Assalamu alaykum,

In our previous post we mentioned about our new product (Masjid & Islamic Centre Content Management System)  that we have launched just recently. We thought we should include the main features that comes with it in a separate blog post.

Main Product Features

Prayer Timetable
This feature will show daily prayer times on your website. The timetable also offers the option of viewing and downloading the full current month’s prayer times in PDF format.

Events Calendar
Here your local mosque will be able to keep everyone up to date with the latest events scheduled throughout the year at a glance. This feature is a great way of making sure no one misses out on those all important gatherings.

Latest News
This really useful feature will update everyone with the Mosque’s latest news and events in a more detailed format. Both Events and News comes with RSS feed so that your users can subscribe to them inshallah.

Ask Imaam
This amazing facility enables Muslims & non-Muslims who are in need of advice, fatwa’s or maybe just confused about something related to religion, to put their questions across to their local Imaam from the comforts of their own home.

Donation Facility
Here your local Masjid will be able to collect donations on-line easily and efficiently using a secure online payment system (PayPal), allowing the community and other visitor’s of your site to make a donation using their credit or debit card or even PayPal. You will also have an option adding your Bank details and Standing order details too.

Education (Madrasah)
Does your mosque run a madrasah school or courses for Adults? Then this feature will be extremely handy inshallah. You can create your classes and provide detailed information for each class.

Media Gallery
A popular feature with all Masjids, everyone wants to know how the Mosque looks like, how many people it can accommodate, good pictures and videos of past social and religious events. You can also upload Friday khutbahs or other lectures in MP3 format.

Articles
This will facilitate the Masjid to share relevant Islamic articles with their visitors. It may serve as a blog if you like. This feature can be updated as often as it is convenient to you. The articles will be printable and can be easily emailed, allowing your readers to comfortably share any articles of interest with family and friends.

Useful Links & Resources
This feature is always very handy to have. Mosques will be able to provide their visitors with a variety of useful links that may vary from the Muslim Directory to a recommended Muslim funeral service. A great help and time saver for any Muslim confused on how to find something.

Social Media
Almost all of the pages have a social media share feature where users can share the content on your website in their Facebook, Twitter or any other social networking accounts. In addition, you can also manage your own social media links on the website, inshallah.

And many more features.
So what are you waiting for? Just click on the Sign Up button below and let’s get started biithnillah!

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We are delighted to announce that the workshop we organised last week (full details are here) went very well. Everybody who participated in the workshop left very satisfied alhamdulillah.  It’s been such a wonderful experience to meet different Muslim business representatives, share their thoughts and network with them, mashallah.

The following Muslim businesses have participated in our workshop held on Saturday, 30th of January:

• Jobs Middle East

• The Islamic Establishment

• The Educational Hajj & Umrah Ltd

• Birmingham Central Mosque

• Al Hijrah Library

• Faith Old Coins

• Alhambra Networks

• Lightimage Photography Gallery

• Kreative Designer

• Al-Firdous Publications

• Green Globe

• Ummah Vouchers (Guest Speaker)

Our appologies for those who wanted to come for Saturday session but because of the space limitations could not book themselves in. Inshallah, we will be repeating the same course this month so please keep checking our website inshallah :- ).  To guarantee your place please send us your details to workshop{at}ummah-design.com and we will add you to our waiting list IA.

Here are some pictures from the workshop:

We will post the video from the workshop as soon as we get it ready IA. So stay tuned. :- )

Please let us know if you want to particiupate in our next training workshop inshallah.  Any comments, suggestions or feedback -  please let us know.

Wassalamu alaykum.

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“And among His signs is this, that He has created for you mates from among yourselves, that you may dwell in tranquillity with them; and He has put love and mercy between you.  Verily in that are signs for those who reflect.” 30:21

Marriage is a compulsory act of worship and a means of completing ones Deen/Faith, it’s a subject of our everyday lives and of everyone’s concern. It plays a great role in our lives and is largely discussed in our Muslim community. Whether you’re a father looking for a spouse for your daughter or a mother looking for a spouse for your son, or maybe a brother or sister looking for yourself, in either case it’s more commonly a long, tiring and confusing process, especially here in the west. However,  as it has been ordained by Allah the Most Wise and All Knowing, marriage is sure to have many virtues and advantages Inshallah for those in whom seeks genuinely, wisely and according to the sunnah of our most blessed and beloved prophet Muhammad (SAAWS).

