So, you wanna build a website for your masjid?

Surprisingly, in a community where so many people are involved in computers, most masajid have really dinky websites (if they have one at all). I never fail to be appalled or frustrated with Islamic center websites - especially if I ' m actually looking for information I need. The internet is an invaluable tool for the Muslims of the 21st common century, but as of now, we are drastically underutilizing it. How can we better use the internet in our service to our jama ' at and our communities as a whole? How can we improve our web presence and get our message - whether it ' s da ' wah or the community calendar - to the people who need it?

In this article, I ' ll go over some suggestions, tips, and basic content ideas to help you build a quality website for your masjid or Islamic center.  In Part II, I ' ll give you some examples of quality websites (with screenshots or links), and tell you what ' s good and not so good about that page.  In Part III, I ' ll show you a sample one page website ideal for a very small community, and then walk you through the features step-by-step.  In Part IV, I ' ll link you to some online resources to help you build and advertise your webpage within the Muslim community. 

Map It Out

First, the masjid committee either needs to hire a professional designer or you need to bring someone on board who has the skills and knowledge to give you a very basic but informative website. I would strongly encourage masjid committees to look towards the youth. I ' ve personally found many Muslim teens are interested in and knowledgeable about web design and graphics. What a great way to get young adults involved in helping the community!

The committee should sit down with that person (or people) and map out - on paper or a dry erase board - the areas / pages you want, and what the general content on those pages will be. When I am building a site, I always brainstorm it on a dry erase board. You can draw it as a map, or you can make tables, charts, and lists, but your website will be 100% more effective than it is now if you simply take the time to brainstorm with your designer on paper first.

Know Your Audience
 

If your site is going to be more than one page, then before you map out your content, you need to consider who your visitors are going to be. As with any website, your biggest concern needs to be user friendliness. Most likely, you will have the jama ' at, Muslims from the region, new converts, Muslim college students attending nearby schools, Muslim tourists (yes), non Muslim journalists, and local non Muslims interested in Islam or interfaith events.

Ask yourselves what these different groups of people are going to want to know, and in what language they need to know it. If your jama ' at is largely made up of recent immigrants, then you will need to have an area in their native language in addition to your English pages. If your masjid is in a neighborhood where there are many Latinos, you might consider having some Spanish language content.

Basic Content

Whether you ' re a small masjid catering largely to people working in downtown office buildings or an Islamic center with a weekend school, every masjid website should have the same basic content, including:

  The address, phone number, fax number, e-mail address, and site URL. You would be surprised at how many masjid web pages I ' ve visited that don ' t give any of this information. In addition, if a user has come to your site via IslamicFinder or a similar service, she or he may be in a frame and can ' t see your URL in case they want to return later. This information should be either at the bottom center of the page (best choice), or should be on a separate page, with a "Contact Information" or other button prominently placed on the homepage linking users to the information. Some websites also put a picture of the masjid at the top center of the page, with the name of the masjid above it and the contact information just below it. I think this is also user friendly.

  Information about parking, especially if you don ' t have a private parking lot. Let people know ahead of time if they should expect to park in a metered lot or on the street. If there is public transportation nearby (subway, bus), let them know which lines and stops to get off at.

  Information about getting around the masjid. Let people know which door they should use (some masajid have a front door that ' s never used), as well as where they should go for wudhu and prayer. For example, "The men ' s restrooms and wudhu area is just inside the backdoor, to the left."

   Directions to your masjid. This should be on a separate page. If you can, include a MapQuest or other map graphic showing the location of the masjid, with the driving directions below. Alternately, you can give a link to an online mapping service that will give the user the directions. However, you should be aware that sometimes these online mapping services give very poor directions. Before you post the link, you should test out the company ' s directions from a variety of approaches (north, south, east, west) to make sure they are accurate.

