Manchester Church wins top web award using virtual cartoon vicar

Virtual vicar


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Published: 09 July 2009

The church of St Andrew's Church, Higher Blackley, has won the title of Best Church Website of the Year.

The site includes a virtual cartoon vicar, based on the church's real vicar, the Revd Ian Fellows. The cartoon vicar blinks, his eyes follow the mouse pointer and he chats as visitors move around the site. The wining web design was produced by website designer Nick Salisbury, 18, who has just finished his A-levels at Oldham Bluecoats School and is hoping to move on to study computer science at St Andrew's University.

Nick designed his first website at the age of eight. He designed and constructed the church website in his spare time and is in the process of adding a live service feed and integrated news link from Manchester Diocese. Anyone investigating family histories will soon be able to peruse the burial records online too.

Nick said, "It was such a long shot when we entered the competition. I never thought we'd make it this far! Thank you to everyone who voted!"

The Revd Ian Fellows, Vicar of St Andrews, said; “The beauty of the website is that it has a warm welcome and is easy to navigate. We made a deliberate decision to stay away from anything too churchy and hoped that the language and style would be as accessible as the layout. I enjoy blogging about things that rarely make it into sermons. I’m thrilled to bits that all of Nick's hard work has paid off. I’d encourage any church to create its place in cyberspace and gently and warmly invite people to find not just an online community but one that meets offline too."

The church website was short listed by a panel of experts and then voted for by members of the public. To be short listed, websites had to excel in design, ease of use, navigation, use of images, competence in website design and production, quality of content, search results ranking, engagement with new visitors to the site, use of technology, regularity of updates, and best use of internet technology where appropriate.

Paul Handley editor of Church Times and one of the judges, said: ‘The awards are showing the immense talent that people bring to their church and community websites. Some of the entries are very strong and the panel of judges had a tough time deciding on the winners.’

You can see the winning site at  www.st-andrew.co.uk

Manchester Diocese site wins honours


The Manchester Diocesan site has won the title Highly Commended Regional UK Site. The diocesan site was chosen to win by a panel which consisted of a national newspaper editor, web experts, journalists, academics and Dave Walker a freelance cartoonist and web editor.

The ceremony for the above awards took place in London on Thursday 9 July 2009.

Visit www.surefish.co.uk/web/winners.htm for details of all the winning entries.


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