Ok, so one of the most common & convenient ways of finding your life partner is by internet, muslim matrimonial sites are increasing rapidly year after year and is thought to be one of the most successful so we decided to compose a small showcase of the top matrimonial sites for your convenience to choose from.

Muslima.com

Qiran.com

Singlemuslim.com

Baitulnikah.com

Islamiclove.com

Muslimmatch.com

Muslimlife.eu

Icmarriage.com

Islamicintros.com

Meetmuslimsingles.com

Mymuslimmarriage.com

So what do you think? Please leave your comments and share any pros and cons of searching for your loved one on line, do you have a success story or maybe some concerns? Or maybe you don’t agree with online searching at all, so give us some alternative methods, whatever your outlook please don’t hesitate to leave your views and suggestions.

Also, if we missed any other Muslim Marriage/Matrimonial website that  is worth  including here, please leave them below along with your comments. Jazakallahu khayran.

Wassalamu alaykum.

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Alhamdulillah, as we have mentioned before, Allah (SWT) has blessed us in the way that recently we have had and still having the pleasure of designing and developing many Islamic non-profitable sites, so much so that we have come to know many important key skills relating to such projects that we would like to share with you today inshallah.

Firstly, these types of sites need to be user friendly with easy navigation, so we have to use appropriate fonts, colours, and other design elements to ensure this but at the same time coinciding it into the site so that it doesn’t look all mismatched. The design should revolve around your content and your mission not the other way around, and that doesn’t mean your site can’t meet the modern web design trends, just that we have to take into account the type of information you’ll be providing us with for the site and the formats that will be used.

Secondly, the website needs to make it easy for Muslim brothers and sisters users to find out more about the cause, to donate money, and to become more involved, it needs to make it easy for them to find the information they need and the contact details of the person in charge. And it needs to do all this in a way that’s inviting to the organization’s targeted donors and/or volunteers.

Thirdly, we have to make sure your organization’s purpose is clear and immediately apparent, I mean how many times have you gone to a website and not had a clue what the site was about? This is so common. Clients often take for granted what their visitors will already know about them if they know anything at all! A good solution to this is choosing the right name for your organisation because a good name can say it all or why not put an abbreviated mission statement on the home page?

Finally, including a news section or blog on your site has some important advantages too, for example, it can increase the traffic coming to your site because blogs and news sites are often quoted by other blogs and news sites, hence, giving you more exposure!

Plus it gives your site a regular change of content, this increases your search engine visibility by making it easier for Muslims actively looking for related information to find your site and then maybe becoming a regular visitor, subscribe to your news page via RSS or just becoming more involved Inshallah.

I’d like to briefly add at this point that it is so much easier when clients know their site’s purpose beforehand, we encourage them to mention their list of main aims and objectives they want to achieve from their website on our Client’s Needs Analysis Form before we start on the design process, making this clear beforehand will save so much time, money and effort later on down the road making any unnecessary changes.

So anyway as promised, here is our Showcase of Muslim Charity Websites that we thought would be good examples of the points mentioned above:

Muslim Hands

Muslim Hands, a well known Muslim registered Charity, is one of our favourites because not only does it comply with the modern web design trends by using certain effects such as the letterpress, big typography and some textures here and there to create a mild grungy effect on their funky slide show style banner, but Mashallah, they have also cleverly incorporated their abbreviated slogan/mission statement into their logo so there’s no confusion in what they do, and they have a clear & user friendly navigation bar and donation basket clearly viewable on the top right Mashallah.

Muslim Hands - www.muslimhands.org

Islamic Relief

Islamic Relief Worldwide is an excellent example of getting a lot of information into a small space while keeping everything de-cluttered, nicely organized under meaningful sections and user-friendly, another famous registered Charity, no need for an intro. Here we see the Latest Appeal box situated right in the middle of the page where no one can miss it, we also notice the Donate option clearly sitting on the top right of their home page. Another thing I noticed was that the loading time of the website is extremely fast despite the site being very much database driven and with lots of content. Mashallah, keep it up, Islamic Relief!

Islamic Relief Worldwide - www.islamic-relief.com

Muslim Aid

Another personal favourite, you can see that they too have cooperated their slogan/mission statement just under their logo, we also see that they have a very simple navigation featuring clearly links to what they do, how to get involved and their Media Centre, having a media centre will make it easier for journalists and bloggers to find information about your Charity and they can bring you more donations or simply give you more exposure. They’ve smartly made their latest projects/appeals immediately apparent on their very eye catching banner adding the donation box to the end of it. Making them all clickable links makes it really user friendly.

