Church Sites

What must your Website do?

Now that you are clear on the purpose and vision of your church website, lets focus our attention on what features your want to have on your church website. Please bare with me as we go through these foundational stages. It might seem tedious but it is important.

From my experience: My tendancy is to think, "I want to build a website." so let's get to building a website. Jumping to the tasking of building before I consider the vision and lay a foundation has just led to disappointment. I start building and then discover halfway into the endeavor that I'm headed in the wrong direction or it will be more work than I originally thought. Be patient, lay a good foundation and you will more pleased with the results.

What features do you want to have on your website (click on the links for more info.)

Take a few minutes and fill in this table. Don't think about it too much just mark the columns. What features do YOU want...don't be concerned with how or how much it will cost at this point just mark the one that you want and prioritize them. There are a few blanks at the bottom if you want to add some additional features.
Here are the definitions of the features and possible ways to realize these features on your site in a simple cost effective manner.

Easily Updated
What I am referring to here is that you will not have to be a computer programmer or know HTML, php, or CSS to build and maintain your website. Here is the thing, there is probably someone in your knows HTML or some other language, but in my experience if they build your site it could end up coming out more complex and be quite difficult for you to maintain. This may not be the case, but it has been in my life. If you can create a word document and email photos you should be able to update your website. Back to the Chart

Content Management System
A content management system often abbreviated CMS is defined by wikipedia as "program used to create a framework for the content of a Web site." A CMS stores your files, organizes and and manages your content and then presents it in simple way. A CMS uses a backdoor or a control panel where you can log in and make changes to your website. It is like logging into your email but you are logging into your website to make changes. Content Management systems can be very robust, but often the more features they offer the more confusing they become. Back to the Chart

Here are a few content management systems.

1. Joomla!
2. Mambo
3. Drupal
4. Wordpress (blogging platform but also a CMS)
5. Ubertor (what I use for the Bridge Church Site. Designed for real estate websites but is very flexible.)
   

With content managment system you don't have to have any software installed on your computer. If you have internet access you can edit your website. You don't need Frontpage or Dreamweaver. All you need is a computer and an internet connection.

Strong Recommendation: Every small to medium church should use a Content Management system to manage and present their website. For the rest of this tutorial we will use Wordpress as the content management system. Back to the Chart

FTP Access & Storage
This feature gives you the ability to upload any and every type of file that you want online. FTP could basically be thought of as a hard drive that exists online. Much like you have a hard drive on your computer, this is storage on a server somewhere. Most content management systems will allow you to store files, but the size of file and type of file might be limited. With FTP you can store whatever file type you want and file size are not as limited. If you don't have storage online with your webhost your can find some storage in a few place. Storage can be useful but is not required. Back to the Chart

1 .mac allows for storage space online
2. www.box.net has a free version that offers 1 gig of space.
3. Most webhosts and domain registrars will allow you to buy some storage Godaddy is one example

Podcasting
Lots of churches want to have a podcast. They are relatively simple to create and easy to maintain. A podcast is basically an audio blog. You create an audio file, stick it on the web somewhere and then create file which lets iTunes or another collector of Podcasts know where your MP3 files are located. I would recommend that you plan to add a podcast. If it is not hosted on your site, there are many free tools like, http://www.podomatic.com which will get you setup with a podcast quickly and easily. Wordpress has a great plugin which allows for easy podcast integration into your website or blog. Back to the Chart

Password Protection
This feature will allow you lock down certain pages on your website. I would not recommend that you store highly sensitive personal or financial documents on these pages, but you may want to have pages that only staff or people on the leadership team can access. It is not a must, but it can be a useful tool for your church. Wordpress allows for the easy protection of pages or even blog posts on your site. You could also lock down your pages with Javascript, but this can take a bit of work to configure. The best thing to do is setup your Wordpress site and then use the password protection feature on the site. Back to the Chart

