When I originally finished seminary almost five years ago one of my primary objectives was to make sure our church had a web presence.
I had read and studied all the chatter about how, before people will visit your church, they will first visit your website. I knew this, I just didn’t know how to make it happen. And in my church, at the time, we really didn’t have anyone with the skills to do so either.
So, after looking at different options, and not knowing too much techie stuff, I decided to build one myself using iWeb. You can see the result here:
Now, iWeb is not the ideal solution for anyone, but it actually allowed us to have a half-decent web presence. And because iWeb featured a really simple (wysiwyg: what you see is what you get) editor, I was able to put something together quickly that didn’t look too bad.
I was well aware of such resources as Clover and others, but to be honest, our church didn’t have the financial resources to cover something like that. And I was aware that some churches were even using WordPress-based sites, but I didn’t have the technical knowledge to make something like this happen either.
What Happened?
Well, earlier this year something happened that changed my outlook on all that: I started blogging on WordPress. I was on Blogger before, moved over to WordPress using the Standard Theme, and all of a sudden I was like, “actually….this is not complicated.” And the more I continued blogging and toying around with different features, I began to see how WordPress could actually be used to have a pretty decent site for a church overall.
As I began to think about my options, I recalled this post here on Church Crunch. I didn’t do anything about it for a long time. A few weeks ago, though, I felt I was ready to make the leap.
Here are the steps, then, that I had to take into account, and that I challenge you to think about if you’ll be making the leap.
1. Choose Your Host Wisely
I was already on Bluehost and didn’t have any issues. I was on the verge, actually, of jumping over to Dreamhost so I could take advantage of the free hosting for non-profits, but at the last minute I decided not to because of one thing: they don’t have the greatest customer service. Now I’m not knocking them (am I?), as I actually use them on my blog. But as I thought about moving everything over from Bluehost to Dreamhost, I got a little dizzy. I decided that, for the time being, I’d stick with Bluehost as they have really good customer service. You can call or chat online with them. If you need help with Dreamhost, you essentially send in an email, and they give you a support “ticket.” If you need help right away this isn’t the most encouraging thing to receive.
If you really want to save, though, jump in with Dreamhost. You really can’t beat free.
2. Choose Your Theme
In this post, I wrote about some different WordPress themes that I had been eye-balling, and that I thought might work fairly well for a church. They ranged in price from $0-$50 or so. Not bad at all considering.
I ended up going with the Boldy theme. It’s free and I think looks pretty good.
3. Install WordPress
This actually isn’t as scary as it sounds. John Saddington has a great walk-through video here on TentBlogger on how to do this.
4. Upload Your Theme
When you first install WordPress, you’ll have a default WordPress theme on there. It’s really simple to install whatever theme you like, though. James Brooks from I Heart Blogging has a great walk-through video here of how to install a WordPress theme. He actually installs the Standard Theme, but it would be the same process for any theme you’d want to upload.
5. Customize Options
Once the theme is up you just have to spend some time customizing what you want it to look like. If you end up going with the Boldy theme, there’s some basic documentation here that you can use to get you going. That’s pretty much it. The videos on our site are hosted on Vimeo. We used a simple widget that Vimeo provides to connect it.
As a result of the process, we ended up going from the iWeb example above to this:
If you’re curious, and want to see it live, you can click here.
So concerning cost, we’re just paying about $8 per month for hosting fees. Our WordPress theme was free, so I think overall, we ended up with a pretty decent website for almost no money at all.
It’s a completely doable process, and for a non-profit or a church without a ton of financial resources, this is definitely a step you should think about.
Any questions? So have you used WordPress for any ministry or non-profit sites? What’s your experience been like?
James Brooks says
Thanks for the mention Rodlie, great resource.
Rodlie says
My pleasure. You made a good video. A great resource.
Kyle Reed says
Use it all the time. Great tool and yes very inexpensive if you know what you are doing or know how to use the google machines
Rodlie says
What tool are you referring to, Kyle?
Meg says
Awesome post!
Is that true that Dreamhost offers free hosting to non-profits? I have been DYING to trick out my existing church’s website (and other ministries) but have been limited by hosting they currently have from Verizon.
That would be awesome!
Rodlie says
Yup! That’s the word on the street, Meg. As long as you have your “determination” letter from the IRS proving that you’re a 501c3 you’re good to go.
Geek for Him says
Great stuff brother, so much more clean. Love it – check out our 35 dollar redo – http://www.huntvalleychurch.org
Rodlie says
Thanks! I like yours as well! Very nice….
KC. A says
Hey Rodlie, Im working in the fundraising department, so we are, at least at this point not looking to send any money. We have a iweb webpage that needs some help, but would like to keep the domain name. Any suggestions?