Muslim Aid - www.muslimaid.org

Muslim Community Fund

Muslim Community Fund is a new charitable foundation focused on the development of the Muslim Community, primarily in the West. They grant programmes that help tackle issues and areas that need attention within our community.

Muslim Community Fund is a website we recently designed ourselves, we chose to use a light and fresh look to coordinate with our clients existing logo, we wanted to keep the theme clean & simple for easy navigation and usability and opted to use a huge typography style banner highlighting key words of our clients services, the main advantage of using this effect is that it can communicate content quickly and effectively and make it easier for users to consume information.

Muslim Community Fund - www.mcfund.org.uk

Mercy Mankind International

Mercy Mankind International was founded in 2006 by two people, Sahar in Britain, and Fahim in Bangladesh, they started work to help the poor in Bangladesh and have slowly expanded into Pakistan and have also worked in South Africa and Algeria. Their future plan is to work in the UK as well Inshallah. We chose this site for our showcase because we liked the peaceful colours, easy navigation and clean, de-cluttered layout.

Mercy Mankind International - www.mercymankind.org

Muslim Poverty Relief

Muslim Poverty Relief is another website we designed and developed ourselves. We tried to make the message of our client’s homepage immediately apparent through images and small text areas. We featured Donation Links both in the main content area of the home page and in the top navigation. Links to “Reports” and “Get Involved” sections are also included in the top navigation bar in easy view of the visitor. We featured the links to their latest Projects directly under their main banner where we thought it would be made more prominent.

Muslim Poverty Relief - www.muslimpovertyrelief.org.uk

Human Relief Foundation

Human Relief Foundation is a UK based Registered Charity established back in 1991 with offices in Bradford, London, Glasgow, Iraq (Baghdad & Mosul), Kashmir, Pakistan, Sudan & Jordan. We chose to feature this site on our showcase because of the really prominent ‘become a volunteer’ clickable link situated on the top right hand side of the home page and when clicked on it then navigates you to the relevant page where it then transforms to a ‘Please Donate’ Link. We also really liked the grungy elements they subtly implemented into their design; and in addition to that we notice they have used another web design trend for 2009 where typography is used to create a kind of news paper headline/magazine look, this is more often used in blogging but it seems to have coordinated well with their theme. We also see this effect in one of the Muslim Hands banners.

Human Relief Foundation (HRF) - www.hrf.co.uk

Ummah Welfare Trust

Ummah Welfare Trust took a different approach on their site, on the header they have used white & orange against shades of black & grey to highlight important info, Multi-media content is featured prominently on the home page, as is recent news and Donate links are clearly situated where ever you set your eyes. Mashallah, and they also have a blog! Great job guys!

Ummah Welfare Trust (UWT) - www.uwt.org

Asad Ghazi Foundation

Asad Ghazi Foundation is one we designed and developed back in February this year. We kept the design simple and clean with clear, user friendly navigation and used colour to distinguish between different sections of their site, we situated the donate box prominently under their main banner using green against the brown background to highlight it.

Asad Ghazi Foundation (AGF) - www.agfoundation.co.uk

Conclusion

We hope you have enjoyed our showcase of Muslim Charity Sites Inshallah, I must be honest, it was a bit disappointing not having much of a variety to choose from, so please feel free to add any more good examples we have failed to mention and give us your comments on what you thought of our first showcase, your feedback and advice is much appreciated.

Jazakallahu khayran and look forward to your comments.

Wassalamu alaykum.

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Our team would like to present our first seasonal range of desktop designs.  Inshallah we start our on-going collection of designs with the Autumn range.

Each season we are planning to present you with 6 unique desktop wallpapers with an Islamic feel, inshallah.

Please share your comments and feedback with us.  Jazakallahu khayran. ( I like the number 4 & 5. And you?)

Update: We have added more islamic wallpapers here:  Islamic wallpapers with prayer timetables for January 2010

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Alhamdulillah by the mercy of Almighty Allah we have completed another project.  The Ormari Mosque, situated in Beirut benefited from our worldwide Mosque promotion where they received a whole new website, for free!

It was a pleasue working with the brothers and pray it serves their community for a long time inshallah.

Take a peek at a screenshot of their front page