Guides and Guidelines for a Church Web Site

Background Information to Consider

If you are planning on creating, evaluating, or improving a church website, take a look at some of these resources:

• The ELCA Guide to Developing Your Own Congregation Web Site - There are quite a few links on this page leading you to other good resources
• Gospelcom.net Resources - This is a great place to get you started thinking about web design. Be sure to follow the links on the lefthand menu bar: Church Sites, Outreach Strategies, Relate & Chat, Training/Volunteer
• Christian Web Site about Christian Web Design
• 25 Church Website Design Tips (PDF) from Christian Computing Magazine
• Church Webmasters Forum
• ForMinistry - full-featured, free church website building tool, plus many resources for ministry online; a ministry of American Bible Society
• Heal Your Church Web Site: "Teaching, rebuking, correcting & training in righteous web design."
• Assesing Church Websites: Studying Best Practices in Online Ministry 
• Ten Internet ‘best practices’ for e-ministry by Terrell Sanders
• Criteria Used to Review Congregational Web Sites 
• Designing Church Web Sites 
• Church websites that reach non-Christians good suggestions and links to additional resources
• If you are at all unsure about your way around the Internet, take this excellent Internet for Religious Studies tutorial / guided tour.
• Christian Computing Magazine is a free, online publication that often deals with church/web issues. Subscribe to get the monthly magazine in your email and check out articles like this one on "Web Strategy: Effective Strategies for Today's Church"

• Is your website mainly intended for church members, or do you want it to be more of an evangelistic and outreach medium? For some guidance to online evangelism, the following are helpful (though keep in mind the theological perspectives):

  • Evangelism guide to internet web outreach (A really outstanding site with all sorts of information and things you should keep in mind)
  • Online Training for Online Evangelists-Outline (This will give an overview. To actually take the course, it is requested that you register [free] and affirm their faith statement.

Where Will the Church Web Site Be Hosted?

• You probably have some web space provided with by your internet service provider. This will likely provide you with a subdomain site. (I.e., ourchurch.internetserviceprovider.com or something similar.)
• If you are wanting to get started for free, either Thrivent or ForMinistry are possible starting points. (I used both of them a long time ago, so I'm not entirely familiar with their latest setups.) Both try to simplify the process of setting up a simple website. Again, you will only have a subdomain site.
• If you want to try to grab your church's own domain (i.e., www.ourchurch.org or the like), you need to claim the name. The easiest way to check out if the name you want is available is to work through the web hosting service you plan to use. There are lots of possible ones, but I can recommend the web hosting service I use for all my stuff. Follow the link here. I'm guessing most churches could start out with a very reasonable cost. (E.g., with the 1&1 hosting service, you could use either the $3.99 or $4.99 per month plan. They do have a quick web site building tool, but if you want to get fancy down the line, this is the way to do it.) Also note that if you go this route, that you get at least 600 email addresses, so you can have church email addresses for everyone. (I.e., you wouldn’t have to use personal emails for church email. Email accounts could either be set up for online webmail or email forwarding to existing accounts.)
• If you do want to start from scratch designing your own web page, you can get commercial programs (like Microsoft Expression or Adobe Dreamweaver), but a simple but comprehensive, free alternative is Kompozer. 
• You can pay for a professional job. E.g., among many possibilities, check out: MyChurchWebsite.)

Evaluating Church Web Sites

• Evaluating Church Web Sites: Criteria
  • You may choose to use the tool in the next bullet, but in general, keep in mind the following questions:
    • Is the site geared toward members or non-members? Is it mainly insider information or intended to be evangelistically welcoming? How would a non-member respond to the site?
    • Is the site attractive? Easy to navigate? Does it load quickly? Is it 'fresh'? What is the first impression you get? What is your final, overall impression? 
    • What is the focal point of the site? What attracts the most attention?
    • What is this site good for? Would you want to attend this church? Has this site made it easier or more helpful to attend this church?
    • Does this site help create 'community'?
  • Evaluating a Church Web Site - This is a great tool to use, but, as it notes, it is simply a guideline for evaluation. Do you agree with all the values it values? Follow the directions to generate a report. 
• Church Web Sites to Evaluate
  • Evaluate your own home congregation's site
  • Evaluate a site of a church of another denomination
  • Evaluate a church which you have visited
  • Evaluate at least one of the following:
    • Hope Lutheran Church of Fargo, ND
    • The Lake of the Woods Church and its related MyChurch: Lake of the Woods Church page
    • Solomon's Porch (Minneapolis, MN)
    • Spirit Garage (Minneapolis, MN)
    • Cedar Ridge Community Church (Spencerville, MD)
    • Church of the Apostles (Seattle, WA)
    • The Well - Church and Coffeehouse
    • H2O Church - Come get your fill (Orlando, FL)
    • LiquidChurch.org (Basking Ridge, NJ)
    • Epikos: A Community of Believers Living Epically for God (Milwaukee, WI)
    • Church of Fools
      

Community and Outreach

What are some things you might do to create community?

• Blogs: They are free and very low maintenance. Try Blogger or WordPress. This could either be a pastoral or congregational project.
• Wikis: Usually free and another way of encouraging community participation. Try pbwiki or wikispaces. (Not many examples as of 2008, but they will be coming. Look at: The Rock MCC Church wiki or Grace Bible Church)
• Try MyChurch or even Facebook / MySpace. (Check the My Church app or Hosanna Lutheran in FB)
• CaringBridge - CaringBridge® is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit web service that connects family and friends during a critical illness, treatment or recovery. A CaringBridge website is personal, private and available 24/7. It helps ease the burden of keeping family and friends informed. Patients and caregivers draw strength from loved ones’ messages of support.
• Voicethread - Try creating a voice annotated history.
• Google Calendars! (If you hurry, you might be among the first 1000. Search Public Calendars for "church.")

What are some things you might do for your church web site to serve as an outreach tool?

• What information is a non-member likely to want at your church's site?
• Are the ways you create community the best ways to generate interest for non-members?

RE: Blogging

• This short video should help give you a sense of Web 2.0 and why we blog.
   
• Okay, here’s a short video to explain what RSS is and why you want it.
   
• As mentioned in the video, I like Google Reader. If you don’t already have one, sign up for your free account and get going with RSS.