Creating a Church Website

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Backwoods Presbyterian

Backwoods Presbyterian

Puritanboard Amanuensis
Ellisville as of this second does not have a website and I have been given the go-ahead to look into setting one up. I know next to nothing about how to go about this. I am not looking for anything fancy nor anything too expensive. Would like to be able to upload sermons but no need for anything more. Just a fairly simple informational site.

Any ideas/comments/advice?
 
I always recommend forministry.com, but nobody else seems to agree with me. For twenty bucks, you get a custom site name (like midlaneparkarp.org rather than free gibberish) and templates that require no knowledge of coding. It's easy to upload photos and images, but ask Tim about the sermon uploading. I know we use another cheap service for that (podbean, I think). You'd be done in an hour, especially if you can copy/paste any text like mission statements (if you're so inclined). At the very least, it's a quick stopgap while you investigate other options.
 
We have gone to a paid, higher-end hosting solution (Church Plant Media - that I would recommend) but we had been using a WordPress install (free) on a web host we purchased from Hostexcellence.com (like $100 year).

You can still check it out (Christ Church PCA) because we have not finalized the transition.
 
Another solution is to use a service like weebly.com. It's free and you can select a free url name (it will just have "weebly" in the name, sort of like "wordpress" if you use that site). Lots of media bells and whistles as well, and it's easy to use.

BTW, I do use podbean.com to host mp3s of my sermons. There is a "jukebox" at that side which you can copy the code for and insert into the church website.
 
There are a number of good WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web editors out there. I used to update the webpage for a church we were members of in another city, and used Microsoft FrontPage to make edits and changes. If you are fairly competent in Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Publisher, etc.) you will find FrontPage to be fairly understandable. There are a number of free FrontPage tutorials online just a Google search away. And I learned most off what I know of HTML and CSS from goofing around on FrontPage and trying things out with it. Once you get a basic understanding of HTML you can do a lot.
 
I would recommend getting a host that gives a free WordPress install (I use Knapp Technologies for $5/month, with $10/yr for the domain name). Then just get a nice theme (free ones and cheap ones are available) and put in whatever content you wish. There are a number of easy options for sermons. I wouldn't go to one of the free hosting sites, as you won't get a complete domain name, just a sub-domain (e.g., http://churchname._____.com instead of churchname.com). Plus the templates on those sites usually don't look great in my opinion.

Plenty of churches have used WordPress for their sites. Rich uses it for his church, I believe, so you can check his out for an example of the type of thing you can do. PM me if you want more info on how to set this up.
 
We also do the Wordpress and then host the site at Hostway. It's around $100 a year. It's as easy as having a blog.

Also, with sermons, I would suggest SermonAudio instead of just having them at your website. SermonAudio gives a much wider audience and is really the first place that people go to now when they are looking for a new local church. You can search by zip code; denomination, pastor's name, etc. It's $30 a month ($20 for RPCNA because of some deal that the RP Church has with SA) and is well worth it.
 
Covenant Joel said:
Scottish Lass said:
This is not true with forministry.com. Our site through them is midlaneparkarp.org.
Click to expand...

Interesting. That seems unusual, but cool if you got it.

I still prefer WordPress sites these days, as I think they're the easiest to maintain and get a good theme with.
Click to expand...

You are able to go through getyourchurchdomain.com and purchase a domain name (a real domain name) for $16 a year. Here's a link at the site explaining how.
 
I second Sermon Audio as the place to put your sermons. We've had a number of visitors, even from Long Island and Canada, who first listened to our sermons on Sermon Audio. It is great advertisement for your church; giving folk an opportunity to hear your preaching before they actually join you for worship. They also provide a monthly report of sermon downlloads by state and country. It is always encouraging to find how many people were listening to which sermon and where they were located.
 
We use the wordpress.com format and then have it forwarded to our web domain: www.graceleduc.org I like it because: it is cheap (read free other than the minimal yearly forwarding charge), we don't have to have the website hosted somewhere else, and the online software is very intuitive.

As far as sermon hosting is concerned: we used sermonaudio.com for awhile and we liked it for its accessibility and well-established 'clientele'. However, the cost is ten times more than podbean.com (which we use now for about $50 a year), and sermonaudio also limits their audio streams to 16kbps which makes for a grainy and less clear presentation of your sermons. Furthermore, sermonaudio may be well known amongst the church crowd but not the world crowd. Those church members who come to our website can easily find our podbean account anyways.
 
fishingpipe said:
Glenn Ferrell said:
How does one use Word Press and then link it to your own URL?
Click to expand...

You would purchase the domain for your church and then forward it to the wordpress URL from the domain registrar control panel. So if someone types in www.yourchurchhere.com it would redirect it to yourchurchhere.wordpress.com.
Click to expand...

Or you can host WordPress on your own site (many hosts have it as a free install), so that it doesn't redirect to churchname.wordpress.com.
 
It looks VERY nice. Makes me think about switching our website now to googlesites. I'm assuming there is no cost. Would I be able to use our current purchased URL if I did?
 
I like Wordpress because it's free, has plenty of good, free templates, is easy to use, and stable. Also, I don't have to be the only person adding content - it's easy enough to let your ministry leaders update their own content.

We host own own sermons archive too. Aisquith Presbyterian Church
 
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