One thing that I do not hear discussed is the reasons why you even need a website. In my consulting work, I will frequently ask if the client is sure that they need a website.
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The ABC’s of a Church Website: A-C
written by Blake Atwood
Monday, February 5, 2007
The ABC’s of a Church Website
Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love a Redesign
Or 71 Suggestions for a Church Website Leaning Towards Developing for Wordpress
Part 1 of Many: A-C
A
Audio
Audio
The Word is delivered via the spoken word. You should have recent messages available on your website, a podcast, and archives of sermons if you have enough hosting space. Try out the Podpress plugin for Wordpress. Or, for non-Wordpressed sites, try Odeo.
Archives
Space permitting, it’s a good idea to have archives of anything you can think of - audio messages, videos done for the church, publications, etc. With storage becoming less of a problem and prices on a downward trend, it’s a nice addition to allow members or visitors to hear a sermon from three years ago.
Try Gamerz File Explorer (scroll to the bottom) for Wordpress to create a publicly accessible archive.
Try Gamerz File Explorer (scroll to the bottom) for Wordpress to create a publicly accessible archive.
Answers
Most websites have FAQ’s (Frequently Asked Questions), and a church website should be no different. Attempt to answer every question a newcomer might have in actually visiting your church. “What are your services like?” “What can my kids do?” “Where does my money go?” The list can be endless, but stay concise with your answers. Try to give a fully rounded overview of what your church is like and what occurs at worship services and during the week.
Accessible
Accessibility is a buzzword in the Web2.0 world. Accessibility means making a website that is accessible by all types of persons and computers. A better explanation can be found at Godbit. In addition to well-written articles about accessible websites, they have an excellent gallery of accessible church websites.
About
Your about page should be to the point without forgetting necessary information: physical address, contact information like your phone number and email address, a map, and your mission statement or some other description of your church’s beliefs.
Ad-less
Sure, we all want to be millionaires by letting Google Ads do all the work. Just don’t do it on your church website. People are bombarded by advertisements nearly every minute of every day. Let your site be a safe haven. Also, beware the use of some ‘freeware.’ I once installed something on a website (it’s been so long that I can’t remember what it was), but it came with a popup advertisement. More than a few people were upset that our church was now advertising for psychics. (And no, I didn’t see that one coming).
Address
Make sure your address is one of the first things people see on your site, as well as a map (preferably a movable, zoomable map like Google Maps ), and directions on how to get to your church. The Geopress Plugin for Wordpress allows you to create an embedded Google or Yahoo map by entering in the necessary address after any post that needs a map.
B
Bible Studies
List the name of the study, a small description, the leader, the day and time it meets, as well as the location. Campus maps are very beneficial, or, if your studies meet at different places around town, I once again refer you to Geopress.
Biblical
A church website should make references to the Bible, right? For my church, our sermons typically cover a certain passage in the Bible, and I like to link to that passage on our sermon page. Scripturizer for Wordpress is awesome. Once installed, any biblical references automatically link to their passage, and you can choose the Bible version your church uses.
Bookstore
Larger churches often have online bookstores. Be sure you have a secure site that accepts credit cards before attempting a store. This is in the works for the future of our site, so if you’ve implemented this into your website, drop us a comment.
C
Calendar
Churches have multiple events that meet throughout the week. An easily accessible and readable calendar is a necessity. Google Calendar is easy to update, allows multiple contributors, has a slew of beneficial features like reminders sent via email or text message as well as email invitations, and it can easily be incorporated into your existing website. Wordpress plugins do exist for calendaring, but none come close to the ease of use, updating, and installation as the Goocal.
Content
Search engines love new content. If you want your site found, update it often with relevant, timely information. Wordpress, as a blogging platform, makes this easy to do in addition to allowing multiple contributors so you don’t have to do all of the updates.
Creative
Be creative without losing the focus of your site. Be creative in your design, your content, and your advertisement. Although not web-centric, the Church Marketing Lab, brought to you by the Center for Church Communication, showcases creative design in a church based setting.
Concise
One of the benefits of a website and the downward spiral of hosting costs is the ability to post anything and everything online. While that’s beneficial in some respects (archives of sermons or publications), a majority of church members won’t need to access that information. Keep your main site concise (to the point) so anyone can glean important information at a glance.
Contact
Members and visitors alike should be able to contact church staff and the website administrator very easily. In order to keep the spam-bots away, I recommend using one of two items: the email address encoder website or, if using Wordpress, the email obfuscator plugin (site in Italian, but the download is easy enough to find). Both the website and the plugin change any email addresses into ascii characters in your HTML, thus ‘confusing’ any spam-bots looking for email addresses.
Chat
Use chat to talk to your website visitors or to allow your church members to converse amongst themselves. MeeboMe ties into your Meebo account (free, but must register) to allow one-to-one chat with your website visitors. Pierre’s Wordspew Plugin for Wordpress (which wins the award for best naming of a plugin) creates an AJAX shoutbox that can be configured to allow only your registered users (via the Wordpress registration) to talk amongst themselves.
Credit Cards
Many churches allow their members to give their offerings via their website using a credit card. Be sure you have a secure site before attempting this. There are many web-based companies that you can also use for this purpose. (Google Search for “online giving church”)
Contributors
Enroll as many people as you can to take over the sometimes tedious task of updating the website. The larger the church, the more people you’ll need. Try to get one person to oversee each ministry within your church. Take time to teach them how to use Wordpress (or your CMS of choice). Wordpress is beneficial for its ease of use and the use of roles, where you can set up contributors as admins, editors, or contributors.
CMS
CMS is short for Content Management System and is the backend software the runs your website and allows you to easily update it. This list encourages the use of Wordpress for its ease of use, its price (free), its voluminous amounts of various plugins and themes (also free, for the most part), and its support community. And, Betachurch is Wordpress based.
Next week = 3 More Letters!
Check out the new embedded version of Kool IM.
www.koolim.com
amanda February 5th, 2007 at 10:49 amWe built chat right into our Social Networking system for churches and ministries.
http://demo.oikosconsole.com
Larry LaBarge March 6th, 2007 at 2:06 pmif that intrest you, I’m using toko for content management (it’s a free one)… http://toko-contenteditor.pageil.net
content management March 15th, 2007 at 1:15 pmI’ve used Event Calendar 3 (http://wpcal.firetree.net/) on my site with a lot of success. The biggest bonus for me is the ability to manage it right within wp without having separate accounts for google. The only downside I have found is that it does not include a large version of the calendar with events written right in (its a sidebar plugin with tooltip style display of events) (note: it is working great on wp 2.1.2 and has a 2.0 version as well)
Sam March 16th, 2007 at 9:18 amI recommend to subscribe to RSS place in a conspicuous place! Readers will be more! Especially at a blog, how are you! Tested - a 30% increased the number of subscribers!
Ilze November 5th, 2008 at 9:31 pm