A very popular question I get asked is “do I need someone to manage my website?” Let’s dig in a take a look at why this is more than essential and what will eventually occur if you are not having a skilled person keep your WordPress website up-to-date.
Chances are you had someone build your website for you, then they handed you the keys with very little instruction on how to properly maintain it. Furthermore, there’s an even bigger risk that you, yourself, do not know the first thing about what goes into properly maintaining your website.
Many people are under the false pretense that it should be up the whatever hosting company they may be using. After all, they are supposed to be backing up your site, right?
First, let’s have a clear understanding of what your hosting provider does. They are responsible for storing and housing your content and usually offer backups of your website. However, this doesn’t mean they are maintaining your website.
Allow me to ask you this. Do you change the oil in your own vehicle? Why not? Let’s see it’s dirty, time consuming, and you have to worry about properly disposing of the old oil. This is why the “Quickie Lube Places” became a huge success. They took the worry out of having your oil changed and oftentimes have it done within a half hour.
I am a huge fan of using WordPress for churches. WordPress is much like maintaining your vehicle. It has several moving parts that are essential to ensure your content is displayed in the fashion you expect it.
You have everything from themes, plugins, and oftentimes custom CSS. All of these require frequent and constant updating. This is where things begin to go “South.”
Keep your WordPress website updated and managed correctly takes more than just clicking on the “Update” icon. As a business owner who specializes in church and ministry website hosting, I can assure you that I have taken on may clients where their website hadn’t been properly updated or backed up in years. What can possibly go wrong with this scenario?
Websites that are left unmaintained are subject to getting hacked. Can you imagine someone from your congregation contacting you to let you know that there is an advertisement for Viagra that shows up when they visit your website? Talk about embarrassing. Don’t laugh, I have found many church or ministry websites just like this.
So what causes this? There can be several possible causes to this. The very first is the fact that the website hasn’t been updated or that there are possibly themes and plugins that have been abandoned by their original authors and have not been replaced with updated ones.
Then I get the dreaded phone call from the desperate client who is in need of emergency help from myself. What is very mortifying is the fact that if they’re not any of my maintenance plans, I either have to charge then an astronomical fee for the debugging of their website or do a complete re-build for a hefty price.
However, this can be completed avoided.
Anyone who has ever been or is a current home owner, usually has a list of people that they would call in the event of a crisis that requires maintenance in their home. You know, your local plumber, electrician, landscaping services, and more.
Shouldn’t it be just as essential to have someone in your back pocket who has the expertise to ensure that your church or ministry website is being properly maintained as well as backed up to ensure that your site doesn’t become compromised?
I am going to open up a can of worms right here. If you are using hosting companies such as BlueHost, HostGator, or other cheap hosting providers, you are setting yourself up for failure.
Look, I understand the need to meet your budget, however, if you want your online presence to be a true representation of your ministry, then you need to stop being cheap.
The best hosting providers utilize Google Cloud servers to provide your content to your viewing audience. In addition, there are additional item’s that are being provide or available to you behind the scenes, without having to pay additional money.
Some of these item’s include but not limited too: SSL Certificates, CDN’s, securing and malware scanning, and technologies that will have your church’s online presence standing out from the rest of those who are competing for the same space and viewers.
If you don’t think it’s a competition between churches for online viewers, then I highly encourage you to re-think your missions statement. In the current state of the world and with the whole COVID-19 concerns, you better be delivering amazing content via your website or when the world opens back up, don’t expect to see any significant increase in your church size.
Let’s take a different look at this. Again, I’m going to rely upon using a car analogy. If you own a Cadillac, do you take it to a Volkswagon dealer to have it maintenanced? Probably not!
Part of owning a Cadillac is the pride of ownership that comes along with it and you want one of their factory trained technicians to perform the periodic maintenance to ensure it runs and purrs just like a kitten. Having someone manage your website is pretty much the same way.
If I can encourage you to do anything, it is get yourself a professional to keep your website maintained and up-to-speed. Don’t wait until it becomes an emergency, because the costs that may be associated with that, could very well outweigh what it would if you had been paying for this service all along.
Can you do it yourself? Sure you can, how much extra time do you have on your hands to roll up your sleeves and get down and dirty? Probably the very same reason why you don’t want to change your own vehicles oil.
You can spend countless hours watching YouTube video’s, reading documents, or if you’re lucky enough try speaking with someone at your hosting company to help you with this. At the end of the day, you’re going to become frustrated, go blind watching video’s, and if you’re lucky you might get someone who speaks broken english at your hosting company who will gladly charge you a nominal fee to help you with something that is not within their scope and certainly no guarantee.
Running my own digital agency that specializes in church, ministry, and Christian business websites, I can assure you that I spend nearly 30 hours a week doing nothing more than preventative maintenance on each of my clients websites.
Most host their sites directly with us and pay for our monthly maintenance packages, thus they can sleep well at night knowing that their website is up and running 24/7, being properly backed up, but more importantly ensuring that is up and available to keep their mission going out to their local communities and around the world.
I hope this will encourage you to seek out a professional to ensure that your church or ministry website is being properly taken care of and maintained.
Site Designed & Hosted by Ark Web Design
