Isn’t the Yellow Pages Enough?

A lot of churches are still depending on old-fashioned phone book ads instead of internet technology to get their church name out into the community.

Well, it looks like the Yellow Pages are about to become obsolete…

This year will be pivotal for the global Yellow Pages industry. Much
like newspapers, print Yellow Pages will continue to bleed dollars to
their various digital counterparts, from Internet Yellow Pages
(IYPs), to local search engines and combination search/listing
services like Reach Local and Yodle Factors like an acceleration of
the print ‘fade rate’ and the looming recession will contribute to
the onslaught. One research firm predicts the falloff in usage of
newspapers and print Yellow Pages could even reach 10% this year –
much higher than the 2%-3% fade rate seen in past years.

via beliefnet.com

Yet another example…

Here’s a simpler design from Calvary Baptist Bible Church in Peoria with a single menu and a wide left column.

The theme used is a modification of techland by WordPress Themeland.

When to call in an expert…

There comes a point in any field of expertise when our reach exceeds our grasp. We’re all capable of changing a light bulb but most of us wouldn’t undertake rewiring our home’s electrical system. It’s not too hard to do your own oil changes but rebuilding the car’s transmission may be a bit too ambitious.

The trick is to know your limits. If the website you’ve imagined is full of modern design and cutting edge technology (see these examples)then you might be better off consulting an expert.

If you’re doing the website on your own (or with a little boost from sites like this one), get some honest opinions about your site design. Don’t be afraid to go with a simpler/cleaner look and shun the more flashy sites.

It’s always better to embrace simplicity than to make a hash of a more complex website idea. “Keep it Simple, Stupid.”

Editing Your Content

Looking for a more robust way to post to your WordPress site?

Well, it turns out that the good folks at Microsoft have released Windows Live Writer which can be used to edit WordPress Blogs from your desktop. The built-in WordPress editing GUI is pretty good, but some folks do seem to like some of the added bells and whistles of the Live Writer. To each his own.

Simply follow the instructions for setting up a WordPress blog and you’re off and running.

Stuff for Standalone Sites

Here are a few resources worth checking out if you’re running a stand-alone WordPress church site…

organizedthemes.com has a decent roundup of five WordPress plugins to help your church website. Not to be outdone Church Communications Pro has a list of six plugins along the same lines.

Revolution Design has released a free version of their church theme that is very “Web 2.0″ looking. If that’s the vibe you’d like your site to have it’s worth a look.

4-14.org has a sermon browser plugin that is very nice looking as well as functional. This one is still in beta so caveat emptor.

Another Example of A Church Website

I decided this past weekend to take a stab at using the LivingOS Delta theme to update the website of a church I attended in New York.

You can see the results here: Maranatha Bible Church

And while you’re over at LivingOS looking at themes, be sure to check out a great writeup on Adding Video to your Site

Adding an Events Calendar

WordPress.com Methods

WordPress.com does not provide a built-in events calendar function, but it’s still possible to include one through Google Calendars and a little magic from RSS.

Step 1: Set up a Google Calendar

If you haven’t already done so, this might be a good time to register a google e-mail address for your church website. Simply sign up for a Google account then go to Google Calendars.

Once you are signed into your calendar click on the Settings link on the left hand side of your screen

Some options will appear in the main body of the page Click on Share this Calendar Then check the box that says “Make this Calendar Public”

Now for the final preparation step, click on Settings again like you did above. Then Click on the Name of your Calendar (in the example it would be Darrell Dow):

Now scroll down and click on the orange XML button:

Copy the link that pops up. This is your calendar’s RSS feed — a method of broadcasting information to other websites.

Now let’s go to your WordPress site. Login to the control panel. From the Menu click on Design then Widgets.

Find RSS on the left hand column and click Add

The RSS feed will now appear in your list of widgets on the right. Click the Edit button and the following box will appear:

In the RSS feed url box, paste in the link you copied from your Google calendar website. Give the Feed a Title Like “Events Calendar” and click the Change button.

Click the Save Changes button at the bottom and….you’re done!

(take a deep breath)

Now as you post events to your Google calendar, they will automatically show up in your RSS feed widget. Pretty nifty.

Hosted WordPress Methods

As always, if you are hosting your own WordPress site there are a variety of options. One of my favorites is the WP-Cal plugin from Fahlstad Design. You can see it in operation here.

Who’s visiting your site?

One of the most important things you’ll do after setting up a church website is analyzing who your visitors are and how they’re learning about you.

One of the best ways to accomplish this is through the use of hit counters.

The good news is that WordPress.com already has hit-counter and statistics software installed on your blog. So if you’re using the free website all you have to do is click on “Blog Stats” on your WordPress Dashboard

From here you can see your most recent number of visitors, the number of sites who have linked to you, and the most popular pages on your site.

Going Deeper

If you’re hosting your own wordpress blog and looking for even more statistics, you can check out some free services from sites like statcounter.com and GoStats.com. These sites will instruct you on how to insert a small snippet of code into your blog to track a multitude of data points.

Unfortunately, since WordPress.com does not allow JavaScript widgets, use of these sites on WordPress.com will be confined to only very basic statistics.

Putting Sermons On Your Website

Unfortunately, sites hosted at WordPress.com cannot use the nifty flash-enabled players that make embedding audio so easy on sites hosted elsewhere. Nonetheless, it is possible to put sermon audio on your church website using some fairly simple techniques.

1. SermonPlayer.com

Even though you can’t embed their flash player, SermonPlayer.com still provides some great options as long as you are willing to let your sermon player open in a new window. To accomplish this you’ll need to create a hyperlink to the sermon player using the target=”_blank” tag.

For example this code:

<a href=”http://sermon.net/calvaryofclayton”>Listen to Sermons</a>

creates this link to an off-site page that will open in a new window:

Listen to Sermons

2. Host and Embed

Another audio option is to host your files on any one of a dozen free hosting services then embed them using the available [audio] [/audio] tags allowed by wordpress.com. For more on the [audio] tags check out the handy WordPress.com guide

You can see an example of a site that embeds audio right here.

3. Go Video

Finally, you can skip the audio embedding all together, pull out the camcorder and post your sermons to youtube.com as videos. Embedding youtube video is simple and pain free.

Not Re-Inventing the Wheel

In the process of doing research for a write-up on how to use WordPress as a platform for a church website, I discovered that the good folks over at Church Communications Pro have already done yoeman’s work on the topic.

Check out their instructions here

There’s also some good material over on Living OS including an article on Getting Started blogging your church with WordPress

And if you’re looking for examples of what your church website can look like, there are dozens of church sites that use WordPress listed here for your perusal.