Building a Church Website on WordPress
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The document discusses building a church website using WordPress, highlighting its advantages such as customization, cost-effectiveness, and available resources. It covers the evolution of church-specific themes and plugins since 2011, emphasizing the importance of selecting appropriate plugins and themes for specific church needs. The document concludes with practical steps for getting started, including finding a hosting company and involving church volunteers in the process.
Building a Church Website on WordPress
- 2. Building a Church Website on WordPress Chris Wallace @chriswallace" Partner & Principal Creative
- 4. What I’m going to cover Reasons to choose WordPress for a church website.! The state of open-source/WordPress for churches.! The pros and cons of WordPress.! Available church themes and plugins.! Selecting a web host.! How to get help from people in your church.
- 5. Why use WordPress for a church website? • Freedom!! • People already know it (think volunteers, staff, contractors).! • Tons of resources, tutorials, help.! • Fewer & lessened recurring costs.! • Customize anything.
- 6. A Brief History of WordPress and Churches
- 7. Before 2011
- 8. What made WordPress hard to use for Church websites? • Few church-specific themes! • Not easy to add church-specific content! • Church themes with custom post types INSIDE themes! • No integration with Church Management System
- 9. What’s changed since 2011? • In 2011, churchthemes.net introduced 4 church themes with built-in framework for sermons, people, and location management.! • In 2012, WP for Church introduced Church Pack with staff, ministries/groups, photo galleries, and events. ! • In 2013, churchthemes.com introduced Church Theme Content plugin with sermons, people, locations, and events.
- 10. Today’s church website options DIY Cost Skills Required Time to Launch Hosted $1,000 up front $50+ monthly content entry, training, working around constraints weeks / months WordPress website hosting ability to click a mouse as few as 20 minutes Do-It- Yourself your life design, development,! content entry, tech support, QA, teaching pastor how to use the Internet, etc. ???
- 11. Where are all the WordPress open source church things?
- 12. WordPress.org Plugin Repository Comparison 364 28 number of plugins tagged ‘slider’ number of plugins tagged ‘church’
- 13. srsly?
- 14. What’s worse… A lot of these plugins aren’t actually for churches.
- 15. OK, so what about themes? Gotta be a bunch o’ church themes.
- 16. There is literally one free theme on WordPress.org & it’s called “Church.”
- 17. ?????
- 18. Still, WordPress is a great foundation for a church website.
- 19. Step 1. outline features needed for the website.
- 20. What most churches need: Pages! Blog! Social! Volunteer/Staff login! Image Galleries Sermons and Series! Events! Staff! Locations / Directions! Small Groups! Contact Forms! Tithing
- 21. What WordPress handles: Pages! Blog! Social! Volunteer/Staff login! Image Galleries Sermons and Series! Events! Staff! Locations / Directions! Small Groups! Contact Forms! Tithing
- 22. Step 2. Pick your plugins.
- 24. Why use the Church Theme Content plugin? • Data portability! • Content won’t just “disappear” when switching themes! • Themes should control appearance, not post types! • Consistency in features! • One-click plugin updates
- 25. What does the CTC plugin add to WordPress? • Sermons & sermon series (with video, audio, PDF)! • Staff bios & groups! • Events! • Locations
- 33. Other church plugins • Church Theme Content Integration - FREE Syncs events from Fellowship One to CTC plugin.! • PrayBox - FREE Can be used for small groups & community.! • Scripture Highlighter - FREE Turns scripture references into clickable links that open & highlight the verse.
- 34. Other plugins for churches • Woocommerce - FREE Powers more than 10% of all e-commerce websites. Good for music, apparel, books, and more.! • BuddyPress - FREE Can be used for small groups & community.! • Ninja Forms - FREE Create powerful forms for volunteer, contact, and other types of forms.
- 35. Other plugins for churches • Edit Flow - FREE Easy way to manage content publishing process and approval.! • Akismet Automate comment spam deletion.! • The Events Calendar - FREE and Pro version Includes extensions for selling tickets, Eventbrite, and community events.
- 36. Step 3. Pick a WordPress theme or create your own.
- 37. Commercial Church Theme Options CTC Themes Non-CTC Themes churchthemes.net churchthemer.com churchthemes.com wpforchurch.com boxystudio.com ThemeForest
- 38. Theme tip: Start with a theme that uses the CTC plugin.
- 39. Theme tip: Pick a theme that can easily be customized and includes support.
- 40. Step 4. Find a hosting company that does everything for you.
- 41. Good WordPress web hosts • Pagely $24/mo+! • Flywheel $15/mo+! • SiteGround $9.95/mo+ no page view limits free migration low cost
- 42. Step 5. Install WordPress + theme + plugins. Pro tip: the hosts I recommended earlier will install WordPress for you.
- 43. Step 6. Get people involved.
- 44. Tips for involving other church staff/volunteers • Subscribe to WP101.com training videos to teach them WordPress.! • Send a call for help to your church. Never build a church website by yourself.! • Give people responsibilities and train them. Require their participation. Set up processes.! • Find key stakeholders early and educate them on how the website works before you build it.
- 45. One more thing: we need contributors.
- 46. Thank you! Questions? Slides available at: slideshare.net/chriswallace7 Twitter! Web! ! ! @churchthemesnet! churchthemes.net! @liftux! liftux.com! @upthemes! upthemes.com! @chriswallace chriswallace.net