The church has launched a new website. It is still currently in beta and you can visit it here. The site will take the place of the current one by the end of this year. The site design has been improved. As I looked over the site I saw a lot of features which made the site more user friendly.
One particular thing that I liked was the as you click on a link, the sub-menu pops open instead of going to the page. This is helpful if you are not sure in what area the information your are looking for is located. The site is classy and retains the feeling of the old site. They also plan to incorporate programs and feature designed specifically for the youth.
If you look at all of the new features that will eventually be incorporated to the site, it is really exciting. Later this year the church will begin offering podcasts. You will also be able to sign in to the site so that you can complete your callings at home, such as reporting visiting teaching numbers. They will also expand the number of languages, which the site will be available in. The languages are Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish
In addition, the church plans on expanding the Gospel Library by including the CES manuals in this section. You can also read the CES fireside talks. Another great feature is that they are making the entire site searchable. This is great. One night I spent twenty minutes looking for a link to “The Family A Proclamation to the World.” I finally googled it. This should cut back on the need to do that. They also plan to redo the titles of links in the Gospel Library search. They will make the links readable to humans meaning that we will be able to tell what we are linking to.
The new site will easily link to the other church sites such as www.mormon.org, www.providentliving.org, www.josephsmith.net, and www.familysearch.org. The site mentions that they plan to update most of these sites sometime in 2007. This is an exciting change, as it should make the information more accessible. I hope that you will check it out.