Church Website Help

I decided to include this church website help article as a service to Churches so they can build quality sites for the Internet. I've designed and hosted a number of Church websites and learned much about some internet applications that can provide church website help to many.

Christian Web Hosting?

I don't believe in applying the title "Christian" to a product. Web hosting is a computing technology and is no more Christian than an automobile or blender. The larger principle that a Church ought to consider is the quality of the service for the price offered and being good stewards of their money. In my web hosting ratings, there are detailed reviews of features to match differing site needs. Service, reliability, and value for the money are all Biblical business principles. I looked at the web hosting services that call themselves "Christian Web Hosting" and found their prices to be too high for the service offered; hence, they did not appear in my top web hosting ratings.

Here are the Editor's Choice Web Hosting Companies:

Web Hosting Reviews Editor's Choice

Choosing Domain Names?

You've probably already experienced the frustration of finding a .org name that was available for your church. A good tool to research available domain names is to search for domain names through a registrar like ICANNwholesale. You can try different domain name combinations and they suggest domain names you might consider. Read the article choosing a domain name for more help. Once you've settled on a name, don't forget about the idea of buying additional domain names that may direct folks to your site that are easy to remember. What if you already have the domain name podunkgracechurch.org. If your Church is in Podunk, see if you can get the names podunkchurch.com and podunkchurch.org. You can use those names as aliases for your main Church website and perhaps redirect folks that were just looking for a Church in Podunk.

A Plan with Lots of Storage and Bandwidth for Streaming Audio?

It has become commonplace for many Churches to provide the ability for website visitors to listen to sermons or teaching online. The process is not too technically complicated nor is it expensive. Real Networks, Microsoft, and others allow the download of free tools that convert .mp3 or .wav files into formats that can be uploaded into a Church website and then streamed for visitors to listen to. Please view the web page how to podcast to learn the details on how to create, upload, publish, and advertise your own sermons and teaching.

The key consideration for a Church website is space or storage available for your web hosting plan. Most websites are less than a megabyte (MB) in size and ix Web Hosting Expert plan is recommended. If the Church is thinking about streaming audio then assume that each 30 minute sermon or audio file is going to take about 5-10 MB in storage space. That's not a problem for most hosting plans if you only intend on making a couple of sermons available with only a few listeners. If you intend to host many sermons or a teaching series, the space and bandwidth requirements can add up quidkly. Even if there are few sermons , if you expect a lot of visitors to listen to your audio content, then you will need a lot of bandwidth.

Churches that want to reach many visitors with their streaming audio need plans with generous storage and bandwidth. Here are my recommended choices:

Assuming the average size of a sermon or teaching series is 10MB, the Sermons column identifies approximately how many sermons or teachings can be stored. The Listeners column identifies how many listeners can listen to an entire sermon in a given month. AN Hosting is the best choice for overall value. Lunar Pages not only allows just as many listeners/month but is the premium choice if you require the best speed, service, and reliability.

Create a Quality Website

Just like any organization that has a presence on the web, a Church should seriously consider how its website looks to those visiting it. I've seen a lot of websites built by members with some computer experience but little web design experience. Many Church websites look very unprofessional and are difficult to navigate. There's much more to a good Church than a great website and horrible Churches can have great websites and vice-versa. Nevertheless, if you want to use the Internet as a portal to reach people then seriously consider whether you have the requisite talent in-house. If you have somebody strong technically but are weak on the design side then think about using a website template. Churches with larger budgets that want a unique site with great impact should consider hiring a professional website designer.

Church E-mail

I don't know how many Church websites I've visited that have website addresses like www.churchname.org and then you click to e-mail the pastor and his e-mail address is bob@aol.com. See my discussion about domain e-mail. When your domain is hosted, nearly all web hosting plans allow you to set up POP e-mail addresses or forwarding rules for your domain. It is much more professional and memorable for your Pastor's e-mail to be pastor@churchname.org. It also frees up his personal e-mail address from becoming cluttered. If your web hosting provider does not let you set up e-mail accounts then switch to one that offers this very basic feature.

While you're at it, you can set up e-mail forwarding rules to give e-mail aliases to everybody in your congregation if the Church is small enough. In my last Church, I set up e-mail forwarding rules so people could e-mail lastname@churchname.org and the e-mail was forwarded to the members' personal e-mail addresses. It made it easy for everybody in the Church to remember other e-mail addresses once the forwarding rules were all set up.