Church Website Go Live :D

After all these months, the church website has finally gone live!!! Yay!!! \ (>w<) /

http://mpcac.org/pc

As some information on the website needed to be confirmed before going live, the site just sat there and waited and waited, until last month, our pastor said, "let's not wait any longer and upload it" :p.

I changed the church title on the top left corner and took off the "30th Anniversary" banner, added a "Chinese version" tab, changed the slide for the theme of this year, and some corresponding changes back end. I think it looked better than before :) I still want to find a font with both upper and lower case that looks like the Bebas font though, because Bebas is in all caps and it's difficult for the audience to read content in all caps.

For the Chinese version, I looked into the language switcher function in Joomla, thinking it could help make the site bilingual a lot easier, but I really don't like the flags >><< they use to switch the language (the Traditional Chinese flag doesn't even show), and as I understand, there's no customization you can do for the graphics or location you can put. (With the help of extensions like United Language Switcher , I could put all the flags in one dropdown menu, but still, I don't like having flags there! Please let me know if there IS a way to use my own graphics with the language switcher!!! I'd love to give it a try!!)

Anyway, I resolved to just create another database, restored the backup of the original English site (I highly recommend Akeeba Backup!!!!), and changed the text inside into Chinese, which means there are actually TWO separate sites, instead of one (just like what we have right now). I think this way, not only can I skip creating all the menus and sub-menus again, it can also make the design and organization of content a lot more flexible, especially when the English ministry might have different content to use in the future, and the Chinese version might not necessarily need those content.

I guess the down side of this solution would be an almost duplicated site LOL, and I can't switch language on the same page. When people click the "Chinese version" tab, it will just open a new window of the Chinese website.

That's all for now :D When the Chinese version is finished, I'll post an update again! Thanks for stopping by!!

A little progress for the site :D

I was finally able to fix the slider problem of the template! Thank God!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Originally, the slider cannot load the first slide and only shows the little loading circle.

I tried to contact the template provider but no reply received. Somehow I figured out from the codes that the slider was originally from Nivo Slider, so I tried to use the Unite Nivo Slider extension in the Joomla site, but it just didn't show with the same background with slanted lines in the template :((( The first slide, however, was able to show without a problem. Then I contacted Unite Nivo Slider, but they were not able to fix that issue for me, because the slider was not appeared as a module in the website :( The slider was hard-coded inside the template.

BUT, they did give me a piece of very useful information: the Unite Nivo Slider only works WITH a position! That sounds obvious but that helped a lot!!! As I mentioned before the template has very limited positions, and I suddenly remember I saw some information a little while ago saying how to create a position in a template by myself! So I tried to create a new position in the template where the original showcase position was, with the extremely simple steps from this website, and put the Unite Nivo Slider inside! Voila! The slider appeared with the slanted lines background in the original template!

I'm ready to move on to the next thing on my to-do list: the floating banner!! Hope that I can also fix the drop-down menu issue as well!

UPDATE!

Got the floating banner working on the home page and the drop-down menu fixed!! I can't believe how simple it is to 'fix' the drop-down menu!! There is no problem at all with the original template, and the only thing I have to do to show the sub-menu properly is to click "Yes" in the "Show Sub-menu Items" under your menu module in Module Manager!!! Thank God again!!