Project Overview #
This project involved creating a website for a local church community. The website serves as a hub for obtaining information, such as times of masses, other announcements. It also features a gallery of images from parish events.
Started in December 2024, ended in January 2025, awating deployment in late August 2025
The parish in question had a website, hosted on through one of the online website editors, which was based on a monthly subscribtion and costly. Customer’s goal was to have a website serving the exact same functionality, but with less recurring cost. We would achieve this by creating a simple custom website and hosting it on free providers, such as Oracle Cloud.
Key Features #
🎯 Core Functionality #
- Responsive Design: Website is optimized for mobile and desktop devices.
- Pdf Newsletters: The website shows the parish newsletter with all necessary information and option to download.
- Image Gallery: Photo gallery showcasing parish events and activities
- Static Information: Pages about history of the parish and the church.
- Contact Information: Easy access to church contact details and location
- Admin Panel: Way for even unexperienced volunteers can manage the website, add photos, newsletters and announcements.
Technologies Used #
Frontend #
- HTML5: Basic language for website structure
- CSS3: Styling using plain css, responsive design using media tags.
- JavaScript: API calls, enabling server-side rendering, dynamic features (newsletters, gallery)
Backend #
- PHP: Handling REST APIs and overall backend logic, including authentication, picture uploads, etc.
- SQLite: Simple database good for small projects.
Tools & Services #
- TinyMCE: Enabling creating custom announcements on the website without touching the code.
Gallery #
Conclusion #
In this project I have used a lot of “historic” technologies, such as plain html/css/javascript or fully php backend. I did this mainly because of their familiarity, because I have learned them in high school, and wanted to make something solid out of what I knew, but adding upon it, e. g. in departments of security and clean, structured code. I hope, that once in productiction, this website could help the parish achieve similar fuctionality as their current website, with fraction of the recurring costs.
Overall, I enjoyed developing this website, and would like to pursue more projects in this tech stack, even though I have already learned more modern approaches.
This project was completed as a solo developer, handling all aspects from initial communication through final deployment and training.