Making a Plan for Your Church Website

Filed under Web Design by on June 19, 2009 at 9:16 pm {one comment}

Before you choose colors, images, pages and features for your church website you need to find out who is going to contribute. Often times, a volunteer web designer will explain all of the possible bells and whistles for a website in an attempt to “sell” the need to the church staff. It is with good intention that this friendly helper starts down the path. You must understand that the bells and whistles require effort to create and even more effort to keep updated. Don’t ask (or allow) someone to build tools that you won’t (or can’t) keep up to date.

Before taking responsibility for a website the volunteer and the rest of the team needs to clarify who can and will help with the web site. Here are a few questions to ask:

Do you have the basics covered? Make sure the essentials are covered first. Get the content for the foundation defined an in place before adding the fancy website features. Include Service Times and Locations. Explain the church beliefs. Add simple Contact information. Create a simple list of the different Ministries.

Do you want a Pastor Blog? Does the pastor like to write? How often and in what format. A pastor blog on a website is a great idea, but only if the pastor likes to write and has the time to write. A stale blog with an update every few months is OK, but everyone needs to know this is the plan (especially the readers).

Do you want an online events list? Does the office staff create the weekly bulletin with events and announcements? Who will be responsible for the various events? Will the events be provided by each small group leader? Will a single person enter it all? Will a single person gather it all? Are there “submission” deadlines to get into the weekly bulletin? How much more work would it be to add this information to the website if you use a particular program to create the bulletin? Would it be better to simply add it to the website and print the web page?

Obviously, it all depends on your church. If you have a church full of iPhone and blackberry junkies a web version of the bulletin may be OK. The church members may have read the information before church starts if it is posted online the day before (think of RSS feeds). On the other hand, if your church members generally enjoy carrying a piece of paper tucked in their bibles you may want to focus on the nice printouts and skip the constant web updates.

What about audio or video downloads? Is the web team also the audio and video team? Will mp3 files be available online? Do you sell CD’s and is this revenue necessary? If the Audio files are coming from a different person, do all the “handlers” have the right software to manipulate the files?

Communication – Often and Early!

The bottom line is to identify who does what and make sure they understand what is expected. Don’t let a single person sign up for everything — they may burn out and leave a proprietary mess. Start small and try to minimize sending all the files and information through a single person. Your webmaster should be in a position to help the rest of the church share information online.

Why a Church Needs a Simple Website

Filed under Articles by on June 16, 2009 at 7:05 pm {4 comments}

In my constant review of Church websites I continue to notice a trend. Sadly, I see so many church web sites that are outdated and full of blank “coming soon” pages. Yes, there are the exceptions, but most times these exceptions are larger churches with a web staff (of dedicated people). Many of the volunteer-driven church sites take off with great starts but quickly go stale.

If you are planning to build a site for your Church (you are the volunteer) think about where the site will be in a few months or a few years. Will YOU be satisfied creating, begging for, and cut-n-pasting content on a weekly basis? You must take this continued task into consideration before you make the plunge. You could spend hours design a sweet, up-to-the-minute, dynamic, streaming church website only to find that it becomes a mess and has nothing new and exciting to entice people to return on a regular basis. Even worse, it might cause confusion with old event and service times and old addresses.

If you are the church asking for a volunteer’s help (rarely the case), are you relying on the volunteer to do all of the work? Will you regularly provide fresh content to your web volunteer to keep the site current?

A website does not need to be a lot of work, but you need to determine what you want on a site before you choose to publish one.

Here are a couple considerations in choosing a direction for your website:

  • Do you want a fresh dynamic site with regular updates? If you design a site intending to publish a weekly audio file (podcast), video file, pastor blog, events, etc. then you must be prepared to continue down that path. If the path is overwhelming and too much work then the content will not be available. Visitors will see your site and notice that it has inactive areas.
  • Do you want a clean simple site that provides the basics? If you choose a site that is more like a brochure you might find the site is more fitting and manageable. The content will require infrequent updates and should require minimal maintenance. This site could be static HTML pages with some pleasant graphics and pictures. A simple static church website may serve your purpose now, but you need to consider the chance of growth in the future.

WordPress and Joomla are great tools to get you started. There are numerous free templates and themes readily available. The community support structures are well established and very friendly. While both WordPress and Joomla are powerful, you can easily setup a simple site with either one. Your simple site will become the foundation you can build on in the future.

If you would like some help getting your web foundation in place, please let me know. I’d love to help you through the process.

Welcome

Filed under Articles by on January 11, 2004 at 10:31 am {no comments}


Holy Web Maker is your choice for web design and web hosting services. We offer a full range of web design services, domain name registration and hosting packages. If you are just getting started on the web we can help choose your domain name and establish an elegant, simple, and effective place on the web. In some cases we will build you a Free Website. If you’ve already been around a while, we can take your existing site to the next level and help you keep it current through a simple online interface.

If you would like to learn specifically what we can do for you, please contact us. We’ll get in touch with you quickly and would love to help you build a great website.