  The Jumu ' ah time and whether or not you are open for all five prayers. This should be on the homepage, since it is one of the things that visitors are most likely looking for. In addition, you can include a script from IslamicFinder that will post the prayer times for your city right on the homepage. Users can click on the prayer times to go to the IslamicFinder site and get prayer times for the whole month as well.

  The name of the sheikh / imam, as well as the names of the committee members. This should be on a separate page, although some sites have the name of the sheikh on the main page.

More Content
 

If you ' re a bigger Islamic center or you have the time, interest, and ability, here is some other content that you need to consider adding:

  Information on any day or weekend schools, including the principal ' s name and contact information, the prices, applications, the ages / grades, and a calendar. You might also consider making available the parent handbook, if there is one, detailing rules of conduct, uniforms, etc.

Information on activities other than prayer. If you have halaqas, weekly dinners, youth activities, and so forth, post that information. You can do it in a list or calendar style. Make sure you put the days / date and time of the activity, who it is for, where it is being held, and any other pertinent information.

  Information on other services, such as funerals / burial preparation, weddings, marriage counseling, da ' wah, prison outreach, charity work, and so on.

 Transcripts of the weekly khutbahs.

  Photographs of the masjid. You can have a simple thumbnail gallery of photos from your masjid. If you are only putting up one page, and you have a very small community, I still encourage you to put up a picture of the front of the masjid. That way, people who look at your website for the address will have an idea of what it looks like when they go to visit you. If you are going to make a gallery, I recommend snapshots of the front, the parking area, the main musallah, the women ' s area, the library, the cafeteria, the office, the classrooms, and any other facilities you have.

  Photographs of community events. It ' s a fun thing for everyone and will be a draw for community members. Just make sure the files are a manageable size.

  Links to Islamic resources. Many people who come to your site are going to be new Muslims, non Muslims interested in Islam, and journalists. A short and simple list of links to good Islamic sites is a must. If you have the time and interest, you might also have a separate page of links for the jama ' at on issues they are interested in.  Please remember, however, that for 501 (c)(3) purposes, you may want to stay away from political links on your site or any appearance of an endorsement of a candidate or party (consult with your attorney or tax advisor). 

  The community newsletter. If your masjid puts out a newsletter, see if you can make it available online in PDF or some other format.

  Local media coverage. People are interested in, and will probably read, newspaper stories and interviews about your local Muslim community.

  Fundraising information. If you are fundraising, then you need to have a page or set of pages detailing the latest efforts and how the money is being spent. You can include a downloadable form, or a donation button as well.
 

What About Design?

If you can ' t afford to hire a professional web designer, and if there is no one in your community with the skills to build a website of that nature, then my advice is to keep it as simple as possible. A white or cream colored background with a plain font (sans serif, such as Arial or Verdana -- such as this page) is, in the long run, better than trying to compensate for a lack of web knowledge by cramming your site full of weird graphics and attempts at tables. Your primary concern is to make information available in a user friendly fashion.

I would recommend investing in a WYSIWYG HTML editor, such as Cute or (yes) Microsoft FrontPage, both of which you can get for $100 or so. Both of these programs will allow you to create a functional and simple site even if you know very little about HTML and other web design elements.

Pitfalls to Avoid

Here are some of the common mistakes that I see on Islamic center websites that you need to avoid:

  Not having the name of your center in the title bar of the browser on every page. How often have you visited a masjid website and bookmarked it, only to go back later and see something like "home," "template," or mystery letters like "icpcsf" in your folder? The name of your center should be written out completely on every single page, followed by a hyphen or colon and the name of the content on that page. For example, if the page is listing community activities, then the title bar should say: "Islamic Center of Podunkia: Community Activities." If you do not clearly identify your masjid on every single page, you are failing to get your information across in a clear, user friendly manner.

