In a previous article where we talked about website designs for churches, now we are going to examine the best way of developing your online presence. Let’s dig in and talk about why using WordPress for Churches just makes sense.
Before I begin, I suppose it is important that we talk about what WordPress is. WordPress is the #1 Content Management System available to develop, deploy, and manage your online content upon. WordPress currently is utilized for nearly 38% of all online content that you see and use across the Internet.
Using WordPress for churches certainly comes with a wealth of benefits, however, for some it could be a learning curve.
How many of you are already using various social networking applications? If you are posting on Facebook, I promise you that you can create, edit and maintain articles on a WordPress website.
You can pretty much design your website to exactly how you want it to appear. Not too mention that there are nearly 50,000 plus plugins that are available within the WordPress Repository that can bring a great deal of extended functionality to your website.
The best part is the software is 100% FREE. All you need to use it is a domain name, a hosting provider and you are on your way.
Sure there are other providers out there that claim to provide website design resources to churches and ministries, however, once you investigate their monthly costs, often times this is not financially feasible for most ministries.
Doesn’t mean their bad, just usually not intended for churches or ministries who may have smaller working budgets.
When you install WordPress onto your own hosting provider, this unlocks the door of complete creativity. Whether that include uploading themes, custom plugins, and the ability to tie in several third-party providers into your application is nothing short of amazing.
However, using WordPress.com takes away from your ability to upload your own custom themes, plugins and connecting to third-party software integrations. So you have to think from the very beginning of exactly what it is you need your website to do.
This will ensure that you get the most for your investment and open the endless doors of opportunity.
Sure you can certainly take on the the task of developing your own ministry website. There are more than ample amounts of videos across YouTube that can help you along your way. However, if you are starting this from scratch and do not have the technical skills or understanding of the inner workings of a quality website design, you certainly may want to think about hiring a designer who specializes in putting church websites together.
If you want to take a look at an amazing example of a church website design, I encourage you to visit Crow Mountain Baptist Church’s website both from a desktop view or from your mobile device to get a good look and feel of what is both possible and for creative inspiration.
When using WordPress for churches there are some things that you should keep tucked away in the back of your mind. Continue reading to gain a better understanding.
Let me tell you about the time I was contacted by a ministry to help them re-design their website. They were already using WordPress, which meant my life was going to be easy.
Since I am a seasoned WordPress professional developer, there isn’t much that I can’t achieve to get a website to do.
Little did I know that when I first logged into their website, to my surprise, they had 98 plugins installed upon their website (most of which had little to no functionality that was being used upon their site.)
Needless to say my hair was ready to stand on end and I was thinking of how many I could delete. Do not misunderstand me, plugins are great, providing they are delivering some functionality to your website that is actually being used.
Some of the more common and popular plugins deal with contact forms, content publishing direct to your social networking channels, calendars, and apps to enable audio and video feeds. Pretty standard for most churches that are using WordPress.
Sometimes you have to go into your website and see what may be say “not so necessary” for your website to have on it. Ask yourself if the plugin is actually serving your needs as well as those who are visiting your website.
Of course a lot also goes into the quality of your hosting provider. If you are going to go the self-hosted version of WordPress, choosing a quality hosting provider that is optimized for WordPress is essential.
I am going to give a WARNING from the word “Go” of hosting providers to stay clear of. The first of those is Host Gator. While they offer extremely cheap hosting, they are very helpful in the way of support if you get stuck along the way. Sometimes you have to “Pony Up” and spend a little more for better website hosting.
You may want to look into SiteGround, Wp Engine, FlyWheel and others who specialize in WordPress hosting.
Trust me, you’ll be glad you spend a little more for your hosting in the event you are having serious issues or need some extra help with the server side of things.
There is another reason why churches should be using WordPress for their online content. It’s the amazing support that you can get from a variety of online communities to help you along your way. Whether that be in various forums, Facebook groups, or other locations.
There usually is someone standing by who is willing to help.
Okay, so you’ve decided to utilize the self-hosted version of WordPress to help your church get online. There are a few things you need to look at before you start rolling up your sleeves and getting started.
The first is “What theme you are going to use?” Are you going to use a page builder or framework?
There are two themes that come to mind when it comes to leading the pack. The first is Divi. If you haven’t seen it in action, I encourage you to visit with the amazing developers at Elegant Themes who are the amazing team behind it.
Divi is a comprehensive theme that comes packed with its own pagebuilder. Truly worth every penny you’ll spend for it.
The other one is using the phenomenal page builder called Elementor Pro. Now on the downside, if you want to maximize Elementor Pro, you’ll want to purchase a stand-alone theme that has been optimized to work with it. For
The Astra and OceanWP have FREE versions, however, if you truly want to unlock the doors of unlimited creativity, you’ll want to look into purchasing the pro versions of either theme.
Okay, so you’re not the creative type. I am glad that you were able to admit to this. So let’s talk about what you can expect to pay a professional to help you build your church or ministry website.
For a fairly straight-forward traditional website design with contact forms and links to your social media channels, you can look at spending between $750 – $1800. It is important to understand that these charges are separate from your your hosting and domain name fees.
If you are looking for something more expansive and need custom functionalities built-in, or possibly have a multi-campus type ministry you are going to be looking at approximately $3000 and up! Now that may seem expensive, however, you need to keep in mind the number of hours that a quality developer will be putting into your website.
There things that your website developer will need from you. The first and foremost is your content. What is content? You know, the words you read on any page. I cannot tell you the vast amount of churches and ministries that contact me for design help and when I ask them for their content all I hear is “Crickets.”
Your developer may be willing to help with the verbage and putting it together for you, but that may come with additional fees to the design process. The next thing is images.
While we’re talking about images, I CANNOT stress this enough. It is important that you own the images and even more importantly is that you have the necessary permissions to utilize those images online. If you have images that contain photos of minor children, you will certainly want to have release forms from their parents to use their images online. Check with your local association or legal team for your denomination for assistance. They usually have pre-designed forms that they can provide to you to use.
Make sure that you keep your use forms in a special file for quick access in the unfortunate event that someone takes you to task on any image that appears on your website.
Don’t get caught up in the fight of having to protect yourself from any copyright infringement type events. Believe me, it’s a fight that will end up costing you a truck load of money.
Since WordPress has been traditionally referred to as a blogging platform, then why not blog?
Remember me talking about having content that people are coming searching for? Here’s your opportunity to provide it to them. Even if you yourself don’t have the time, then get someone within your congregation who might enjoy writing deliver this for you.
Articles don’t always have to be Biblical in nature. In fact, it’s often better if the articles that are on your church or ministry website are people or situational focused.
People can come visit in person to hear you preach or deliver a series of messages.
People are coming in search of articles that touch them and make an impact in their life. After all, what is it that people are looking for? Jesus!
People want to read about how Jesus made a change in our lives, why they should choose to accept Him into their heart and to begin a life-changing commitment to living their life for Him.
Just make sure the articles are yours. If you make reference to someone else’s material, PLEASE make sure you give the proper credit. Nobody minds that you utilize their creations, but they do want and need the credits when credit is due.
Well, hopefully you have gained some useful content and ideas from this idea. I will be working on providing more articles that will help you with managing your online content and learning how to utilize it as one of the most valuable tools you have to increase your evangelistic efforts.
Look for the next article soon!
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