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- 1. Tools to help churches build a Web Site. However good a church web site looks, it needs to be maintainable. Most church websites are poorly maintained. Many start out looking great - and end up stale or abandoned. Some reasons for failure: 1. A web site may be too time consuming and expensive to complete or maintain. 2. Staff changes or interest loss can render a new or current web site dead. 3. No easy way for content updates by multiple people. A single person responsible for updating frustrates the updating process. 4. A single editor with no other authors for the website may limit new and fresh content. 5. Lack of planning for maintenance, may mean a well designed web site with no plan of content updating. Some of these problems need to be addressed before you look at technology, but I would like to give an overview of how technology can play a part in reducing the impact of these by building a maintainable web site. 1. Traditional Web Development tools. There are many great tools for building web sites such as Dreamweaver or HTML-Kit. But to build a web site with traditional tools you really need to be proficient in HTML, CSS and JavaScript scripting. It is possible for several editors to be trained in these development tools, but the complexity does not help us to minimise the needs we have to build a maintainable web site. 2. Blogging tools. The line between website and blogs is becoming more blurred. Wordpress for example with the many free templates, and the multitude of 'gadgets' available today are impressive. And all those 'blogging' features are actually things you can use to create conversation and invite multiple authors to contribute. Blogger from Google is another option, though not quite as flexible as Wordpress. Wordpress has the advantage here of having the concept of pages built in. Blogger is designed to be a single page web site. Here are a few reasons why a blogging tool (like Wordpress or Blogger) is a great choice to run your church web site: 1. Its easy to update easy to add new or edit articles and information. You can update the web site from any computer on the internet and have many authors and editors. 2. Its easy to use if you have average computer skills, you can update a blog. 3. The search engines love it Google and the other search engines easily parse and catalogue blog sites meaning they get indexed quicker and better. 4. There are thousands of free templates available there are many templates (themes) available that you can just upload. It is also possible to customise the templates yourself to meet your needs.
- 2. 5. Affordable Blogger is totally free on blogspot.com, or Wordpress is available as a free version or pro version (US$110/year), hosted on the wordpress.com site. Wordpress, been open source, can also be loaded on your own hosting site for free. 6. Lots of support These tools are very widely used and there are many forums and FAQs and template sites for these tools. In fact there are many church web sites built with Wordpress so you will have lots of examples. 7. Lots of community building tools A blog site is inherently a community site, in that people can leave comments about your stories. This depends on you having a large reader base and you posting new stories regularly. You can use this to your advantage if your church has a social interest that is in the public eye. However most churches use a web site as a communication tool rather than a community building tool and would benefit little from these added features. A Blog site does have the major disadvantage in that it is still an unstructured list of articles. Your site structure is somewhat fixed to this paradigm. This limits the complexity of your web site, and you should consider only having one level of pages on your site if you use these tools. A few links to get you started looking: http://livingos.com/wp/churches/ http://churchcommunicationspro.com/using-wordpress-to-run-church-websites-tutorial-series/ http://livingos.com/2008/04/29/10-best-church-wordpress-themes/ 3. Open Source CMS tools There are several open source Content Management System (CMS) tools that exist, the most common being Joomla. This is an extremely powerful CMS that is more feature rich than Wordpress but is not for the faint of heart. Drupal is another common open source CMS. Very large Churches may consider utilizing this for the more advanced features as Joomla! is a true content management system while Wordpress is a blogging platform that has sort of morphed into a CMS tool. Joomla is FREE and you just need to find a web host for between $5 to $15 per month. This site will give you more information: www.cmsdesignresource.com 4. Web 2.0 Online CMS tools This category of tools is very new and still evolving. However, there are already several tools that we could use very effectively to build a church web site that is maintainable. These tools have all the advantages of using a Blogging tool, and in addition there are designed specifically for building a site with multiple levels of pages. They also have many of the same widgets and features of a blog. Of all the tools I have seen out on the web, there are 6 tools worth reviewing, 3 of which I often recommend depending on the needs of a church. For a tool to be considered in this class, it needs to be either FREE or under $100/ year.
