Today we soft-launched the new web site for The Word of God Community in Ann Arbor, MI.
This web site and I have grown up together. My brother Ricke and I volunteered to make the site for them in 2002; when we started their host didn’t have MySQL, so Ricke programmed a custom flatfile Content Management System for them (I know this is Geek-ese for most of you). Later the host installed SQL, and we moved to WordPress.
Word of God Web Site Screencap from 2002
I created the first Photoshop layout (right) for the site when we got started in 2002. The design has stayed pretty much the same; you can see the site to see how I updated the logo section to use WoG’s real logo, and made some changes to modernize the layout just a little. A few other changes were made at the request of Phil, the head of WoG.
Both Phil and I have been rather busy since 2002 and didn’t have this site as our top priority, so we’ve worked on it in fits and bursts (usually no more than a week long) for 8 years now. I graduated high school, went off to college, graduated college, and every 6-12 months we’d get a little more work done.
In November of 2009, Phil brought on a guy named Steve Lucchetti, and since then Phil & Steve have been filling in the nearly-completed site with content. I’ve put in about 17 hours of tweaking, final prep work, and transitions between servers and such things–as well as doing a little work here and there to prep a site made in 2002 to go live in 2010.
All in all, I’m really excited the site is finally launching. Their old site was unbelievably out-of-date, and even though this site is old, it’s on a new framework and has new content. So it’s as good as new. I’m happy for Phil’s work, Steve’s work, Ricke’s work, and my work (of 8 years!) to finally come to fruition.