How to Develop a Church WebsiteI can make no claims that I am a professional graphic designer, but I can make the claim that I know what looks good and how to make things look like what I want. This seems to be a rare thing among church website designers. The problem that many churches have is that they are limited in the choice of people who are willing to put the effort into developing a website. With the exception of very large churches, most churches cannot afford to hire someone to develop a website, so they must rely on volunteer labor. Some churches have an individual or individuals who are trained in the skill sets required to design and build a website and who is willing to put in the time required to develop the website. If your church is blessed in such a way then you should thank God for this person and then turn this person loose. Some churches have individuals who think they know how to develop a website, but really lack the knowledge required. Some lack the ability to write the code that is required by a website, while others lack the good taste required to design a nice looking website. In the worst case, the only people willing to work on the website lack both skill sets. The ideal person to develop a website is a computer programmer with a good eye for art that is doctrinally sound. You will notice that I mentioned three skill sets. If you do not have a person who has all three skill sets then you will need a committee. I recommend a committee of two or three. The committee, when working together, should have the three skill sets mentioned. The committee leader should be doctrinally sound and should take the primary lead in determining the content of the website. The design of the website comes next. The job of the person with the programming skills is to implement what the other two skill sets direct. If one of the three skill sets is lacking in you church then you should try to find a person in another church that has the required skill set. You should probably try to stay within the associations that your church has joined rather than just accepting help from anyone. You will want your website development team to be united concerning church doctrine. When selecting people to work on the website, you may want to ask to see some work that they have done in the past. If the person has developed websites before then you should look at the websites. If you are looking for someone to serve as the “design” person then you should look at other types of artwork that they have done. Good taste in one type of graphical art often translates into good taste in other types of graphical art. Content, Content, ContentOnce you have selected the people
that will be working on the website it is time to think about content.
The church or pastor may provide direction concerning what should be on the
website, but most of the content will probably be determined by the development
team. This is why it is very important to have a doctrinally sound
individual working on this team. There are some things that should be on
most church websites. These are the church name, the address, church or
pastor’s phone number, schedule of services and the church’s doctrinal
statement. Some churches like to include a calendar of events, the
ministries of the church, a map or directions to the church building and a
picture of the church building. The content must be driven by the purpose
of the website. You may want to take the time to write a purpose
statement for the website. You might write something like, “The purpose
of this website is to provide information about our church for people who are
looking for a church in the
Zalma,
If your intended audience is people who do no currently attend you church then you will want to avoid certain things. You should avoid statements that appear to be bickering with other denominations and organizations. Some of the people who are looking for a church see no difference between your church and your competition. While you may be totally correct in what you have to say, the argumentative attitude may turn people off. It would be better to teach people what is wrong with other denominations after you develop a relationship with them. If you want to say what is wrong with a denomination on a website then you should create a separate website. Another thing that you should avoid is the use of theological words. People have changed very little over the centuries. If you tell a man that he “must be born again” then he will probably assume that you are telling him that he must come from his mother’s womb again or be reincarnated. If you find it necessary to use theological terms then be use to provide some means of defining the term for the reader. You should avoid turning people off with non-doctrinal issues. Some churches are critical of people who do not use the King James Version. Some churches are critical of people who do not sing a certain type of music. If you believe these to be doctrinal issues then by all means include them in your website. If you don’t believe these to be doctrinal issues then you should not risk turning people away because you take such a strong stance on which version of the Bible to use or what type of music to sing. Once you have decided what types of things you want in your website you should begin making an outline of your website. The outline should contain all of the things that you have decided to place on your website. If you see two or more things that are similar then you should create a category for these things. You will find an example outline below: 1. Services 2. Ministries a. Sunday School b. V.I.P. c.
Youth
i.
AWANA
ii.
Nursery iii. Children’s Church d.
Music
i.
Adult Choir
ii.
Wind Ensemble iii. Youth Choir e. Web 3. Calendar 4. Contact Us This outline can serve as the basic layout of your website. The front page of your website may have some general information about your church, but it should also have links to the top level outline items. In our example it would have links to Services, Ministries, Calendar and Contact Us. You should start at the top level and move deeper into your outline. Some pages may start out as just a list, but will eventually become a list of links to other pages. Designing Your WebsiteOnce you have decided who you are
talking to and what you want to tell them it is time to consider the appearance
of your website. The appearance of your website can magnify your message,
but it can also nullify it. A good way to design a website is to pull
design elements from the message of the website. In the case of many
church websites, this may mean pulling design elements from the church
building, the name of the church or the style of worship. As an example,
when I designed the South Park Baptist Church
webpage I used the building color scheme and too inspiration from my
first impression of
There are many software packages that provide templates for web pages. Using a template can save a great deal of time, but you run the risk of having a design that does not match your church. This causes the website to seem detached from your church and it gives it the appearance of just being thrown together. There is also the risk of using a worn out design. Some templates have been used so much that they are recognizable. Using design elements from your
church can help make it more recognizable and memorable. If your church
is located on
Unless your building is architecturally significant then you should avoid using the outside of it as a major design element. Most small church buildings are not very attractive and most large church buildings look like fortresses. If you must show a picture of the whole building be sure to take the picture with the parking lot is full of cars and there are people standing around outside. Rather than showing a picture of the building it would be better to show pictures of people who are enjoying themselves at church. Domain Name and HostingOne you know what you are going to be putting into your website you can start thinking about the domain name and the hosting company. You don’t have to have a domain name to have a website but it is helpful if you do. You should pick one that is easy to remember and relates to your church in some way. In order for your website to be viewable to the general public it will need to be located on a web server. There are several options available. Some organizations provide small amounts of space free of charge to some churches. There is the option of buying a computer to work as a server. There is the option of renting space on a server owned by a hosting company. The option that you choose must be determined by the needs of the website and the abilities of the people involved. The easiest method but sometimes in the long run most expensive method is to rent space from a hosting company, but it can be done for around one hundred dollars per year. Writing the CodeThe simplest website is a single HTML document. Most sites have multiple pages linked together. Some sites have thousands. A lot of sites have databases that store the data for the dynamic content of the page. There are several programming languages that can be used to create a website. It would be impossible to explain the details of implementing the code behind a website in this document. See Also
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Copyright © 2005 Timothy Fish. All Rights Reserved.