Mississippi Conference on Church Music & Liturgy (MCCML)
Website Design & Management | 2025-2026
Project Overview
The Mississippi Conference on Church Music and Liturgy (MCCML) is an annual gathering of Episcopal musicians, clergy, and liturgists from across the Diocese and beyond. Founded in 1975, the conference has a rich history of providing spiritual renewal, musical excellence, and community for church musicians.
In 2026-26, I served as Webmaster for the conference, managing the official website at mschurchmusicandliturgy.org. I redesigned and maintained the site to serve two key purposes: providing a lasting record for conference attendees and recruiting new participants for future conferences.
The project involved full website management, content strategy, SEO optimization, and integration of multimedia resources. I collaborated with conference leadership to ensure a seamless online experience that reflected the warmth and hospitality of the conference itself.
Solutions
Website Design & Architecture
I built and maintained the conference website using Squarespace, designing a clean, accessible layout that prioritized ease of navigation for both desktop and mobile users. Key pages included:
Homepage with dynamic content that evolved throughout the conference cycle (announcements → welcome → recap)
Registration Page with clear fee structures and payment instructions
Schedule Page with daily event listings and location details
Faculty Pages with biographies and photos
FAQ Page addressing common questions
Recordings Page with audio embeds from multiple years
Conference Portraits Page with group photos dating back to 2023
Conference Book download page
Content Strategy
Pre-Conference: Published faculty announcements, schedule details, and registration information to build anticipation
During Conference: Shared daily updates and maintained essential information for attendees
Post-Conference: Published recap blog posts, audio recordings, photo galleries, and the conference book for download
SEO & Discoverability
Optimized meta titles, descriptions, and tags for search visibility
Created blog posts that could be shared across social media and email
Multimedia Integration
Embedded audio recordings of conference liturgies (Evensong, Closing Eucharist) from multiple years
Created photo galleries for conference portraits and candid moments
Featured video content, including attendee interview compilations
Results
In my first conference cycle, the MCCML website successfully served as both a pre-conference information hub and a post-conference archive. The site attracted 1.4K visits from 922 unique visitors, representing a 21% year-over-year increase in traffic.
The Conference Schedule and Registration pages were among the most visited, with users spending an average of 3–4 minutes on each, indicating deep engagement with the content. Post-conference resources, including the Conference Recap and Conference Book, continued to draw traffic after the conference concluded.
70% of visits came from mobile devices, reinforcing the importance of responsive design for this audience. Traffic sources were split between direct visits (818), Google searches (373), and Facebook referrals (136), demonstrating a healthy mix of brand recognition, search visibility, and social media presence.
The site's ability to transition seamlessly from pre-conference registration hub to post-conference resource archive, while maintaining strong engagement metrics, demonstrated its effectiveness in meeting the needs of both attendees and future participants.
What I Learned
Managing the MCCML website taught me the importance of adaptability in web design. A conference website is not static. It must evolve from an information hub to a registration portal to a living archive, all while serving different audiences at different stages. I also deepened my understanding of church music culture and the needs of Episcopal musicians and liturgists, which has informed how I approach projects for faith-based organizations.
Visit the site:mschurchmusicandliturgy.org