Files in the Church website Template

Here is a list of all of the files in the template. The name of each file is linked to the file itself. If you download the files from here, make sure that you place them all in the same directory or folder on your computer's hard drive before you start to customize the template. The graphics below are for the blue color scheme. If you want a different color scheme, you must download that color scheme from the download page.

• index.html - the home page
• blank.htm - the template page
• cross.gif - the UM cross and flame logo image
• wingding.gif - the red wingding between the sections of the list of links in the left-hand column
• back.gif - the beige and white image for the page backgrounds
• spacer.gif - the transparent graphic used to keep the columns properly spaced (it is placed in a table cell between the cell containing the cross/flame logo and the table cell containing the page title

Structure of the Church website Template

The United Methodist church website template is structured so that the basic layout of every page is the same. The only things that should differ on each page are:

• The title of the page (the text that usually appears at the top of the browser window when you load a web page)
• The text in the page banner (the red text at the top of the page), and
• The body of the page--the actual content of the page.

This structure was carefully created so that it contains many desirable website features, including:

Common look and feel: all pages on the site look very similar, therefore the visitor to the site has no doubt whether a given page is part of this site or another site

Contact information on each page: there's an area on at the bottom of each page for you to put contact information--e-mail, street address, phone number, etc. In case the common look and feel isn't enough, this information explicitly states to what website the particular page belongs. In addition, the site visitor can find this important information at any time while viewing pages on your site.

Complete navigational links on each page: the left-hand column contains a set of links to all pages on the site. The visitor to the site should never have to click more than once to find desired information.

Quick download time: the pages were designed to download quickly. There are only three very small graphics on each page; even on the slowest modem, it should take no more than a few seconds to download a page and the graphics.

Browser compatibility: The site should appear pretty much the same on Netscape Navigator, version 3 and above, and on Microsoft Internet Explorer, version 2 and above. On Netscape Navigator 2, the pages should have the same basic structure but some graphic elements (table cell background colors) will be lost. Since the site contains so few graphic elements, it should also be compatible with graphical browsers that have image-loading turned off and on text-only browsers. See the Intentions and Limitations page for more details on browser compatibility of the template.

All content in Dancing on the Web is made available by United Methodist Communications for United Methodist Church use. All Rights Reserved. Copyright ©2001 by United Methodist Communications. Please direct comments to websupport@umcom.umc.org