New look for CMF website

The main site has undergone significant redesign and was relaunched on 2 July.

The home page of www.cmf.org.uk
• now fills the whole screen for most users
• is cleaner and brighter
• is more visual
• is lighter on text
• has a more prominent search function, easier to use
• takes you to each department's individual home page
• has a colour-coded theme

There is a new section for Allied Professions, to reflect the growing conviction voiced at this year's General Committee that CMF must do more to support nurses and other professions allied to medicine.

Nick Mott, our previous designer/developer, started the work two years ago because the existing site no longer reflected how CMF had come to be restructured departmentally. The lengthy process of extensive recoding was speeded up by the appointment of a full time web manager last October, and Robert Yaxley has received further technical support from David Clark who is contracted to CMF on a one-day-a-week basis.

CMF's other sites

The previous www.cmf.org.uk averaged 14,000 visits per month, ~ 450 per day, and each visitor viewed an average two pages. www.healthserve.org.uk averaged 3,500 visits per month, with an average three pages viewed per visit. The content has now moved to CMF's International Ministries department. (The url still exists and there is a redirect page.)

We are currently exploring various options about what to do with www.ethicsforschools.org.uk. Although nothing has been updated for four years, this site still gets significant traffic, averaging 2,500 visits per month with three pages viewed per visit. The material is still accessible from the new ethics and public policy page.

Password protected areas

These are the next priority. They would help get around the question of 'sensitive' material; could enable us more easily to keep track of members' email addresses; might encourage more to join - especially if only members could view the entire contents of publications; could let individual groups post events to their specific interest webpage; and would allow regional secretaries, medical school secretaries, and perhaps other volunteers to have convenient contact with their groups.

Developing a 'Media Centre'

A budget of £4,000 to set one up has been agreed. With more and more members and staff appearing regularly in the media, and with the potential later to create specific material of our own, promoting audio and video material easily would be a great bonus for the site. At its recent meeting, the Publications Committee felt on balance that accessibility to our arguments was the priority and that getting material onto sites such as YouTube should be considered.

Blogs?

Pilot blogs have been working, but the main obstacle identified by the committee was staff time to produce well written, insightful reading matter. Effective blogs would need to be updated at least weekly.

Promotional DVD

The editing and post-production work for the DVD to introduce CMF to colleagues and to churches is being finalised throughout July, and we will be sending every member a copy, with other materials, in the early autumn. Please join us in a promotional blitz then!

Forthcoming books

• I could do that! is a racy collection of 15 short and inspiring autobiographical chapters. Every one of us should find something in the wide range of stories that we ourselves at least could do. This should be out by the autumn. Watch out for details of a pre-publication special offer.
• More Matters of Life and Death. John Wyatt's substantially revised version of his 1998 bestseller will definitely be published by IVP in January 2010, hopefully as a co-publication with CMF. We will keep you posted.
• Foundations. With apologies for the delays, we trust this practical guidance specifically for juniors will be out this year.

New Publications Committee invites members

It is clear from all the above and of course from our everyday lives that technology is changing the way we communicate. CMF's Publications Committee is adapting to recognise that. We meet two or three times a year, in Johnson House of a midweek evening, under the chairmanship now of Dominic Beer, and would welcome approaches about joining the group - especially if you are mainly interested in 'new media'.

Andrew Fergusson is Head of Communications.