The Client
Bay Vista Baptist Church has served the spiritual needs of Mississippi's Gulf Coast for decades. They emphasize serving their community as well; they were a hub for FEMA during Hurricane Katrina relief and recovery efforts, and they are a relay point for each year's Operation Christmas Child campaign.
The Problem
In late 2013, the authors of their current website were no longer around, and no one could get to the site to update it.
The Solution
We developed and continue to maintain a fast, static website that can be updated by multiple trained church members. The site also has a repository for their sermons dating back to January 2014, and a podcast feed that gives their ministry a global reach.
The Process▼
Initially, we set up a WordPress-based site, where multiple people could have the ability to maintain the site. We manually downloaded all the publicly-accessible parts of their old site, and used that content to form the basis for the new side, updating outdated information along the way. We maintained the same look-and-feel, but soon moved to a more mobile-friendly layout.
In 2016, we determined that we were the only ones updating the site, so we transformed the site to use a static site generator; this resulted in fast page loads, with automation providing scheduled updates. We also wrote a custom template for the podcast feed, which is also generated as a static file.
In 2019, we open sourced the site's source code. We also set up Azure Pipelines to automatically build and deploy the site both on demand and on a schedule. Finally, we trained other church members on updating the site's contents and the podcast feed. Although we continue to host the site, the church is now maintaining it themselves.