Rudig said. “Couple that with rich music and worship offerings, prayers online, uploads of local mission video and photos, bilingual functionality, and the ability for churches to edit their own information in the Find A Church section, and you can start to see how an open source platform can be used to create a welcoming experience.”

As noted in the award nomination:

Prayer Goes Social on Episcopal Church Drupal Website: Stained glass designs and ‘Prayers of the People’ brighten faith online for feature-rich website produced by Drupal web developer Duo Consulting.

The Episcopal Church has embraced the Internet to help its members embrace the Church. Among the features now available on its new website church members can submit their prayers, view other prayers and ‘like’ prayers to offer their support. In addition to bringing information on missions, feasts, fasts, sermons and doctrine to its members, the Church also offers perspective for non-members on what the Church stands for and what it means to be Episcopalian.

The requirement to launch quickly, on budget and with a broad new and imaginative set of feature requirements dictated the Drupal open source content management platform and led the Church to Duo Consulting. The Episcopal Church and Duo worked together to construct a site that was easy for non-technical staff to manage.

Features of the new site include:

Smells & Bells: Drawing on the rich history of the Episcopal Church, its team designed a stained glass concept, color-coded based on category. Site visitors are invited to customize their own stained glass along themes such as Families, Art, History and Worship. Site administrators can easily change the image options.

Find & Learn About a Church: Integrating with world maps, visitors have the ability to find churches based on state, diocese, parish and even cathedrals. Search results are delivered in a style similar to Google Maps, including the viewer’s distance from the nearest parish.

More than Prayer Gets Social: In addition to submitting prayers, individual churches can manage their own detail information such as clergy and contact information as well as uploading their local mission work recorded on video.

Episcopal en Español: Communicating with a broad international community, the site leverages the mulitilingual capabilities of Drupal to feature English and Spanish content with Creole and French content planned.

http://www.bluedropawards.org/best-non-profit-education-website-built-with-drupal/nominees

Blue Drop Awards

Created in 2012, the Blue Drop Awards is a community-nominated, community-voted event that aims to publicly recognize the excellent individuals, companies and projects that have pushed the limits and maximized the capabilities of Drupal, the open source content management system. Finalists will be selected by the Blue Drop Awards Nominating Committee based on Drupal Innovation, Use of Drupal Best Practices, Content, Structure & Navigation, Visual Design, Functionality and Overall Experience.

Winners will be selected by vote by the Drupal community.

Awards will be announced on March 27. http://www.bluedropawards.org/about-blue-drop-awards

The Episcopal Church welcomes all who worship Jesus Christ in 109 dioceses and three regional areas in 16 nations.  The Episcopal Church is a member province of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

The Episcopal Church: www.episcopalchurch.org

Facebook: www.facebook.com/episcopalian

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