- 3. All the tools below host the content on their site. This hosting is included with the tool, and you can usually purchase more space and bandwidth if you need. 1. Weebly.com is a great CMS site builder for the more technical minded developer. It does not have good inbuilt templates, but the template HTML and CSS can be modified and many widgets can be added. It has a reasonable support following, as it was one of the first tools to come out and it is quite flexible. Weebly can also be used for FREE, though there is an upgrade if you so need. 2. Webnode.com is the other tool I often recommend when FREE hosting is desired, with paid hosting available if extra features are needed. Webnode has better templates, though they are only a few and they are harder to customise. The graphical interface is very easy to learn and Webnode has many useful inbuilt widgets that help you add features to your site. 3. SnapPages.com is a CMS site builder for the graphically minded. They have some great templates, which you can modify in many ways through the interface. You cannot load your own templates, but you can normally develop something you need from what they provide. You do need to pay the $100 a year for this site to get enough capacity and features for the normal church site, so this one I would not call free. These next three tools do not have a concept of sub pages. You can manually add links to subpages, but this is not built into the page manager. There might be a case where you would use one of these tools, but I have not used them yet. 4. Freewebs.com has a lot of inbuilt applications, but many of these applications can be built into other web builders from third party sites. The interface is not as intuitive for authors to update content, and the sites are Add supported so this tool also requires an update for about $100 a year. 5. Yola.com is worthy of mention as it seems to contain a similar set of features to Weebly or Webnode. However, customisation of the templates by CSS editing or the interface is not possible; you need to use one of the templates provided. 6. Blinkweb.com is worth of mention because it is the simplest Web CMS tool for authors that I have found, and has a reasonable set of templates to choose from. Blinkweb is totally FREE and has no advertisement except a link back to Blinkwebs home page. You cannot modify the templates, and there are not a lot of inbuilt widgets, but for a very basic site this might be ok. Weebly, Webnode and Yola have the concept of an e-shop if you have products to sell. (Note: I have not done a complete investigation of all the e-shop tools available, just listing those that are part of an online CMS system, which is the main requirement for most church web sites. For e-shops you might want to look at ProStores, Amazon, Dreamhost and iBizLog to name a few.)
- 4. To help you know which web builder to choose, I made a table here to compare the above products: Weebly Webnode Snappages Freewebs Yola BlinkWeb Cost FREE FREE $100/year $100/year FREE FREE Customisation CSS** + HTML CSS** + Template* Inbuilt Settings CSS** None None Approx 60 Approx 70 Approx 70, but approx 10 good 15 very good Approx 100 good Inbuilt templates average average not very good templates templates templates templates templates If a basic site is For the technical When free hosting is If the e-shop For most church needed. Some of minded developer needed, and some Not meets your need, Final Say sites with no desire the templates are or if you need an knowledge of CSS is recommended worth a look at to edit the CSS. quite fun but no e-shop. on hand. this one. customisation. *No interface for Template Customisation, so recommended only for web developer. ** Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics (that is, the look and formatting) of a web page. I supplement the features of these CMS tools with my own widgets or custom built widgets from other sites. For example: For Custom Forms : wufoo.com For polls : micropoll.com, polldaddy.com, surveypopups.com, freepollkit.com, vizu.com Forums : www.lefora.com, nabble.com, motigo.com, bravenet.com GuestBook : www.smartgb.com, motigo.com Webstats : Google Analytics Calendar : motigo.com, Google Calendar Short URLs : motigo.com Mailing list sign-up : bravenet.com Newsletters : www.mailchimp.com I think you get the idea - there are many tools available for your custom needs, just a matter of finding one that meets your needs and budget. Most can be found FREE or for a very modest price. All you need is a site to place these widgets, and that is what these online CMS tools are best at doing. For sub ministries, I often recommend the ministry builds their own Online CMS site if they are active and large enough.
- 5. 5. Custom Designed Web Sites and expensive CMS tools. There are many expensive CMS tools that have many features such as multiple editors, secure intranet, workflow and approval of updates. There are businesses that offer an online CMS as part of a package to develop your site. There are also CMS tools that are offered as a part of a larger package, some even aimed at meeting the specific needs of a church in the form of complete church management software. These range from hundreds of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars. Most of these are outside the small churches budget. Larger churches may consider getting a web developer to assist, but make sure they offer a CMS package so you can update your site. Also check what the ongoing costs are so you are not surprised by the cost of maintaining your site. Review of these more expensive options is beyond this review, but some custom church solutions I have found in my brief look are: Ekklesia 360 www.ekklesia360.com Elexio www.elexio.com faithHighway www.faithhighway.com SkyCMS www.discoversky.com E-zekiel www.e-zekiel.com AdvancedMinistry www.advancedministry.com SiteOrganic www.siteorganic.com Web Empowered Church webempoweredchurch.com Church Web Works www.churchwebworks.com ChurchSites www.churchsites.com ACS Technologies www.acstechnologies.com Church Community Builder www.churchcommunitybuilder.com Clover www.cloversites.com Endis www.endis.com 6. Other options Like anything on the internet, there are always other options. I would like to mention social networks like www.ning.com. Here you can build a community site. This might be great for a geographically spread ministry. Facebook is also a great place for a group currently being the favourite social site, and sites like www.eventbrite.com are great if you are running and want to manage registrations for your event. Sites like wix.com let you build a whole web site in flash. I do not recommend a whole site built on flash, but tools that help build flash banners and slideshows can be useful.
- 6. Conclusion In my experience of building quite a few websites for Ministries and Churches over the years, I normally recommend a Web 2.0 Online tool for small church web sites. In some cases I might suggest a blog site for specific needs, such as a Pastors personal site. Rarely would I suggest an Open Source CMS unless a church has someone to maintain the system. Instead for larger churches I might suggest one of the custom church management software systems depending on their needs and budget. My preferred Web 2.0 CMS at this time is Snappages, because of its great interface for users to customise the look and feel of the site. Although I also like Webnode when I need to build a free site. Wordpress is my preferred Blogging tool, though I use Blogger a lot when I need a free blog tool.