When someone visits a parish website, they are usually not thinking about the website’s structure. They are thinking about what they need.
A visitor may want to know what to expect on Sunday. A parishioner may need the calendar or Parish Portal. Someone exploring Orthodoxy may be looking for an explanation of the faith, while someone else simply wants photographs, a sermon, or a way to contact the priest.
Good navigation helps each person recognize where to go without requiring them to understand how we organized the website behind the scenes.
Navigation is not a list of every page
The main menu is not meant to be a complete directory of the website. If we put every page and every possible route into it, the menu would quickly become difficult to scan—especially on a phone.
Instead, we chose seven clear top-level options:
- About
- Parish Portal
- Media
- Calendar
- Contact
- Learn
- Visit
Seven is not a magic number, but it is a useful guardrail. It gives us enough room to represent the parish’s life without presenting visitors with an overwhelming list of choices.
The order is intentional, although we do not pretend that there is one mathematically perfect order. About helps someone understand the parish. Parish Portal gives returning parishioners a prominent route to the information they use. Media and Calendar show the ongoing life of the parish. Contact, Learn, and Visit provide clear next steps for people with questions or an interest in coming to church.
This gives us a sensible starting point. We can continue refining it as we learn how people actually use the site.
Some pages belong in more than one place
People do not always think about information in the same way. One person looking for photographs may look under Media. Another may look under About because photographs help them understand what the parish is like.
Neither person is wrong.
That is why Photos appears under both About and Media. Both links lead to the same page; they simply provide two reasonable ways to find it.
The same principle applies to Plan a Visit. Someone may look under Visit because visiting is their goal. Someone else may begin under Contact because they want to tell the parish they are coming. In either case, they reach the same Plan a Visit page.
Nielsen Norman Group’s usability research supports this approach: “Offering more than one path to the same information can be useful.” It also warns, “Do not offer links with similar names that take users to different information.” NN/g, Site Map Usability, p. 61
The important distinction is consistency. Providing multiple sensible routes to the same destination can help people. Using similar labels for different destinations creates confusion.
Why Events belongs under Calendar
People commonly look for events through the calendar, so Events belongs under Calendar.
The calendar and event pages still serve different purposes. The calendar gives a broad view of services and activities. An individual event page can provide the fuller description, location, schedule, registration information, or other details that would not fit comfortably inside a calendar entry.
This allows someone to begin with the calendar and continue naturally to the event information they need. Important events can also be featured on the homepage or elsewhere on the site without giving Events another permanent position in the main navigation.
Why Parish Portal has a significant place
A parish website serves both visitors and the people who are already part of the parish. Those two groups sometimes need different things from the website.
The homepage has a particular purpose. It should welcome visitors, answer their immediate questions, introduce them to the Orthodox faith, and help them take the next step toward visiting the parish. If parish announcements, internal schedules, council materials, ministry information, and administrative resources receive the most prominent space on the homepage, that visitor-focused purpose can easily get lost.
That does not mean parishioner information is unimportant or hidden. The Parish Portal has a significant and permanent place in the main navigation, where it remains one click away from every page on the website.
This gives parishioners a clear place for the practical information they regularly need without requiring the homepage to function as the parish bulletin board. It also gives the parish room to add schedules, forms, council materials, ministry information, and other resources without making the main navigation increasingly complicated.
Ministries also appears under About because someone learning about the parish may reasonably look there. That route can take the person directly to the ministry information inside the Parish Portal. The information has one home, but visitors can reach it through more than one sensible path.
This is the balance we are trying to maintain: the front page remains focused on welcome and evangelism, while parishioners retain direct and prominent access to the life and practical needs of their parish.
Some alternate routes belong inside the pages
Not every useful connection needs a permanent place in the main menu.
A homepage can feature an upcoming event. A visitor page can link to Plan a Visit. A page introducing the parish can invite someone to view parish photographs. These links help people continue the particular journey they are already on without adding more items to the global navigation.
GOV.UK’s navigation guidance expresses this well: “If you need to refer to specific information as part of your service’s journey, use links within your pages.” GOV.UK navigation guidance
This gives us a helpful balance: a stable main menu for the website’s most important sections, with additional links placed where they are relevant and useful.
The goal is confidence, not cleverness
The navigation is designed around recognizable words, common tasks, and the different ways people approach a parish website. It gives newcomers room to explore, gives parishioners direct access to practical information, and keeps the choices manageable on both desktop and mobile screens.
We are not trying to force every page into one perfect category. We are giving people clear and consistent ways to find what they need.
That is what good navigation should do. It should not call attention to how clever the structure is. It should quietly help people take the next step.