Article Archive

The Decision To Drop IE6 Support By Default

Here at Mustardseed, we wrestle daily with the forward movement of technology and the web. The struggle is between the drive to stay on the cutting edge, offering our clients the most modern web designs while being careful not to leave too many "old school" users behind. One area we've recently really struggled with was: Which web browsers should we support by default? This answer is a bit more complicated than it may sound, so let me lay out the current situation....
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When To Use .PDF Downloads

One of the file formats that's most prevalent on the web when it comes to downloads is the .pdf file type. At this stage in the church/technology time-space-continuum, most people are familiar with this type of document. It used to be the realm of designers and geeky white-papers, but these days most churches distribute their content in .pdf format at one time or another. The question is: Should they? As a web developer, I find that people at churches (and elsewhere) are much too quick to use the .pdf format on the web. Let's talk about when it's good to use them and when it's not......
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Moving Beyond The Web

By this time, we've all heard the phrase "Web 2.0". It's a buzzword that basically describes the current state of the internet: Websites that are more simple, more useful, and more functional which seek to enhance our lives (and our ministries). But what if I told you that very soon (if it hasn't already) the time of Web 2.0 will pass. We'll be talking Web 3.0...
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"I Want It GREEN!"

Often times we get distracted by color. Color is important and color is emotional, but color is not the only element in a website design that we should be concerned about. There are many other concerns such as typography, layout, and functionality which too often take a backseat to color, and I think it damages the potential which church and ministry websites have to impact their visitors....
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A New Video Podcast

Here at Mustardseed Media, we're all about helping churches and ministries...even if that means giving away some of our web design and development secrets. Ok...maybe they're not quite so secret, but still......
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Develop Fast? Develop Slow?

In a recent episode of The Geeks and God Podcast we talked about church website pre-production. In this episode you'll hear alot of talk about what you should expect when creating a reasonable timeline for developing your church website. We suggested (as is the policy at Mustardseed) to figure on about 2-3 months of development time. However, a recent project experience shed some more light on this issue, creating a new wrinkle that I never thought about....
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Online Church Communities

Churches are communities of people...are they not? Sometimes we forget this. Sometimes we think they're more like corporations than like Small Groups. Church leadership starts to become more like a board of directors or employees of a large company and congregation members begin to have a 'customer' mindset. Am I the only one who has seen this?...
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When You Outsource, Be Involved!

Whenever we at Mustardseed get involved with a church, it means they've decided to outsource something. Whether it be web design, print design, video production, or audio recording, that church has come to us because they need some help outside the expertise that lies within their ministry. I think this is a good thing (not just because it pays my bills) but because it recognizes that a ministry can't be an expert at everything and they're willing to ask for help. ...
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Add Content Not Pages

As most of the world begins changing from traditional static websites to CMS (Content Management System)-driven websites, the way we think about these websites must change as well. This is especially important for people who are new to CMS concepts in general, or who are in transition from a static site to a CMS site....
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When To Use Offsite Services

When I begin a new project with a client, I always take time to ask about the current state of their website and try and see where it can be improved or streamlined so it makes more sense to their visitors. Sometimes, this process is easy and obvious. Maybe they're just using Front Page or Dreamweaver to create static html pages and don't really have any dynamic content. In that case, we'll be changing the approach by adding dynamic content which didn't exist before. No problem. ...
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