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10 Steps you should follow when building a church website. |
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Written by Resource Center For Church Webmasters.
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Thursday, 07 June 2007 |
Churches have always been a fundamental parts of every society, they influence people's life in several ways. In today's world Churches face many obstacles when trying to deliver the right message to people, and many times that very same message might be misunderstood or misinterpreted. Not only that, but creating and maintain a well informed and organized church society has become increasingly important.
It is widely known that the internet can help people connect and share ideas with each other, so the best way to build a church community is to build a church website.
Church webmasters need to keep in mind 10 important steps when building a church website:
Keep an attractive and professional design
Churches just like any other organization require a certain degree of formality when presenting its ideals and information. That is why a professional looking site is important. Remember that the aspect of a site says a lot about an organization but do not overdo it since it is also important to keep it attractive to church members.
It needs to be useful and interactive
There are millions of sites on the web. The reason one site is more popular others is due to the usefulness of the site to a certain community. People look for topics relevant to their interests, that is why the site must be properly organized and presented so that the church community can make the most out of it. Making a site "interactive" also important if you want to create a constantly aware and updated church organization.
Choose a company which offers great support for your church site
This is an important and yet often overlooked step. Many people like the "do it yourself" kind of approach to many things in life, but what happens when something goes wrong?. Don't let a great community down by not being able to solve technical problems!. That's why having a great support team, backing you up every step of the way, is an unvaluable asset you should not overlook when building a church site.
Choose a company which offers the best church site features
Getting the right church site features can make a webmaster's life a bit easier. Useful features like site statistics can come in handy if you want to track the community growth over a certain period. Weekly backups can prevent headaches if for some reason you loose important data. WYSIWYG editors can help you design and give you a real feel of what the final product will look like. Alway look for the company who offers the most features.
Plans
Work with a company which will offer different plans according to your community needs, regardless of its size.
Upfront Pricing
Avoid hidden charges, choosing a company which shows everything the way it is gives you the power to keep proper accountability which is required in every church community.
Management Tools
This is a required an essential step. Get the right set of management tools and make sure you become familiar with the term CMS or content management system. This system lets you effectively manage and organize content in order to deliver relevant messages at the right time. So as you can see it "is a must have" feature for every church webmaster.
Hosting Information
You need to have a good estimate of how much bandwidth your community will require or you can work with a company which will let you choose the bandwidth, disk space, amount of pages, email accounts and editors such project utilizes. Remember that church communities grow so you should always plan ahead.
Screen shots
When you consider working with a company which will help you host, design and maintain your site, it is important that you see what the interfaces and back end look like. You don't want to be stuck with a highly advance interface if you are a beginner, or on the other hand, you don't want to be limited by a simple interface if you are an advanced church webmaster.
Make sure you have Advanced Tools available:
You might be wondering, aside from a CMS what else do I need to get the most out of a church site?. For starters every church site needs advanced tools such as: a News Letter System, Ministries Management System, Members Connect center, Volunteer management system, sermon management system, Photo album, Prayer center and Advance calendar system.
The fact is that church communities grow fast and sooner or later you will need each and every tool mentioned above, so always plan for the future.2007-06-0. |
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Making an attractive church website. |
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Written by Resource Center For Church Webmasters.
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Thursday, 07 June 2007 |
When building a successful church website it is imperative to know the basic steps of online networking and design. A couple of basic questions that arise when planning church websites are:
1. Should you design the site yourself or pay a designer?
2. Will you write the content yourself?, pay a ghost writer or ask your church members to write for you?
To address the first question, you have to realize that if you are not a web designer you will most likely end up with a site you will not be very proud of.
The most important part of a website, is the header. The website header is the graphic you see at the top of every website. In order to create an attractive site header you have to use special design tools such as Adobe Photoshop which will let you manipulate images in order to create a unique an attractive graphic.
Your work doesn't end with the design of a site header. There are several other graphics that require proper design, a few of them are:
Navigation buttons: These are the graphics which define the most important parts of the website. The most popular among church websites are: Home, Site Map, Archives, Volunteers, Donations, Ministry, Church Forum, Blog, Announcements, About, Contact Us, etc.
Page animations: This special kind of graphic plays an important roll if you want to capture your members attention towards a specific page or content. This kind of graphics can be designed with Photoshop, Swish or a Macromedia flash application.
Banners: These are specially useful when you want to advertise your church site in other related church sites, content networks, emails, etc, in order to attract interested prospects.
Attractive CSS (Cascading Style Sheet): This part of the design is not done through an image design tool but through a code editing tool such as Dreamweaver. Cascading style sheets let you specify the size, color, position and the way your text is displayed, making your content more attractive to church members.
Now, to address the second question. There are several ways you can generate good and relevant content for your church website. The first step would be writing down and organizing your church activities. Write a description for each and every activity, collect pictures and show important announcements.
Another way to make your church site even more attractive and useful to members is to include a forum. This tool allows church members to create discussion threads, to communicate with each other and organize events. This is perhaps one of the most important features every church site must have. Forums give a real sense of community to a site.
Add real value to a church site by having useful zones in place, such as:
A Church Membership Application, which will expedite the process of becoming an active member
A Church Volunteer system, which helps the church get more activities done and be more productive.
Taking care of a church site design may seem complicated at first, but it really isn't if you have the right help. There are several companies out there which offer church site building services. You should choose the one which offers the best support during site construction and after the site goes live. eChurchSites is among the best companies which offers custom church website design, a variety of affordable plans, valuable service and support.
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Help for church webmasters |
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Written by Resource Center For Church Webmasters.
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Monday, 04 June 2007 |
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Church websites are an essential part of local churches’ public profiles to their communities. Indeed, in some parts of the world, church websites draw more people into face-to-face church activities than any other method. Church sites outnumber all other types of Christian sites by a ratio of 5 to 1. Church sites could therefore be powerful outreach tools. However, research reveals a discouraging picture:
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most church sites are written purely for their members, using ‘religious insider’ content style and religious language.
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many do not create a sense of welcome to outsiders or include any material that they would perceive as relevant to them.
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either they do not provide any hint about the life-changing Gospel; or else they present it in heavy-handed terms which may be ‘too much, too soon’, a counter-productive ‘Bible-bashing’.
Yet there are many ways you can create church sites that are truly welcoming to non-Christians. Ideally you would want to include these strategies when you plan your site. But you can also apply them to an existing church site and transform it into one that reaches out into the community.
Strategies for effective church sites include:
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a natural informal sense of welcome, even humor, throughout the site.
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lack of insider ‘churchy’ language and jargon.
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photos showing not only the church building exterior, but also interior shots including people; these will help prospective visitors feel the church is familiar even before they first visit the physical building.
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church members photos and profiles, some prominently displayed on the home-page. These may not be full testimonies in the normal sense. Instead, they may be introductions to some real church members with background to their lives: hobbies, jobs, pets and other personal details.
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Bible explanations for pre-Christians.
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Online leading to face-to-face support for recovery from life problems (divorce, alcohol/substance abuse, bereavement etc.)
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Age-specific content (children, teens, seniors)
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clear directions with online map to find the church, where to park, public transportation links.
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a sense of identification with the local community, in terms of secular news, photos, links; this can also draw in website visitors.
You don’t have to be technical!
Maybe you think that your church has no members with the time or technical webmaster gifts to create a website.
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