To visit the beta site, click on the "New Beta Website" logo just above the news report on this home page, or select the link in the text accompanying the logo. Then, make certain to complete the brief survey form and tell us what you think of the new site and what suggestions you may have for further improvement.

"There are a number of enhancements reflected in this construct," says Don Meyer, executive minister of Covenant Communications, who observes that this represents the third significant change in graphic appearance of the home page over the years, but is the first major structural overhaul of the website since its inception in the late 1990s.

"When we constructed the website, we were faced with a basic choice," Meyer recalls. "We could have taken the time to develop a more appropriate architecture and structural framework to house content, with content developing more slowly, or we could provide various departments and offices the freedom to post lots of content within a fairly unstructured website, which would accelerate the pace of content development. We chose the latter option, knowing the day would come when a better framework would be put into place. That day has arrived."

For many individuals already familiar with the Covenant website, the sense of continuity within the new site may be the most apparent change. For others, it may be the improvements in navigation that allow visitors to move more freely within the site and return to key locations more easily. Key to this is addition of the Google search engine, considered by many to be the industry standard. However, due to technical restrictions, the Google engine will not search content in the beta version of the site – it points instead to the current version of the website.

"Content will be expanded and refreshed at a faster pace than ever before," Meyer says, thanks to the new content management system inherent in the new system. This allows individual departments and ministry areas to directly update and add content on their pages at any time, eliminating the need to channel changes through a single individual.

Other enhancements include:

• Covenant News RSS feeds. This allows local Covenant churches and conferences to position news on their own home pages that originates on the denominational website.
• Searchable resources – and an expanded resources database.
• A new jobs posting feature that will contain employment opportunities available at denominational, conference, and local church levels.
• A comprehensive events calendar including denominational and conference events.
• A new look – and an individual page for each local Covenant church listed in the church directory.
• Addition of an "email to a friend" option, an improved "print this page" function, and a more comprehensive site map that provides an alphabetical listing.