The ABC’s of a Church Website: D-F

In our continuing series, here are three more letters full of tips for your church website, with a Wordpress-centric bent. Comments, suggestions, and additions are always welcome.

D

Directions
The only way people can find your church is if you give them directions. With the plethora of mapping sites on the web, you should link to at least one. The Geopress Plugin for Wordpress comes in very handy.

Discussion
Allow your members to talk amongst themselves. Discussion boards, while beneficial, also need fairly constant attention due to the strange nature of website forums. Arguments erupt over the strangest things, so, before implementing, make sure you have one or more moderators. WP-Forum and BBpress are two simple forum plugins for Wordpress that integrate with Wordpress’ registrations. If you need something with more power, check out phpbb, which is packed with features and plugins, and, of course, is free.

Design
If you can afford it, get a graphic designer to create a mockup for you or to design your site. If you don’t have the dough, Wordpress has thousands of themes for free that can be changed with just one click. Start at the Wordpress Theme Viewer, which allows you to search by color or number of columns. Tim at Living Open Source has created more than a few templates just for churches. Personally, I like many of themes found at WPdesigner. Someone’s also created a Wordpress Theme Generator, which is helpful to those without a lot of HTML knowledge. And you can always just google “Wordpress Themes.”

Domain
Make it short. Make it memorable. Make it last. Make it meaningful. If you’re just starting a website for your church, the pickens may be slim, so you may have to get creative. Just remember - you can register something other than “.com.” Even more than just doing “.org” or “.net,” you can check out the list of EU (European) domain names. There is a “.ch” ending, which means you could have “www.cometochur.ch” as your address. Know that you will pay more for these domain names. Also, if someone has a domain name you’d like, query their site at whois.net. Oftentimes you can glean an email address from that information. Send them a polite email and see if they’d be willing to part with it. Maybe they’ll give it up for free to a church, but, more likely, they’ll ask for a dollar amount. Shorter names typically cost more. Depending on how badly your church wants that name answers the question as to whether or not the current owner is asking too much.

E

Email
A church website should make it very easy for anyone, church member or not, to get in touch with someone at the church. Publish your email addresses, but use precautions. For Wordpress sites, use the Email Obfuscator plugin (the site is in Italian, but the download is at the bottom of the page). It will automatically turn any email address into its ASCII equivalent in your HTML. This means, for the most part, bots that surf sites looking for email addresses to harvest will not be able to grab your email address. Instead, they will see what looks like gibberish to us: betachurch. If not using Wordpress, many sites exist where you can type in your email address and receive its ASCII equivalent.

Easy Editing
If you don’t want to be the only person updating and editing your site, make it very simple to update. Wordpress is ideal for this. You can set up as many users as you need while also only allowing them to edit certain parts of your site. If you want to just allow users to send information your way for the website, I recommend the TDO Mini Forms plugin. They fill in the form on your website and the post is kept as a draft in your Wordpress site. No copying and pasting necessary.

F

Fast (Loading)
Keep your site lean. I’ve learned that, while Wordpress plugins are incredibly helpful, too many (or poorly written ones) can slow your site down. Also, beware of cheap hosting. Also, trash the Flash intro. It may be cool…the first time, but return visitors will tire of it quickly. Many sites exist that will check your site’s loading time. Try the Website Speed Test for starters. If you know of others, leave a comment.

Free
While you often get what you pay for, open source software has come a very long way, and, given that you represent a charitable organization, there are many companies that will donate software or other items. Never be hesitant to ask. Wordpress is free and has a great, continuously creative community behind it. DreamHost offers their top-tier hosting plan for free to 501(c)(3) organizations. Adobe and many other software makers give non-profit discounts.

Flash
Flash sites done well are very cool. If it fits your church and you’re either blessed with a talented Flash designer or can afford one, go for it.If not, keep the Flash light. ( Sovrenti, a web design company in my neck of the woods - Austin - creates good looking and functional Flash sites for churches and other organizations.) If you know of other good church sites in Flash, leave a comment.

Frontpage Filter
Wordpress is not a Content Management System per se, but using the correct plugins can get you there. The Front Page Filter plugin (seems like their site is down at the moment) allows you to select one category in which all items in that category appear on the front page. It’s very useful for those announcements that apply to both your members and those interested in your church.

This series will continue, but I’ll refrain from posting an estimated published time. I’m only a few months late with this current post!