Church Web Standards Project

Church Websites WebstandardsA new site is launched called the Godbit Project. I’m pretty excited about what they stand for. Something I have been pushing for a while here as we speak with churches about how to use technology for the advancement of the Kingdom of God. Here is their purpose:

The purpose of this site is to help the Church catch up with the rest of the world in adherance to standards given by the World Wide Web Consortium, the governing body of best-practices on the Internet. The majority of Christian web design agencies are using outmoded methods of coding to create websites that the rest of the world would scoff at. Basically, they are stuck in the 1990’s.
This is so common in fact, that the term “Christian” when associated with the Internet has become synonymous with “sub-par.” Without pointing fingers specifically, some of these practices include overuse of JavaScript, malformed (X)HTML, all-Flash websites, and over-dependence on tables for layout.
We realize that if anything is going to change, we need to stop simply poking fun at these agencies, and start educating them, as well as making churches and pastors aware of how they are being short-changed by doing business with such individuals. Our vision then, is to highlight churches, freelance designers and web agencies that are on the cutting-edge of web methodologies, in order to give others something to aspire after. We want to be a city on a hill.

They have started a gallery of church websites that adhere to valid XHTML 1.1, CSS and 508 accessibility requirements.