So you want to build a Christian church website?

• So people can find you
• To bless your church with pictures of your events and copies of your study notes
• To evangelize through MP3s of your teachings
• To make people feel more comfortable with the idea of coming to your church by telling them what to expect and showing them pictures of what you and your church looks like

• Contact info: email, phone number, address
• Meeting times
• Pastor's Bio
• Your doctrine and purpose statement
• MP3s of your teachings (you can buy a pocket recorder that will work well for this for $100)

• Put most important stuff on front page: contact email, address, meeting times, map to church
• Pastor's Bio
• Pictures of church
• Doctrine
• Purpose
• All services
• Special events
• Calendar
• Email address
• Bible study meeting address
• Mailing address
• Phone number
• Staff email addresses
• Map to Bible studies

• Home page
• About us
• Schedule
• MP3s
• Contact

Keep your church website pages simple...

• No unnecessary words, short lines, bullet points
• Studies show people do not read webpages like printed material
  • "Web text should be short, scannable, and approachable. Typically, you should write half as many words for the web as you would for print. If targeting a broad consumer audience that includes people with no or little education, it's better to aim at 25 percent of the print word count. And in web writing, it's always best to start with the conclusion, so that people who read only the first line or two on a page still get the main point."
• Understand eye patterns - (think Z)
• Don't reinvent a new navigation idea
• Cross browser compatibility - Screen size and platform
  • 42% firefox, 28% chrome
  • Less than 14% 1024x768

• "Content Management System" like Joomla
• Microsoft Word
• Microsoft Publisher
• An html builder (First page by Evrsoft.com)
  
• A Blog Spot
  
• A Free webpage template
• An image resizer
  
• Color Tools
  • A color picker
    
  • Color Schemes
    
  • Colors on the Web
    
  • Fashion Trends
    
• An MP3 converter
• A Graphics program (only if you have lots of time to spare)
  
• Monitor your websites "uptime" with Basic State

• Do it
• Cost $15 per year - be careful where you buy it from, lots of scams
• Regional domains (eg. .hu) are more expensive and harder to get but you should get one
• You can move where your webpage is stored wherever and whenever you want to

Church website hosting

• $80 per year up
• Lots of choices, don't buy more than you need, you can always change
• If you choose a "content management system", like Joomla, you will not want to move it
• You can check out SiteGround hosting by clicking here
  

• Don't even try it unless you are willing to spend lots of time working on your webpage

• Depends on how you build your page
• There are many tricks to improve your placing

• Via an internet page
• FTP

• If you create you own logo, when you ask for people's opinions on if they like it, be absolutely sure you ask people who will tell you the truth
• Neither creating a logo, nor finding someone that will tell you the truth about if it looks good, is easy to do

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