New Harvest Church in Salem, Oregon, began in 2004 with the desire to create a community of faith and a place where many would experience transformation. The church has grown tremendously in the 20 years since then, offering a variety of global and community outreaches as well as ministry opportunities for all ages.
Part of the current phase of growth for New Harvest was the need for a website refresh. Usability of the old site was pretty limited, for both the backend and front end users. We quite literally had the “inside track” with this particular project, since Debi is on staff with New Harvest and reached out for our help. Working with one of our own through the process not only helped ensure we created what they needed but also allowed us to organically audit our services and systems along the way.
About This Recent Project
Website Design and Development
The previous New Harvest Church website was not an overly complex site, using only a default free theme from WordPress plus the Elementor page builder, so not a lot of research was needed to prepare for the redesign. With only very minor content and sitemap adjustments and an existing brand design to incorporate, we were ready to jump right into the actual design work.
We partnered again with Erin of Erin Ulrich Creative to craft the look and vibe of the new site design. Mandy and Erin worked together to advise Debi and the church team on how best to optimize both the front page and the Visit Us page of the site, creating landing pages for new visitors and providing quick links to the current church members as well. One style request Debi had was to add some visual interest between the sections of content on the pages—she and the other church staff members liked the idea of incorporating shapes or various border styles to keep the site from having a ‘striped’ or more rigid appearance down each page. Erin really enjoyed adding the waved or curved edges to bring a little whimsy and extra appeal throughout the design.
On the backend of the website, we removed the Elementor page builder and converted all pages and posts to the native Block Editor for WordPress. Not only does this simplify Debi’s management and updates of the site going forward, but it also adds longevity to the design and functionality. Also on the backend, the previous developer had created a duplicate feed for the church’s podcast—one post to feed to Blubrry and Apple and one post to appear on the website’s blog page. Updating the website’s core software allowed us to eliminate the duplicate feed and create the styled posts needed for the blog area of the site. We also carefully set redirects for the removed post duplicates so no 404 errors (broken link) would be triggered while the podcast feed updated.
New Harvest relies on registration and calendar options through Planning Center, and while it was important to maintain this integration for them, we also created placeholder pages and link redirects to minimize the clicks away from the New Harvest site and to help the two platforms work together more seamlessly. Wrapping up our site work, we added a Privacy Policy and cookie notice to the website to help with compliance for current privacy laws, and an accessibility widget to ensure all users have a great experience navigating the new site.
The final step in this project’s scope was to move the completed website to a brand new domain and to set all necessary redirects within the site and host account. Once this step was taken care of, we also completed basic SEO updates alerting Google of the site move and prompting the reindexing of the updated sitemap.
New Harvest Church now has a fresh, vibrant and user-friendly website to serve their existing members and new visitors well. We’re pleased with the finished product and look forward to Debi’s updates as they continue to grow!
What the New Harvest team had to say…
“Thanks for all your help and hard work, ladies!! People are LOVING the new site. They think it looks fantastic.”
Services Included in this Project
- Sitemap Planning and Organization
- Custom WordPress Website Design and Development
- Removal of Elementor Page Builder and Backend Cleanup
- Training for Gutenberg Block Builder
- Planning Center App Integration
- SEO Jumpstart and Domain Change
- Ongoing Tech Support
Team Members Involved
Mandy Roberson
Debi Stangeland
Erin Ulrich
Find out more about these ladies and the rest of the team here at MRM: Meet the Team
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