I am convinced that every church should have a website. And, it shouldn’t suck!
And yet, I have found that most churches follow one of these paths:
- They don’t think it’s important to have a website, so they don’t do one.
- They figure they should do a website, but can’t be bothered to invest any time, resources or energy into it. As a result, their website is almost always outdated.
- They know a website is important, and they spend thousands of dollars having professionals do it for them. Then, when it comes to upkeep, they are lost and have to keep investing money in order to make it work.
Is there not another option?
Of course there is. Here’s what/how I did.
I designed my first website about ten years ago. At that time, I used Microsoft Frontpage. It was my tool of choice for about five years. The first version of the Bikers’ Church website was done in Frontpage. I basically learned the program on the fly.
Since then, I’ve moved over to using Dreamweaver. There are less expensive programs available, but I am comfortable with Dreamweaver, so that’s what I use. I learned Dreamweaver by utilizing an online tutorial at Lynda.com. A cannot stress enough how great a training site Lynda.com can be. For $25/month, you can view as many tutorials as possible. I spent one day learning the program at the site, and then began putting together the church website.
I found a website that offers free templates called Open Source Web Design. They have so many great ideas and all for FREE. I took a template, played around with it, and made it my own.
I signed up for a webhost called 1 & 1. We pay $10/month for 300 GB of storage space! That’s HUGE! I am able to create subdomains as well, so I can have as many websites as I want hosted at their site. When you sign up for an account with them, they will take care of registering the domain name of your choice. I registered the bikerschurch.com domain (and the bikerschurch.ca domain).
I read a number of blogs on church websites. A few really good ones are:
All of those blogs are excellent resources. Stay on top of them.
Recently (a week ago), I installed Google Analytics on the website. It is an amazing (FREE) piece of code that allows you to really monitor who visits your site — how often, what pages, etc. Use it.
I devoted a week to get everything up and running and working the way I wanted it to work. Since then, I spend approximately one hour per week keeping the site maintained. That includes the time I spend reading the blogs mentioned above.
And yet, our website is invaluable. I cannot begin to count the number of people who have told me that they began attending our church after checking out the website. The website is a place where people can learn about you from the safety of their own home. There is no pressure, no pushy people, no uncomfortable stares. Just them, a computer, and all the info you wish to share with them.
Some will suggest that your website needs to be designed for either church people or for unchurched people. Maybe they’re right. I know we don’t focus on either group specifically. We simply use the website to tell our story. And it works. We get all kinds of people visiting it every day.
So, fire away if you have any questions, and I’ll do my best to answer them. And, feel free to offer more ideas and suggestions in the comments section.
