Hello from NW GA

[Ken]

Hello Everyone!

I am brand new to this forum, brand new to GA and brand new to website building. I'm GREEN!!! I have been in Music/Youth Ministry full-time for 26 years in OK until June '06 when we picked up and moved from western OK to NW GA. I started a handyman business and then ended up bi-vocational minister of music at Olivia Baptist Church in Dalton, GA in September. The pastor wants me to check into starting a website for the church and I'm very interested - just don't know where to start. I have been doing some research on the web and ended up finding this forum.

If anyone has time and is interested in helping a newbie, I need lots of educating. I'm computer proficient, just haven't done any real website work. (I did work with Frontpage one time with a summer missions ministry, but the main form was built by someone else and I just learned enough to input "our" information on the site. And that was 5-6 years ago.)

I have discovered www.godaddy.com & www.churchaddress.com. Unless I'm missing something, we purchase our domain name through godaddy, then register with churchaddress and for $25/month, they will host our website (which as I understand it means they provide server space for the information to be stored that makes up the content of our website) and provide us with a long list of ready to use components for the website (website templates, membership lists, polls, ability to change our content at will, email addresses, etc., etc., etc.) Is my understanding correct or am I missing something?????

Thanks for the help I am confident will come. (I've looked around and seen your response time and level! ;-) )

Ken

[flutem3]

Hi, Ken,

Welcome, welcome, welcome to web site 101. I, like you, didn't know anything about building a web site, and I was not competent on a computer either. However, I charged ahead anyway and made come weird errors along the way.

There are many things to consider before you begin. I have a wonderful letter which was sent to those of us on UMConnect, and if you would like, I will send it to you.

But in a nutshell some of it is this.

1. Why are you building a web site...not you specifically...in general.

2. What is the content you are going to use in the web site and from whom are you going to get it consistently? Most of us build web sites backwards. We design it and then decide how we will fill it. We would never build a home that way. The content, people and things as well as resources, determine the design of the house in a general way. People will go to an UGLY site which contains content they think they need/want. People may go to a beautiful site once, but they won't return again if there is no content they need/want.

3. For whom is the site being designed...the members in the church, people looking for a church, those who are seeking for something and have not been to church.

4. Run a survey in your church to see what kind of computer literacy is in your membership. And ask what they would like to see on a web site. Also ask what the three favorite web sites are that they return to time and time again. That will give you wonderful background if you can get people to answer the survey. The best way to do that is to ask the minister for time in church for people to do it. Otherwise, nobody will answer. I found that out the hard way.

5.Take the time to read and tabulate the survey. You will be surprised at what you find out. I found out that one person in our church wanted church history on the web site. There are five pages of church history under the title, "Church History" on our web site. :confused:

As you can tell, I am now from the "design follows function" school of design. One of the most effective web sites I know is also one of the most simple. Take a look at www.kencollins.com (http://www.kencollins.com/) . It is a good resource for information pertaining to churches in general.

Now, after you do that, you can think about design. :D You do not need to spend that amount per month on web hosting. Others will fill you in on all the possibilities out there, but they are enormous. Do you know html? If not, you need some good WYSISYG software. I do not know much html except for being able to use snippets created by others. They do marvelous things too.

One other thing, most of our church web sites are as redundant as can be and that includes ours. Much of the information is already known by the membership. You need to have some information of some kind which can be found only on the computer. And that, in my opinion, is the information with which you try to get people to return. I have not done a good job along this line. But I keep at it. And it is a frustrating joy to do!!

If you are doing it just because someone asked and you felt that you had to say that you would do it, you are in for a miserable ride. On the other hand, if you really want to build a web site for the church, you will find a great joy and just possibly a deepening of your faith.

Keep us posted.

Carol

[GuruGreg]

Welcome aboard Ken. Feel free to just ask any questions as you go along, as there's plenty of us here with varying degrees of experience that can help you out.

GoDaddy should be fine for your domain name, but I couldn't tell you anything one way or another about ChurchAddress since I've never heard of it before. If they offer services that help build your site, then the $25/month would be well worth it. However, if it's just hosting, I'd recommend you look elsewhere (like Dreamhost (http://www.dreamhost.com/)) where you get a better rate and a strong reputation. At least try to find someone with experience with ChurchAddress before you make your final decision.

[David Gillaspey]

Hi Ken,

As GuruGreg states, GoDaddy would be a good choice as a domain name registrar (that is, a place from which to purchase a domain name). I use GoDaddy. Some members of this forum have raised objections to the company's SuperBowl ads, however.

Be sure to sign up for automatic domain name renewal and provide a credit card or PayPal account so that GoDaddy automatically renews your domain name before it expires. This way, you won't lose your domain name, which happens from time to time to churches.

$25 a month for hosting by www.churchaddress.com may or may not be too much. For the price, you are getting pre-designed templates, but a very small amount of storage space -- 50MB to 300MB or so, depending upon the plan you choose. That's outrageous. Hosting plans these days give you many GIGS of storage space, which you need for audio for sermons.

If you designed your own website, or used an open-source content management system (PHP + mySQL), then you would want to select a hosting company that just hosts your site. Cost these days is under $10 a month, including, as I mentioned, GIGS of storage space. Make sure the hoster offers PHP and mySQL; most do. Such a hoster is using Apache web server software on a Linux machine. Other hosters use Windows-based machines and software, including .net and Active Server Pages. You're better of with Linux, PHP, and mySQL.

If you don't feel comfortable designing your own site, then here is a long list of vendors of web Content Management Systems, which make it easy to keep your website up to date. Most include pre-designed templates. Some offer custom designs.

http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/CMS_main.php

I can't say how much storage space they provide.

Here is a list of top hosters:

http://bestwebhosting2006.com/

I use midphase, but will be switching to another hoster (from this list) soon.

Consider also the Web Empowered Church open-source Content Management System solution:

http://webempoweredchurch.com/ and http://webempoweredchurch.org/

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites
(and forum administrator)