Client Showcase: Tower Church

Tower Presbyterian Church is the first client to be featured here in my client project showcase. It is an ECO Presbyterian Church in Grove City, Pennsylvania, just a short walk down the road from my alma mater, Grove City College. After attending church there for the latter half of my college career, I finally got the chance to do a complete website redesign and upgrade for the church in fall of 2023.

The Old Site

The church had a website when I approached them to offer a site redesign. The site was built on Wix, and had an overall outdated look. The content on the site was also a mixed bag of current and outdated content. The body of each page consisted mostly of bland text describing the Church’s beliefs and community outreach programs. The events page was completely empty and nonfunctional. Many of the photos on the site were stock photos. Overall, the site was not accomplishing what leadership wanted it to: providing a modern, welcoming feel and imparting important information about the church in a lively, engaging way.

Project Goals

My clients at Tower Church had a twofold goal for their site redesign project. Firstly, they were looking to give their church website a more modern, youthful feel than the outdated site they had at the time. Secondly, they were looking to create an intuitive interface for managing registration and information for a new preschool they were starting in the beginning of 2024.

This meant I had two main tasks: Firstly, to recreate all existing functionality on the old site, while giving it a contemporary look and feel. To accomplish this, we decided on a modern color palette, got some beautiful pictures taken by the lovely grace.e.photography.

I also collaborated with church officials to decide on new features to make the new site go above and beyond the old one, including a comprehensive event management system and a pop-up card to display Bible verse content.

Finally, the church had an additional important goal for the website: to help manage applications to the new preschool they were starting. So, I needed to create a way to accept applications containing prospective student information and a $30 application fee on the new website.

New Site Features

Events

One feature the church requested was a way to easily announce outreach events to the public, and display them on their website. To accommodate this need, I integrated the site with the The Events Calendar WordPress plugin, which allows the Church staff to fill out a form for each church event, including details like name, description, and date/time. Then, a page in the navbar displays each event in a list view and a calendar view.

Preschool

One major goal my client’s had for their new website was for it to be used to handle applications to the new Christian Preschool they launched in early 2024. This application is meant to collect information about the child, the child’s parents, the program they are interested in, and the collection of a $30 application fee. To do this, I developed a custom form that collects all this information, and integrates with Stripe to bill the $30 application fee.

Forms

There were several other contact forms needed across the site for visitors who wanted to inquire about things like church ministries, or to get in touch with church staff. I integrated with Forminator to implement all forms found directly on the site. The church also wanted email notifications whenever a form submission occurred, which I accomplished using Twilio Sendgrid.

Bible Buddy Plugin

Previously, whenever the church wanted to reference a Bible verse on their website, they would either type the whole thing out, or link to the verse, which would require the user to switch to leave their website to read the verse. Needless to say, this was incredibly inconvenient and a change was well warranted.

Fortunately, I have previously developed my own WordPress plugin from scratch that solves this exact problem. My plugin, Bible Buddy, automatically finds verse references in a WordPress post or page, and links them with a helpful popup card right next to the reference that contains the content of the verse. IT is installed on this site too, check it out by clicking here: Numbers 25:6-11. This addition allowed church site admins to conveniently include Bible verses all over the new website.

Before vs After

Final Verdict

The project lead from Tower Church has not been shy about informing me of how satisfied they are with the new site. I am thrilled that they are happy with their new website, and I hope it serves them well in the years to come. Of course, since they have decided to allow me to manage their hosting, I will not be losing touch with them. I trust our partnership will continue productively for years to come. Check out there website by clicking here!

If you are interested in working with me to bring your organization’s website to life, begin by downloading the documents on my “About” page. Then, get in touch with me!