  Poorly written content. Everything on your website, including the address, should be in a standard format and should be written in clear English. If you do not speak English well, or lack confidence in your abilities to write it well, then team up with a native speaker or someone who can write well to make sure everything on your site is understandable and punctuated correctly. Too many Islamic center websites feature mistakes such as, "We are Located at 234 Hiederberger ST. near the Dry Cleaner and the Gas station."

  Properly formatted links. As a user, it drives me nuts to see masjid websites (or any website) where the links are not formatted. This means you ' re not writing something like:

Islamic Information Services
www.thelinkhere.com

When it should look like this:

Islamic Information Services (run your mouse over the words, so you can see that it is properly formatted)

If you want to include links, then you need to learn the very basic HTML encoding to ensure that they appear properly formatted on your page.

Animated gifs (computer graphics) and tacky tiled backgrounds. These are very amateurish and do not do your site or your community any favors. Please do not include doves with flapping wings, a flashing graphic of the Name of Allah, a rolling smiley face, or anything else of this nature. Graphics should be limited to pictures, titles, and buttons, as well as a simple background graphic. Background graphics should not interfere in anyway with the text. That means no black backgrounds with stars (I ' d stay away from black altogether), no stripes, no fluorescent colors, and so on. And make sure that any graphics you do have that contain links (such as buttons) do not have that horrific blue border around them.

  Putting up links to content that isn ' t ready. Don ' t aggravate your visitors by putting up a link to "Monthly Events," and then giving them a page that says "Under Construction." Leave it off until you ' re ready to upload it.

  A site that is not maintained. Many times I have visited the site of an Islamic center or school only to discover that it hasn ' t been updated in three years. Before you put the site online, you need to have a person or team of people who can commit to regularly updating and maintaining the site and checking the e-mail. If you can ' t find someone to maintain the site, then remove all of the out of date information and keep the basic stuff available (address, etc).

  Forgetting other usability issues.  Putting up audio files that automatically play Qur ' an or the Basmala when your site is opened seems like a nice idea, but it can be a hassle for people using dial-up.  It could also interfere with a sound program they already have running.  If you are going to put up graphics (such as graphic titles for pages, or pictures), make sure that you have an alternate text description for the visually impaired (their computer programs will read the text aloud to them, but can not interpret pictures).  Again, keeping visually impaired users in mind, avoid using different colored fonts on a black colored background as the text can be extremely difficult to read. 

Making Your Site Known

Nobody ' s going to visit your masjid ' s website if they don ' t know it exists. Here are some tips to let people know about your website:

  Get your own domain. For very little money, you can purchase a domain (that ' s your website ' s address) and pay for hosting for a year or for as long as three years (perhaps even longer). There is even one company, Dot Easy, that offers free hosting (but you should purchase your domain through them). I have used Dot Easy for several years and find them to be very reliable and easy to deal with (for the most part). You want to get a domain that sounds like your masjid ' s name or its abbreviation. For example: masjidtaqwa.com or ISBC.org. I personally would advise you to stick with .com, .org, or .net for your address, although there is certainly nothing wrong with the newer ones like .us or .info. If you find that these domain names are already taken, then get one that ' s easy to remember and that describes your community. For example, birmingham-muslims.com.

However, if your community is so small or under funded that you can ' t even afford the domain, don ' t let that stop you from getting a website. You can still build a site on Geocities or another free service. Just make sure that your username corresponds to the name of your center so that the URL is easy to remember.
 

  Make sure you ' re listed on IslamicFinder and Salat-o-Matic, and keep these entries updated. I don ' t know how you can go about contacting IslamicFinder about out of date entries or multiple entries, but I know that as a user, this is always a big annoyance for me. Make sure that your entries with these services include the complete address, phone number, URL, e-mail address, jumu ' ah times, whether or not you ' re open for all 5 prayers, and any other info (like weekly Qur ' an classes).

  Make sure you let your jama ' at know about the site. Remind them at jumu ' ah and other events. Put it in the newsletter, at the bottom of your monthly prayer schedule, and on donation forms.