Forum
If you check that you must have a forum, I want to you think again. Forums seem cool. A place where people can ask questions and share ideas on certain topics. I'm just going to be straight up with you and say you don't need a forum. It will just be another thing for you to manage and maintain. Forums can also be a problem especially when dealing with spam issue. It would be horrible for a church forum to be filled with porn. It can happen, believe me. If you must have a forum, I would recommend that you use something like Google Groups or Yahoo Groups. It is essentially a forum, but it can be tied in with your email. Groups can be open meaning anyone can join or groups can be closed meaning you control the membership. We've used Google groups at our church a bit for small groups. If you are a member of a group you are a member of the google Group. Then people can quickly and easily communicate with the whole group through on simple email. Skip the forum and go with Google Groups. Back to the Chart

Live Chat
This feature might catch you off guard at first, but it is one that I am considering adding to our church website. I'm not really talking about instant messaging like MSN or Google Talk but adding a program like Live Person or Bold Chat to your website. So many people are connecting with our church through the web. I think it could be useful to be there for them if they have questions. At your church you might have something like a prayer team. Just imagine a live chat team. 5 people manning their computers at home ready to talk if people have a question about the church or a prayer request. I have used Live Person before. It is a great program and is the one I would recommend. Back to the Chart

Blog
Definitely not optional. If you are going to have a website you got to have a blog. You might even want several blogs. One for different departments within the church. Or maybe a "Pastor's Blog" and "Youth Blog" etc. My recommendation is to start with one blog and categorize to represent the different departments within the church. It is better to start smaller and let things grow than to try and build some huge thing which you have to maintain. Please trust me on this...I know from personal experience :) You can setup a free blog at Blogger.com or at wordpress.com These blogs are hosted by the companies mentioned. In my opinion wordpress is better. It is more optimized for the search engines. Blogger may have an easier interface, but I'd use wordpress if I were you. Back to the Chart

Blog with Comments
Currently on our church blog we do not have commenting enabled. This is mostly because I don't want something else to monitor. This feature can be nice and up to you. Just remember if you allow for content you will have to monitor them and sometimes people will comment on a blog post just because they are trying to get you stired up not because they are really looking for answers but mostly because they are looking for a fight. Back to the Chart

Photo Gallery
Photos are an important part of your website. When people come to check out your site online they want to see photos of your church. Basically there are two main categories for photo galleries. The ones that are installed on your server and run by some photo gallery engine and photo galleries that utilize socail media like, flickr or picasa from Google. My recommendation would be to go with Flickr or Picasa. Currently I am using www.box.net to host our photo gallery, but I'm planning to change to using flickr in the future. Back to the Chart

Why use these social photo tools rather than using a hosted photo gallery?
1. People can actually find your site when they are searching on Flickr or one of these other tools. Using the social photo sites is a simple way to get your stuff on more parts of the web.
2. Easily updated by several people. With flickr you can simply tag photos with a unique tag and then they will display on your website. We'll talk more about how to set this up later when we get into the nuts and bolts of building your site.

Optimized for the Search Engines
Last but most certainly not least. Will your site be found by the search engines? It is an important question and one that you should most definitely not ignore. In today's world people are looking to Google for answers to life's questions. I want Google to point these searchers to your website. If you are considering a host other than the one's recommended in this book then be sure to do your research on the search engine capabilities of the content management system. Again when we get to the bells and whistles in this book we will work on the Optimization of our church website. Back to the Chart

For our church website which options did we choose for this tutorial.

1. Easy to Update -- Must Have
2. Content Management System -- Must Have (we are going to use Ubertor)
3. Password Protection -- word be nice
4. Podcast -- would be nice, but we might use the free tool like podomatic.com
5. Blog -- Must have
6. Optimization for Search Engines -- Must have.
7. Photo Gallery -- Must Have (we are going to use Flickr for our gallery)
   

Those are the features that we are going to enable for our website. All the other features in my opinion are just fluff. If you are just starting out, you don't need to be overwhelmed with a long to do list, so let's keep it simple for now.

Assignment: If you haven't done it already

1. Complete the vision and purpose for your website.
2. Decide which features you must have on your site.