I used to work in the Archdiocese of St. Louis as the director of Web Development, so archstl.org (and other online Archdiocesan properties) are near and dear to my heart. I spent countless hours merging some 49 Joomla websites into the Drupal install that (still) runs archstl.org, and besides a bunch of database heavy lifting that was outsourced, I bled over almost every feature on the site (I’ve chronicled many experiences on this site in the past).

Archdiocese of St. Louis archstl.org redesign - blue

So, I’m very happy to see that the Archdiocese has continued to develop and improve the site. This new design has a more modern and ‘edgy’ feel, and is the first redesign to involve more theming and work on the ‘View’ of the website rather than a complete rearchitecting of the database, filesystem, etc.—which is awesome!

I wish other Catholic organizations I’ve worked with were in the position of not having to scrap their website and redesign from scratch every few years… I’ve seen too many projects where an organization will spend thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, and end up with a site that’s not very future-proof, and will again be scrapped and redesigned for much more $$$ in a few years. Don’t be that organization :)