Free Personal Web Hosting and Personal Homepages!

The redesign of my church’s website is behind us, a website update policy has been developed and is being implemented and tweaked, and we’re well into the ongoing maintenance of the site.  Staff and volunteers are making weekly updates to the calendar, news page, sermon notes, and podcast.  Less frequent updates to the site are being made for new sermon series and to ministry pages.  The site is running like a well-oiled machine (more or less, anyway).

But periodically big things come up.  Big things that defy regular maintenance procedures.  Big things that call for more than just a graphic or a two-sentence announcement on the homepage to reach their full potential.  Big things like Christmas.

What you can do with your website to make the most of big opportunities?

(more…)

Two weeks ago I posted an article entitled Developing a Website Update Policy, part 12 in this series about the development of my church’s new website.  If you’ve been following this series, you know I’ve been posting one article each week.  Except for last week.  Last week I was really busy trying to make a project deadline and didn’t have time to write an article.  Maybe you noticed… or maybe you didn’t because you’re so busy with work, family, ministry, cleaning the house, baking pies, getting your fantasy football roster done early this week.  (Note to self…)

Chances are you’ve had times in your life when you just couldn’t get everything done you were supposed to.  It happens occasionally, or maybe more than occasionally for some of us.  But what if the person responsible for updating your church website is too busy to get that done?  Let’s take a look at what happens and how to prevent it.

(more…)

With my church’s new website launched (see part 11), there was a strong, natural temptation to let off the throttle.  Those of us working on the site had pushed hard to get the site ready for launch and now just wanted a break.  But continuing the NASA metaphor from last article, what happens immediately after the launch of a new website will determine whether it reaches a sustainable orbit or comes crashing back down to earth.

(more…)

Having finalized the menu structure for my church’s new website (see Church Web Design Part 10: A Website Organization Exercise), only two major tasks remained before we could launch the site.  We needed to finish adding content to the site, and we needed to review the entire site to make sure everything was functioning properly.  Could we get those final tasks done and launch the new website in time to help promote our fall “open house” outreach?

(more…)

In part 9 of this series about the redesign of my church’s website, I outlined 12 principles for organizing a church website.  Today we’ll take a practical look at applying those principles by examining how Tim, our church’s executive pastor, and I organized our church’s new website.  We used a neat little exercise that allowed us to quickly look at several different organizational options.  You might find it helpful as well.

(more…)

Last week, in part 8 of this series about the redesign of my church’s website, we talked about the importance of training to the long-term success of a website and why it is often neglected.  With my training complete and OCC having added content to the site there were only two steps remaining before the site could go live: review the site to be sure everything included in the contract had been done and add the rest of the content to the site.  But when we started adding the rest of the content we realized there was a big unresolved issue – how do we organize all these pages?  How many main menu items should we have?  What should they be named?

(more…)

In part 7 of this series about the redesign of my church’s website, we left off with Mike (OCC’s website developer on this project) having added a limited amount of content to the new website.  The next step in the development process is training the client (me) on how to use the content management system (CMS) and all the components installed.  This is one of the most important aspects of getting a new website, yet it’s usually overlooked.  Do you know why?

(more…)

In Part 6 of this series on the redesign of my church’s website I described the design phase of the project, and how Mike (OCC’s website developer on this project), was able to create a CMS template for our new website that looked virtually identical to our current site.  With the concept phase complete, the next step was the content phase, one that is often fraught with delays.

(more…)

In the last article in this series about the redesign of my church’s website I described the process of getting competing proposals for the redevelopment project and the challenges involved.  With that done and having received approval by the finance board for the funds needed, it was time to finally get the project started. The big challenge - could OurChurch.Com create the design within a CMS to look exactly the way we wanted it?

(more…)

Having gone from the initial consultation request to receiving a formal proposal from OurChurch.Com in just four days, the next step in the redevelopment of my church’s website was in the hands of the finance board.  Would they approve the above budget request for funds?  Would they ask for proposals from other website development companies?  Would the fact that I’m both the CEO of OurChurch.Com and an elder at the church factor into their deliberation?

(more…)